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Sabio Tarot · History and curiosities

By Sabio Tarot

Etteilla and the early tarot cartomancy manuals

A British Museum record describes a 78-card cartomancy deck preserved with an instruction booklet. Its sales name, Grand Etteilla, points to an eighteenth-century figure. The physical copy, however, is dated to around 1872–1890. A name on a box, an author's lifetime and an edition's date are not the same thing.

Etteilla was the professional name of Jean-Baptiste Alliette. The British Museum identifies him as a French populariser of tarot divination and explains that his pseudonym spells his surname backwards. The Victoria and Albert Museum places him in the history of late-eighteenth-century cartomancy, first with ordinary playing cards and later with tarot.

Cartomancy before the deck bearing his name

Divination with cards did not begin with one tarot manual. According to the V&A, Etteilla presented himself as a teacher of cartomancy using an ordinary 52-card deck and created cards specifically for that practice in the 1770s. He later brought tarot into his work, at a time when esoteric accounts of the game's supposed Egyptian origins were also circulating.

That sequence has a useful implication. We should not imagine that someone took a fifteenth-century Italian deck and found within it an intact ancient manual of divinatory meanings. Modern cartomancy developed new correspondences, instructions and products. Its history is one of authorship and publishing, not the simple discovery of a proven secret code.

What a museum deck shows

The British Museum object 1904,0511.49.1-78 contains 78 cards and an instruction booklet. Its record describes trumps with emblematic figures different from conventional motifs and imaginatively treated suits. It also gives the technique, size, publisher and an approximate date later than Etteilla's lifetime.

The object shows that a cartomancy tradition associated with his name was printed, circulated and accompanied by rules. It does not prove that Alliette himself drew this copy or that every card is identical to one he used while alive. A later edition may preserve, revise or combine earlier elements; measuring the changes requires comparing dated editions.

The same museum holds a print titled Cartonomancie, ou l'art de tirer les cartes linked to his publishing circle. Its record can help us study how the practice was advertised, but a promotional print is not a count of all its readers.

Why his method matters to readers now

Etteilla illustrates a principle: a reading system is constructed. Card order, names, illustrations and instructions can form a coherent whole. If you open a manual based on an Etteilla deck while holding a Marseille or Rider–Waite–Smith deck, you may find that the visual description does not fit. Calling one card “more authentic” will not solve that mismatch; identify the edition the book actually describes.

Before buying a guidebook, check three details: the exact deck name, that edition's date and one example card. Repeat the check with a trump and a numbered card. If the author asserts a historical line of descent, ask for a dated object or document at each step, especially where an Egyptian origin enters the story.

Etteilla does not exhaust cartomancy or stand for all tarot reading today. His importance lies in showing how cards can change function when new rules and images are published. For the broader chronology, continue with when tarot cartomancy began and the Egyptian origin as an idea.

Reading an attribution without jumping centuries

A copy titled “Grand Etteilla” may postdate Jean-Baptiste Alliette. The British Museum dates its 78-card deck to the late nineteenth century, whereas Etteilla himself lived in the eighteenth. The gap does not invalidate the object; it shows the endurance of a publishing tradition. To know which parts of a rule came from Etteilla and which from a later printer, we would need to compare dated evidence from each stage.

At least four roles may stand behind a name on a deck's cover: creator of a method, artist of its images, printer and seller of an edition. Sometimes one person fills more than one role; sometimes the largest name is an inherited brand. The museum record distinguishes publisher, technique, date of the copy and conservation notes. Copying only the title removes the information most needed for attribution.

This care is especially useful when a book claims to teach “the original method”. “Original” might mean the author's first text, a faithful later edition, a reconstruction of meanings or merely a sales promise. Ask for the date and source the book uses. A modern reproduction can teach a historical system carefully, but it must say what it reconstructs and what it updates.

An exercise with three cards

Choose a trump, a numbered card and a court card from a clearly identified Etteilla edition. Compare their names and motifs with cards in similar positions in your usual deck. Record three levels: structural correspondence, visual resemblance and the manual's interpretive rule. Do not infer the third from the first two. Two decks may share a suit yet give different reading instructions.

Next, examine the leaflet accompanying an edition if it is legally accessible. Does it explain how to shuffle, order or lay out cards? Does it distinguish upright and reversed positions? Does it connect cards to one another? Such details make a method teachable. A list of words beside 78 images is only part of the practice. The booklet's physical existence shows that cartomancy was passed on through specific publications, not as a message without an author.

The conclusion does not require you to choose Etteilla as an authority for reading today. His historical contribution shows how tarot moved into another cultural setting: decks designed for reading, instructions, successive editions and names that outlived their authors. Understanding that sequence helps you ask the same critical question of a modern manual: What object does it actually describe?

Sources consulted