In comparing the Bolognese cartomancy document's keywords with those of the chapter in Le Bohemien discussed in the previous section, I will go rank by rank rather than suit by suit, because meanings seem more often to have changed suit than they changed ranks within a suit. Since changing from suit by suit to rank by rank can produce errors on my part, in that post I have spliced together scans of the relevant lists in the 1802 French book, which go by suit, so you can check my transcriptions. For ease of reference, I give the link here:
To see that meanings often changed cards, and varied somewhat
even then, one has only to compare Etteilla in 1770 with the same author in
1783 and then in his 1785 supplements. Most dramatically, he had no qualms
about using his 1770 reversed meanings of the sevens through tens for his 1783
upright meanings of the twos through sixes.[1] As
Dummett observed, the same phenomenon of meanings changing cards occurs in
Bologna among its four sets of meanings, i.e., from the eighteenth century, the
first quarter of the nineteenth century, the third quarter of that century, and
1920. He says:
it will be seen from the table that in
the Bolognese tradition of cartomancy the same meanings wander about from one
card to another, according to the conceptions of different interpreters. [2]
To illustrate this point, in the second part of Appendix B I give for each Bolognese card a series of meanings, one from the cartomancy sheet and others from two historical packs of Bolognese cards with cartomantic meanings written on them. There are two sets of meanings; I have put the first set (pp. 51-53 of Le Bohemien) on the top half of the scan and the second set (pp. 56-57 and 59-60, scans courtesy of the University of Chicago Library) on the bottom half, for each of the four suits: Hearts (Coeurs), Diamonds (Caros/Carreaux), Clubs (Trèfles) and Spades (Piques). And I have included only the cards with meanings in both places, Paris and Bologna, i.e., not the triumphs (trumps) or Knights of the Italian list, since Etteilla’s deck lacked them, nor the 7s through 9s of Etteilla, which the Bolognese sheet lacks.
In the tables below, the first row gives the suits, first the French and then the corresponding Italian. The second row is Etteilla’s upright meanings, translated from the book, first those in the first set of meanings, then in parentheses those of the second set. The third row is Etteilla’s reversed meanings, which are mostly in the second set, except for Spades, and so in parentheses. The fourth row is the Bolognese cartomancy sheet meanings. For the missing ones I put a series of dashes.
First, here are the Kings.
|
Kings |
Hearts/Cups |
Diamonds/Batons |
Coins/Clubs |
Swords/Spades |
|
Etteilla 1st & (2nd) upright |
blond man (blond businessman) |
It is a man (a soldier) |
dark-haired man (same + fidelity) |
man of law (same) |
|
Etteilla 1st & (2nd) reversed |
(man of whole heart) |
(man of country) |
(illness of men) |
widower (evil man) |
|
Bologna |
an old man |
unmarried man |
the man |
evil tongue |
One match is “man” (un homme/l’uomo) between Diamonds and Coins. Also, “evil tongue” (malalingua) is close to “evil man” (méchant).
In other words, the French parallels the Italian in drawing the cartomantic meaning from the most prominent feature differentiating the visual appearance of the card in its suit: in the Italian, age, and in the French, color. So in Kings all four Bolognese meanings have parallels in Etteilla.
I continue with Queens:
|
Queens |
Hearts/Cups |
Diamonds/Batons |
Clubs/Coins |
Swords/Spades |
|
Etteilla 1st & (2nd) upright |
Blonde woman (good blonde woman) |
a woman (traitorous woman) |
dark-haired woman (woman of love) |
woman of loose morals, whore (widow) |
|
Etteilla 1st & (2nd) reversed |
(good woman) |
(woman of country) |
(jealous woman) |
widow (evil woman) |
|
Bologna |
married woman |
whore [puttana] |
truth |
--- |
One match is between Batons and Swords, both referring to a prostitute; the word in Bologna is “p---ana,” short for puttana. Etteilla’s femme gallante, which in eighteenth-century French did not typically mean “gallant woman,” but rather a prostitute or woman of loose morals, appears only in the present document; he changed it to “woman of the world” (femme du monde) which is less negative, in 1770 (on p. 13).
Other differences can again be explained by the different appearance of French and Italian suits, as with the kings. Whether there is an age difference in the Bolognese Queens (above, third and fourth from left) is unclear. But for the Bolognese cartomancer the women seem paired with their king: the older man has a wife, and the younger, unmarried, has a prostitute.
Truth (Verità) has no particular correspondence to anything in Etteilla. It might, however, reflect the literal meaning of the suit sign of Coins; perhaps there was an Italian saying about money and truth, like the English “Put your money where your mouth is.” So for Queens there are two good correspondences and one that is fairly speculative.
Now for the Pages,
Valets in French and Fanti/Fantesche in Italian:
|
Pages |
Hearts/Cups |
Diamonds/Batons |
Clubs/Coins |
Spades/Swords |
|
Etteilla 1st & (2nd) upright |
blond boy (blond young man) |
a soldier (traitor) |
brown-haired man (faithful man) |
envoy, messenger (traitor) |
|
Etteilla 1st & (2nd) reversed |
(thought of blond man) |
(domestic servant) |
(indecision) |
a curious person; (illness) |
|
Bologna |
the woman |
thought of the woman |
young woman |
--- |
The French-suited Pages are all young males, differentiated only by their suit signs, red and black. The differentiation in Bologna is between females in Cups and Coins, male in the other two. Where Etteilla has hair color, Bologna has male vs. female.
“Thought
of the woman,” or “the woman’s thought” (pensiere della donna), is of
course nothing like “soldier” (militaire), but strikingly like Etteilla’s
second reversed meaning in Hearts, “thought of blond man” (pensée d’homme
blond). It seems to me that this coincidence of expressions is particularly
strong evidence of connection, because it is just such odd turns of phrase that
are looked for when trying to trace sources. I know of nothing in French
cartomancy beginning “pensée de . . .” before or since. Oddly, it gets
applied to a Bolognese suit that has a male Page. But since all the rest of the
Bolognese Page expressions have “woman” in the meanings, perhaps it can be
explained in that way. So here we have 3 out of 3. Now the Aces:
|
Aces |
Hearts/Cups |
Diamonds/Batons |
Clubs/Coins |
Spades/Swords |
|
Etteilla 1st & (2nd) upright |
bottle, table, (house of good heart) |
letters (great news) |
much money (money) |
love (love, pregnancy) |
|
Etteilla 1st & (2nd) reversed |
(house of false heart) |
(letter, ticket) |
(love) |
pregnancy (letter, trifle) |
|
Bologna |
the house |
vexations |
table |
letter |
Bologna’s “house” (casa) is matched by Etteilla’s houses of “good heart” and “false heart” (maison de bon coeur and maison de faux coeur), as well as his 10 of Club’s “house” (maison), as we will see shortly. “Table” (tavola) in Coins fits with Etteilla’s table in Hearts; Bologna’s “letter” (lettera), as Dummett observed, matches Etteilla’s lettre in Diamonds. Baronate, i.e., “vexations,” it seems to me, is close to Etteilla’s 10 of Diamonds, “angers” (courroux) or “anger” (colère) (see below). The first, in the plural, might refer to the objects of anger, like “vexations.” This is one of those where the 1770 is different: “betrayal,” which is much less like “vexations” than “anger.”
Here
it is perhaps 3.5 out of 4, baronate and courroux/colère being a
bit distant. Finally, the 10s:
|
Tens |
Hearts/Cups |
Diamonds/Batons |
Clubs/Coins |
Spades/Swords |
|
Etteilla 1st & (2nd) upright |
the city where one is (repast of full heart) |
gold - next to bad spades, angers (country/campaign sure) |
house (good luck) |
tears (boredom) |
|
Etteilla 1st & (2nd) reversed |
(repast of false heart) |
(anger) |
(love) |
(tears) |
|
Bologna |
roof tiles |
--- |
money |
tears |
As Dummett again pointed out, “money” (denari) connects with “gold” (or), and “tears” is also in both, even the same card. I would add that “tiles of the house” (coppi della casa) relates to “house” (maison) in Clubs, even if also using the assonance, only in Italian, coppi/coppe. If “gold” were not enough, there is also “money” (argent) in Etteilla’s Aces. So all three Bolognese meanings have good correspondences in Etteilla.
In summary, all the Bolognese meanings except Truth have some sort of correspondence in Etteilla. The result is a 92.5% correlation, if we give baronate-courroux half credit. A connection is certainly suggested: most accounts in that century do not even use keywords.[5] An exception is an English deck allegedly of 1750 that Mary Greer lists, Sketchley’s Newly Invented Conversation Cards;[6] some keywords on the twelve cards she shows are also used by Etteilla, or are similar. Sketchley was considered an ardent Freemason, Greer says. I’d think any foreign influence on him would more likely have been French than Italian, because of the numerous personal connections between French and English Masons, much fewer than with Italians then.
The French book gives two types of spreads. The first is simply laying cards down one by one; the second is complex but at one point involves dividing twelve cards into four piles: “for you,” “for the house,” “for that which is to be” and “for the surprise.”[7] Then one reads the first three piles by groups. The process is done three times, with the “surprise,” which only got one card per turn, read at the end. This forty-card reading in ten sets of four is roughly comparable to Bologna document’s thirty-five in five sets, even if done all at once in Bologna.
These correspondences mostly also hold for Etteilla’s 1770 book [8] with four exceptions: there is no “evil man” corresponding to “evil tongue”; the 1770 has “woman of the world” instead of “woman of loose morals”; there is no “thought of…” construction; and we see “betrayal” in place of “anger,” corresponding less well with “vexations.” So, using the 1770 publication as a basis, there are still 16 - 4 = 12 correspondences, out of 17. Not allowing the adjustments for visual differences in the court cards, in 1770 there are 7 out of 17: man, woman, house, table, letter, money, tears (Dummett missed the first two). This is not counting a second reference to a house in “roof tiles” and the numerous variations on man, woman, and young person, even if different in the two systems.
[1] Michael Dummett, Tarot Cartomancy in Bologna,” The Playing-Card 32:2 (2003), p. 80, online at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1760&p=22186#p22186. By "1783" is meant the Third Cahier, i.e. Maniere de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées tarots. Pour servir de troisiéme cahier à cet ouvrage (Amsterdam: 1783-84), online in Gallica and transcribed by "Corodil" at https://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=180963; the explication of the triumphs
on pp. 5-13 of the book, with translation at http://thirdcahier.blogspot.com. By "1770" is meant Etteilla,
ou manière de se récréer avec un jeu des cartes par M*** (Amsterdam,
1770), online in Gallica and Google Books, keywords on odd-
numbered pages of pp. 7-15.
[2] Dummett, “Tarot Cartomancy” (of previous n.), p. 82, and table pp. 85-87. The data are also in Andrea Vitali and Terry Zanetti, Il Tarocchino di Bologna: Storia, Iconogafia, Divinazione dal XV al XX secolo (Bologna: Edizioni Martina, 2005), pp. 80-81.
[3] My example is from https://www.wopc.co.uk/denmark/index.
[4] Vitali and Zanetti, Il Tarocchino (see above n. 2), pp. 52 and 56. The year 1770 is on the Page of Batons, p. 56.
[5] For examples see Ross Caldwell, “A Brief History of Cartomancy,” online on academia.edu, and Mary K. Greer, “Origins of Divination (Playing Card Divination),” online at “Mary K. Greer’s Tarot Blog,” April 1, 2008 (https://marykgreer.com/2008/04/01/origins-of-divination-with-playing-cards/).
[6] Greer, “Origins” (of previous n.).
[7] Le Bohémien (see above n. 1), p. 65: “Pour vous. ----Pour la maison. —Pour ce qu’il en sera. —Et pour la surprise.”
[8] Etteilla [Jean-Baptiste Allietta], Etteilla, ou manière de se récréer avec un jeu des cartes par M*** (see n. 1 above).
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