Etteilla
Etteilla, the pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Alliette (1738-1791), was a Parisian wig-maker turned cartomancer, regarded as the first professional cartomancer of modern history. He published in 1785 Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées tarots and designed the first tarot expressly drawn for divination.
Origin and etymology
Born in Paris in 1738, Jean-Baptiste Alliette first worked as a wig-maker and seed merchant before devoting himself to cartomancy. He chose as his pseudonym the anagram of his name: Etteilla. As early as 1770, he published Etteilla, ou manière de se récréer avec un jeu de cartes, devoted to the 32-card piquet deck. His encounter, through reading Court de Gébelin, with the thesis of the Egyptian origin of the tarot transformed his practice. He then extended his methods to the 78-card deck and in 1785 published his reference work on the tarot. He presented himself as the heir of a tradition transmitted from the Book of Thoth.
Evolution and tradition
Around 1789, Etteilla had his own deck printed — often considered the first divinatory tarot designed for fortune-telling. The arcana were given a name and a keyword, both upright and reversed, an innovation that standardized the binary reading still in use today. He founded a Society of the Interpreters of the Book of Thoth and trained students such as Hugand-Jejalel and Mademoiselle Lenormand, who would extend his method into the nineteenth century. His deck went through several reprints under the names Grand Etteilla, Petit Etteilla, or Egyptian Tarot. Éliphas Lévi, while mocking the man, acknowledged his role as a bridge between the learned speculation of Court de Gébelin and the popular practice of cartomancy.
Practical use
Etteilla's legacy is immense: professional cartomancy, the keywords printed on the cards, the systematic upright/reversed distinction, and reading in numbered spreads all owe their modern form to him. On Tarotoui, when you read a reversed meaning different from the upright sense, you are unknowingly following the Etteillist method. His Grand Etteilla is still reprinted today by Grimaud and remains popular in esoteric circles attached to the French tradition.
Going further
Despised by the Masonic elites of his time, who reproached him for his popular origin, Etteilla long suffered from a poor historiographical reputation. Recent work by Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis, and Michael Dummett in A Wicked Pack of Cards (1996) has restored the importance of his contribution: without him, the tarot would probably have remained a simple Lombard game. His distinctive numbering, which shifts the major arcana, nonetheless sets him clearly apart from the traditional Marseille.