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.”