1. Introduction

Author's note: This blog reproduces, with minor changes, my essay of the same title published in Andrea Vitali and Michael S. Howard, eds. Bologna and the Tarot: an Italian Legacy from the Renaissance: History, Art, Symbology, Literature (Riola, Italy: Mutus Liber, 2022). It is divided into seven sections beginning at the top and ending at the bottom of this blog. For the first three, you can just scroll down from here. Then for the next, click on "older post." They can also be accessed by clicking on the link. Unfortunately the titles embedded in the links don't match up with the real titles, because after setting up the blog I decided to merge what were 2 and 3, since they were so short.

1. Introduction: the present page.

2. Trumps and Suits: here, but also accessible separately at https://bolognacartomancyetteilla.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-triumphs-trumps.html.

3. Etteilla's earliest work on cartomancy, here, but also accessible separately at  https://bolognacartomancyetteilla.blogspot.com/2023/09/3-suit-cards.html.

4. Comparing the Suit Cards' Keywords with Etteilla's, https://bolognacartomancyetteilla.blogspot.com/2023/09/4-etteillas-earliest-work-on-cartomancy.html.

5. The Direction of Influence, at https://bolognacartomancyetteilla.blogspot.com/2023/09/5-comparing-suit-card-keywords-with.html.

6. Conclusion, and Appendix A: Trump Keywords, at https://bolognacartomancyetteilla.blogspot.com/2023/09/6-direction-of-influence.html.

7. Appendix B: Suit Keywords, at https://bolognacartomancyetteilla.blogspot.com/2023/09/appendices-and-b.html.

In 1989 Franco Pratesi reported on a sheet he had found in the University of Bologna Library. It had a list of words on one side recognizable as the titles of thirty-five cards of the traditional Tarocchino deck of Bologna (a reduced Tarot without the twos through fives), and next to each was what appeared to be a divinatory meaning for that card.[1]

Pratesi reported that the sheet was included among others of a diverse nature dating between 1760 and 1783, with a significant number specific to 1772-73. Among them were letters and notes of a Masonic ambience, and in certain cases specifically linked to France, although not the sheet in question. Such papers and dates correlate well with the known milieu of French cartomancy of that time, specifically the publication of Etteilla’s first book on cartomancy in 1770 and then the 1781 essays by de Gébelin and de Mellet. While Etteilla denied belonging to any Masonic lodge and held their degrees in some contempt, they were interested in him,[2] and de Gébelin certainly was a Mason. It is likely that their ideas about the Tarot were then part of a French Masonic milieu.[3]

  But one thing suggested a date even earlier: two of the titles were the Maid of Coins (Fantesca di Denari) and the Maid of Cups (Fantesca di Coppe), cards that seem to have gone out of fashion by 1750. Pratesi’s reference was Tarot historian Michael Dummett, who had noted that the non-standard pack by Mittelli, 1664, had only male Fanti and that “accounts of the game in 1753 and 1754 refer only to Fanti (Jacks) and not to Fantine or the like.”[4] If Maids had been included in the deck, Dummett reasoned, they would have been mentioned in the order reported in this last volume, where the ranks of the court cards of Cups and Coins are explicitly listed. Dummett mentioned two decks with Fantine, one “in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris from the end of the seventeenth century” and “a single-ended one made after 1725 in the British Museum.”[5] He suggested “around the period 1690-1730” as in which the Fantine would have been included.[6] Pratesi gave 1650-1750 as the maximum limits for these cards, placing the list before 1750. The Bologna University library currently dates it at 1730-40.[7]

Pratesi pointed to features of the document that suggested a tradition independent of France. The Temperance card’s cartomantic meaning Tempo, i.e., Time, is hard to associate with anything besides its standard Bolognese title, Tempra. Similarly, the meaning of the Ten of Coppe (Cups), Coppi della casa (roof tiles), seems suggested by the assonance coppe/coppi. The French term Coupes does not so readily suggest its French equivalent, couvertures. Also, the method described, putting the cards in five piles of seven cards each, is different from anything known in France. Here let us note that this number, 7x5, suggests that the thirty-five cards listed might not be all the divinatory cards in the deck, but just the cards in a particular reading.

  Pratesi ended by referring to another set of Tarocchini, from ca. 1820, with similar cartomantic meanings written on them in pen, including coppi della casa, this time on the Nine of Coppe. So Bologna seems to have had something of a tradition.

Subsequent research by Dummett produced not only all the meanings for the ca. 1820 deck but also for two more decks, from the third quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century; he listed the words handwritten on the cards.[8] In 2005 Vitali and Zanetti published many images of extant examples, all double-ended.[9]

Is there any connection between these meanings and those of Etteilla, as first published in 1770? Dummett compared the meanings in Etteilla, or way to entertain oneself with a deck of cards, by M.***[10] with those of the corresponding cards on the Bolognese sheet. In making these comparisons, he disregarded whether it was the same precise card, because both Etteilla in later works and the later cartomantic packs in Bologna often changed the card to which a particular keyword had attached previously. The comparisons were for the cards the two documents had in common. Etteilla’s lists were for the Sevens through Tens of the four regular suits, plus the Jack, Queen, King, and Ace. Of these, the Bolognese sheet was missing the Sevens and Eights, as well as one Queen, a male Page, and a Ten. Out of the remaining seventeen (four suits, five ranks, minus three cards), Dummett found five keywords out of seventeen where the two systems had similar meanings.[11] These were not enough for him to say either that the two systems were related or that they were not. “I feel uncertain on this point,” he said. I wish to pursue this matter further.[12]

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[1] Franco Pratesi, “Tarot Bolonais et Cartomancie,” L’As de Trèfle, no. 37, May 1989, pp. 10-11. Online at http://naibi.net. The sheet is held by the Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, BUB 4029R-1. Scans provided by the University staff of both sides are in Appendix A of this blog.

[2] Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis, and Michael Dummett, A Wicked Pack of Cards (London: Duckworth, 1996), p. 89. They mention that he was invited to speak at the Philalèthes’ second congress of 1787.

[3] Ibid, p. 68.

[4] Michael Dummett, The Game of Tarot, from Ferrara to Salt Lake City (London: Duckworth, 1980), p. 316. These two accounts, mentioned on p. 317, are R. Bisteghi, Il Guioco Pratica (Bologna, 1753) and Carlo Pisarri, Istruzione necessari per che si volesse imparare il dilettevole giuoco dei Tarocchini (Bologna, 1754). The former lists the court cards by rank on p. 102, the latter on p. 16.

[5] Ibid, pp. 315-16.

[6] Ibid., p. 316.

[7] Andrea Vitali, personal communication, April 2020.

[8] Michael Dummett, “Tarot Cartomancy in Bologna,” The Playing-Card 32:2 (2003), pp. 79-88, online at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1760&p=22186#p22186.

[9] Andrea Vitali and Terry Zanetti, Il Tarocchino di Bologna: Storia, Iconogafia, Divinazione dal XV al XX secolo (Bologna: Edizioni Martina, 2005), pp. 78-104.

[10] Etteilla [Jean-Baptiste Allietta], Etteilla, ou manière de se récréer avec un jeu des cartes par M*** (Amsterdam, 1770), online in Gallica and Google Books. The keywords are on the odd-numbered pages of pp. 7-15.

[11] Dummett, “Tarot Cartomancy” (see here n. 8), pp. 80-81.

[12] The present essay is an expansion of my post of Jan. 17, 2017, at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1152&hilit=cartomancy&start=10.

2. Trumps and Suits

A. Trumps (Major Arcana)

What corresponds to the Tarot trumps (i.e. triumphs, major arcana) in Etteilla's version of that deck are his first twenty-one cards plus the Fool (which he locates variously as 78th and between 21 and 22, the World and the King of Batons). Each card has an upright and a reversed keyword. Dummett did not provide particulars in the way of comparing these keywords with those given - one only - for the trump cards on the sheet in Bologna, simply saying that there was no point. But it is worth going over the two, just to be sure. 

Etteilla’s first interpretations of the trumps are in his Third Cahier, 1783.[1] Comparing them with those on the sheet, there are indeed not many correspondences. The Fool means Madness for both writers, and Death means Death, although Etteilla adds “or as little of it as necessary.”[2] These are obvious associations. 

The card corresponding to that of the World has the meaning of “voyage” for both. Is that obvious or not? It is to be expected that in one or two cases two people will think of the same associations; on the other hand, there may be a common source. 

In one case, a meaning for one card appears to transfer to another: Bologna’s “betrayal” for the Hanged Man transfers to Etteilla’s card for the Hermit, signifying “hypocrite, traitor.” (See Appendix A of this essay for the full list.) "Traitor" had always been one of the main Italian names for the Hanged Man card even in Etteilla's day, people called the card that, at least in the expanded deck of Minchiate, although not written on the card. His reassigning that meaning to the Hermit is an example of his anti-clericism, along with his non-inclusion of the Pope and Popess.

At the same time, he transformed what had been the man hanging by one foot into a card for Prudence. That the Hanged Man was "originally" Prudence had already been asserted in 1781 by de Gebelin and de Mellett in the eighth volume of the former's Monde Primitif. De Mellet, for his part, observes:

Douzieme, les accidents qui attaquent la vie humaine, représentés par un homme pendu par le pied, ce qui veut aussi dire que, pour les éviter, il faut dans ce monde marcher avec prudence: pede suspenso.

Twelfth, the accidents which attack human life, represented by a man hanging by his foot, which also means that to avoid them, one must walk with prudence in this world: Suspenso pede.[3]

 

Suspenso pede is a Latin phrase whose literal meaning is "suspended foot," but also means "on tiptoe." (https://www.lingq.com/en/learn-latin-online/translate/la/3250359/suspenso-pede/). Hence the man would be walking upright, not hanging upside down. De Mellet says nothing about betrayal, just "accidents." Neither he nor de Gebelin says anything about the snake on Etteilla's card, changed from a rope; that may be Etteilla's invention. 

Calling the man in a cassock a traitor is also Etteilla's invention. Gebelin and de Mellet both interpreted the figure on the Hermit card as a sage. [4]

Card 6 of Etteilla’s triumphs, a design of his own invention replacing, he says, the Empress, displays a moon and a sun and has the meaning Night upright and Day reversed. These keywords correspond in Bologna to the cartomantic meanings given for the Moon and Sun cards. These again are obvious enough. Etteilla's reason for the sun and the moon on a single card, and the meanings Day and Night, is that Etteilla wanted to find the “six days of creation” in his low triumphs, which do not enter into the Bologna document. Etteilla in his 1783 book did have cards that corresponded to the usual imagery on the Sun and Moon cards: the dog, wolf, and crab on the Moon, the two young people on the Sun; the meanings he gave them relate only metaphorically to to night and day: “No. 2. The Sun, this hieroglyph means enlightenment” and “No. 3. The Moon, means harmful talk,” in French coup de langue, but modified to the more neutral propos ("talk" or "plan") in his 1789 cards.

So overall there is little to link the meanings of Etteilla’s triumphs with those in Bologna, just as Dummett said. The few correspondences that exist are most likely coincidences, because they are the obvious meanings to give. It seems that Etteilla at least would have had to know the Italian titles, in order to know that one of them meant "traitor" - unless monks skulking around in the dark were automatically dubious characters, which I doubt. These titles would have been easy enough to learn about. Etteilla was a print reseller by trade and traveled extensively.[5] 

B. Suits

As Dummett observed, a comparison of Etteilla’s two books, the 1770 for a thirty-two card deck and the 1783-84 for seventy-eight, will quickly reveal that he assigned his 1770 upright meanings in Spades to Swords in 1783, Hearts to Cups, Diamonds to Batons, and Clubs to Coins. [6] And since there are more ranks in the Tarot than in the Piquet deck, Etteilla gave the reversed meanings in his first book to the uprights of these additional cards, more or less, and added new reversed meanings.

These correspondences between Tarot suits and French suits are not unique to Etteilla. The same ones are articulated by the Comte de Mellet in his companion piece to Court de Gébelin’s famous article on the Tarot in vol. 8 of his then-celebrated work Le Monde Primitif (The Primitive World).[7] From the way de Mellet writes, it seems that he means to be reporting elements of existing practice. Of “our fortune-tellers” he says, giving the correspondences in parentheses:

Hearts, (cups), announce happiness.

Clubs, (coins), wealth.

Spades (swords), misfortune.

Diamonds (batons), indifference & the countryside.[3]

De Mellet goes on to say that the Ace of Spades presages victory, just like the Ace of Swords, etc., illustrating the cartomantic correspondences between French and Italian suits. Like Etteilla in 1770, cartomancy with French suits is only with the Piquet deck.

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 [1] Etteilla [Jean-Baptiste Alliette=, Maniere de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées tarots. Pour servir de troisiéme cahier à cet ouvrage. (Amsterdam: 1783-84), online in French in Gallica and at https://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=180963; his explication of the triumphs is on pp. 5-13 of the book. My translation is at http://thirdcahier.blogspot.com.

[2] Ibid., p. 13: “la Folie”; p. 11: “ou peu s’en faut.”

[3]Le Comte de M***[Louis-Raphaël-Lucrèce de Mellet], "Studies on the Tarot and on Divination with Tarot Cards," in Court de Gebelin, Le Monde Primitif, vol. 8 (Paris, 1781 online in Gallica, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1087220/f494.item), pp. 395-409, on p. 398. De Gebelin's own essay is on pp. 365-394, with "Prudence" discussed on p. 372.

[4] Ibid., pp. 373 and 399.

[5]Ron Decker, Thierry Depaulis, and Michael Dummett, A Wicked Pack of Cards (London: Duckworth, 1996), p. 80.

[6] Dummett, “Tarot Cartomancy” (see here n. 8), p. 80.

[7] “Recherches sur le Tarots et sur la Divination par les Cartes des Tarots,” in Court de Gébelin, Le Monde Primitif Analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne, vol. 8, Paris, 1781, pp. 395-410. Online in Gallica and translated by Steve Mangan at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=21052 and posts following.

[8] Ibid., p. 403 (Section V): “Les Coeurs (les coupes), annoncent le bonheur. / Les Trèfles (les deniers), la fortune. /Les Piques, (les epées), le malheur. / Les Carreaux (les bâtons), l’indiffèrence & la campagne.”

3. Etteilla's earliest work on cartomancy

Keeping in mind the cartomantic suit correspondences between French and Italian suits, I want to compare again the Bolognese suit card meanings with those of Etteilla. I think Dummett missed some parallels. Also, there is a text that is probably earlier and also by Etteilla, in which there are a few more. Since this text is not well known, I will say more about it.

Published with no author listed, Le Bohémien (below) was printed in 1802 Paris.[1] That of course is not earlier than 1770, but there is more to be said. Decker et al mention it in their 1996 book A Wicked Pack of Cards.[2] They observe that it is a combined reprint of two works, of which the second, L’Art d’Escamoter (The art of the sleight-of-hand artist), first printed in 1797, tells how to do magic tricks. It is the other, L’Art de tirer les cartes (The art of reading the cards), that is of our interest. 

Although anonymous, there is good reason to think the author, or at least editor, of both was one Jacques Saint-Sauveur. After attending school in Paris, at least until 1772 and age fifteen, he followed his father’s career in the diplomatic service and then wrote illustrated travel books; he also seems to have been known for performing magic tricks.[3] Decker et al state that he published a Petit Etteilla, i.e. a Piquet deck marked with Etteilla’s 1770 keywords, sometime in the last years of the eighteenth century.[4] They also observe that the publisher’s address for the earlier printing of the booklet on magic tricks (Le Petit Escamoteur [sic]) is the same as that given by “citoyen” Saint-Sauveur on a card of his Petit Etteilla.[5] The British Museum has the very card on its website.[6]

L’Art de tirer les cartes is a compendium of different methods of reading ordinary playing cards, using different layouts and different sets of meanings. What is of our interest is a short treatise called Le Petit Etteilla, which the editor says is a work that Etteilla printed privately for friends in 1771. In it are two sets of cartomantic meanings for the Piquet deck. The editor says that a copy fell into his hands, and he went to visit Etteilla in 1772, to ask permission to reprint it. He continues:

Eteilla [sic] went further, and considered that he should pay me if I reprinted this little amusement, from which he had not claimed to take any advantage; having given this way of drawing cards at the age of fifteen or sixteen, and having just verified it at thirty-three.[7]

Since Etteilla was born in 1738, Decker et al point out, he would have “given” this work in 1753 or 1754 and “verified” its correctness in 1771. They note that what comes next “strongly resembles Etteilla’s own very peculiar style.”[8]

The early date is consistent with other reports attributable to him. A 1791 document to which Etteilla put his signature also characterizes him as “giving” (donnant) his method in 1753.[9] Somewhat confusedly, it also speaks of him writing an abrège (synopsis) in 1757.[10] However, in 1785 Etteilla said he wrote that work in 1753.[11] In any case, its first set of meanings is much the same as those of his book of 1770.

As to where this system came from, the 1791 document mentions “three elderly persons” imprisoned for cartomancy in Paris 1751-1753. They did not agree among themselves, so the young Etteilla “harmonized” (avait accordé) their individual meanings.[12] It seems to have been a system for the Piquet deck. Decker et al say only that his system, including that of the Tarot, “is largely fed from older French cartomancy.”[13]

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[1] Le Bohémien, contenant l’Art de tirer les cartes, suivi par l’Art d’Escamoter, et de l’application des Rêves aux Numéros de la Lotterie (no author/editor listed, but probably Jacques Saint-Sauveur, ed., Etteilla the author of "Art de tirer les cartes," and Saint-Saveur the author of the rest). (Paris: Chez Lemarchand, 1802). Scans of relevant pages from this work have been graciously provided to the author by the University of Chicago library.

[2] Ron Decker, Thierry Depaulis, and Michael Dummett, A Wicked Pack of Cards (London: Duckworth, 1996), p. 275, n. 65.

[3] Biographie universelle et portative des contemporains, ou Dictionnaire historique des hommes célèbres de toutes les nations, morts ou vivants, ec., 1826, p. 1231, in Google Books. Cited by Steve Mangan (“Kwaw”) online on Aeclectic Tarot Forum (find “biographie universelle”).

[4] Ibid.

[5] Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett, Wicked Pack, p. 274, n. 62

[6] https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1896-0501-715-1-32. Thanks to Steve Mangan for this link.

[7]  Le Bohémien (see above n. 1), p. 46: “Eteilla [sic] fut plus loin, et crut me devoir des obligations de réimprimer ce petit amusement, duquel il n’avoit prétendu tirer aucun parti; ayant donné cette manière de tirer les cartes à l’âge de quinze ou seize ans, et l’ayant vérifiée juste à celui de trente-trois.”

[8] Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett, Wicked Pack (see above n. 2), p. 98.

[9] From Le Nouvel Etteilla, ou Moyen Infaillible de Tirer les Cartes et de lire dans l’Avenir, in the booklet accompanying the Petit Etteilla deck reproduced by France Cartes (Paris: n.p., n.d.), p. 12. This seems to be the 1791 booklet described by Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett, Wicked Pack, pp. 96-97, inasmuch as their liberal quotes from it correspond to passages in the France Cartes version.  The year 1791 is given in the bibliographic material contained in the copy of the original booklet from which they quote, according to their n. 64, pp. 274-75, giving its original title as Etteilla, ou l’Art de tirer dans les Cartes.

[10] Ibid. of Le Nouvel Etteilla.

[11] Etteilla [Jean-Baptiste Alliette], Philosophie des Hautes Sciences (Paris, 1785), p. 116. Online in archive.org. Cited by Decker et al, p. 78.

[12] [Etteilla? Jacques Saint-Sauveur?], Le Nouvel Etteilla (see above n. 9) p. 11. This passage is also quoted (in their translation) in Decker, Depaulis and Dummett, Wicked Pack, pp. 96-97.

[13] Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett, Wicked Pack (see here n. 2), p. 94.