At a time when the tarot was still just a game of chance, one man made it the mirror of subtle wisdom. Under the name Etteilla, Jean-Baptiste Alliette, a modest 18th-century Parisian print merchant, revolutionized the art of divination. Visionary, bold, sometimes controversial, he created the very first esoteric tarot, structured the foundations of modern cartomancy, and claimed that the cards were the forgotten fragment of knowledge from Egypt. Here is the story of the man who, long before Éliphas Lévi or Papus, opened the doors to the hermetic tarot.
The Origins of an Enlightenment Occultist
Jean-Baptiste Alliette was born in Paris in 1738, in the heart of the Age of Enlightenment. Coming from a modest background—his father was a master roaster—the young Alliette grew up in a time when the attraction to rational sciences coexisted with a persistent fascination for occult arts. Little is known about his youth. As an adult, he first took up the profession of grain merchant, like his mother, and married Jeanne Vattier, with whom he had a child. Around 1767, his life took a turn: he separated from his wife and changed profession to become a print merchant in Paris. This trade immersed him in the artistic and intellectual circles of the capital, a fertile ground where esoteric ideas also sprouted.
It was in this vibrant atmosphere that Alliette was initiated into hermetic knowledge. He took a keen interest in astrology, alchemy, Kabbalah, and divinatory arts. Tradition holds that he learned the art of card reading very early: according to him, as early as 1757 (he was only 19), a revelation came to him about the powers of the cards. Perhaps he met a traveling mentor from Italy—since later Alliette claimed to have been initiated into the tarot in 1751 in Naples, long before anyone spoke of it in France. In any case, in the esoteric Paris of the 1760s, the taste for mystery and predictions spread across all social classes. Female card readers began to read cards for ladies of high society, and Jean-Baptiste Alliette would soon make a name for himself in this emerging field.
The Birth of Cartomancy
In 1770, Alliette anonymously published a small work that would mark the history of divination: Etteilla, or a Way to Entertain Oneself with a Deck of Cards. The pseudonym “Etteilla” is nothing other than the reversal (anacyclique) of his surname, a cryptic nod that would become his pen name. Under this mysterious signature, he delivered the first cartomancy treatise ever published in the West. The book proposed transforming a simple deck of cards into a tool for divinatory entertainment—“to entertain oneself,” as it was phrased, to soften the boldness of the practice. Alliette used the Piquet deck (32 ordinary cards) and presented unprecedented methods of card reading for the time. Notably, he systematized the reading of cards upright and reversed, attributing meaning to reversed cards, which was a major innovation in the art of cartomancy. Thanks to this pioneering work, Etteilla became, in a way, the first known professional “card reader,” living off his consultations and cartomancy lessons. The success was immediate: the book was reissued, and contemporaries echoed this new fashion of “recreational” cards to foresee the future.
Excerpt. Source
Building on this growing notoriety, Alliette diversified his occult explorations. In 1772, he published The Mysterious Zodiac, or the Oracles of Etteilla, a collection of horoscopes and astrological sayings. This text, combining popular astrology and predictions, reflects his taste for astrology and the eclecticism of his hermetic knowledge. Alliette willingly presented himself as a follower of all the “high” esoteric sciences: not only cartomancy but also chiromancy (palm reading) and metoposcopy (divination by forehead lines)—ancient arts he practiced and later wrote about. During the 1770s, Etteilla thus established himself as a versatile occultist, both author, seer, and unofficial esoteric teacher.
Curiously, after 1773, Etteilla observed an editorial silence for nearly a decade. He was likely absorbed by his print merchant business—which he ran in partnership with his brother—while probably continuing his divinatory consultations. For obscure reasons, he left Paris for a time and settled in Strasbourg in 1777, before returning to the capital around 1780. But this calm was only apparent: in the shadows, Jean-Baptiste Alliette was preparing for a spectacular renewal, stimulated by a triggering event on the scholarly scene.
The Revelation of the Book of Thoth
In 1781, the Parisian intellectual community was stirred by the publication of the eighth volume of Le Monde primitif, the encyclopedia by Antoine Court de Gébelin. In this volume, a striking chapter proposed a then-revolutionary thesis: the tarot deck was not a mere pastime but the vestige of an ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth, containing the symbolic secrets of ancient wisdom. Court de Gébelin—a Protestant scholar and Freemason—claimed to recognize the sacred symbols of ancient Egypt, convinced that each major arcana of the tarot concealed an esoteric truth inherited from Egyptian priests.
For Alliette, this reading of the tarot acted as a true revelation. He who until then had confined his oracles to ordinary cards suddenly discovered a far nobler and richer medium: a whole deck of symbolic images, which Court de Gébelin elevated as the key to Egyptian mysteries. The tarot became in his eyes a bridge between the present and occult Antiquity, a wealth of symbols to interpret. From the publication of Court’s essay, Alliette eagerly embraced it: “Etteilla” would explicitly claim this new theory to rebuild his own divinatory practice. Moreover, he coined a term to describe his discipline: Egyptian cartonomancy (meaning cartomancy through the tarot, bearer of sacred names). This neologism, preferred over cartomancy, emphasized that his art of card reading entered a new era, tinged with oriental exoticism and ancient scholarship.
From 1783, Jean-Baptiste Alliette thus followed up with a series of works devoted to the tarot, collected under the ambitious title Collection of the High Sciences. These publications—some appearing in Amsterdam, a sign of their international reach—formed the first tarot divination treatises ever published. The project was considerable: it aimed to reinterpret the entire Tarot of Marseille in the light of occult sciences and Egyptian mythology. Etteilla began with How to Entertain Oneself with the Deck of Cards Called Tarots (first booklet published in 1783), followed by several additional booklets up to 1785. He developed Court de Gébelin’s theories, adopting and extending them. From then on, the tarot was no longer a simple game for him: it was a book of esoteric images to decipher, carrying sacred knowledge from the depths of time.
In his Theoretical and Practical Lessons on the Book of Thoth (published in 1787), Etteilla structured his tarot teaching as a true esoteric course. He explained how each tarot card, renamed Book of Thoth, was linked to cosmic and symbolic forces. He wove around the deck a vast network of hermetic correspondences: the four elements (water, air, earth, fire) were associated with the four tarot suits, zodiac signs intertwined with the major arcana, and even Hebrew letters found their place in his system. Long before Éliphas Lévi codified these relationships, Etteilla sketched a Kabbalistic connection by matching the 22 major arcana to the 22 sacred letters of the Kabbalah. Under his pen, the tarot became an esoteric microcosm: each card a polyphonic symbol reflecting Egyptian wisdom, Chaldean astrology, Pythagorean numerology (“arithmology”), and the mysteries of the Kabbalah. Etteilla particularly emphasized the heritage of Thoth–Hermes Trismegistus, the scribe god of ancient Egypt whom he considered the mythical father of the tarot. According to him, the tarot deck was created around 2000 BCE by a college of Egyptian magicians disciples of Hermes. By claiming such a lineage, Etteilla fully embraced the Egyptomania of his time—a fascination with ancient Egypt popular in 18th-century secret societies—and gave his tarot an aura of mystery and archaic dignity.
Etteilla Tarot. Source
The Etteilla Tarot he designed in the late 1780s reflects this innovative esoteric vision. Alliette indeed created his own divinatory tarot deck, the first of its kind made specifically for cartomancy. By 1788, he had the cards of this original “Egyptian” tarot engraved, which he titled Grand Jeu de Thot or Etteilla Tarot, and obtained the publishing privilege the following year. The cards he issued were a striking blend of traditional tarot and new symbolism: the structure of the Tarot of Marseille is recognizable, but enriched with Egyptian allegorical figures, astrological symbols, keywords indicating upright and reversed interpretations, and a slightly modified card order. Etteilla numbered the Chaos card first (before the Magician) to symbolize the original darkness preceding Creation. He revised some attributions of the minor arcana and incorporated elements from hermetic books. His declared goal was to reform the tarot to restore what he believed was its original purity, free from the distortions of time. This boldness later earned him harsh criticism but laid the foundations of the occult tarot as it would develop in the following century. In 1789, when his Etteilla Tarot began circulating, Paris discovered a deck unlike any other—a tarot recreated to reveal oracles, bearing a rich esoteric syncretism.
“Professor of Algebra” and Master of the Hermetic Arts
As he published his works on the tarot, Etteilla gained stature in the Parisian occult milieu. He no longer limited himself to writing: he taught and gathered around him a true esoteric school. Around 1787-1788, confident in his tarot expertise, he began to present himself under the singular title of “Professor of Algebra.” Far from indicating a literal mathematical teaching, this enigmatic title belonged to hermetic jargon: the “algebra” Etteilla referred to was the art of hidden numbers and symbolic combinations, that is, the science of numerical correspondences (which he also called arithmology, the esoteric study of numbers). By proclaiming himself a professor in this field, Etteilla asserted his role as a pedagogue of mysteries.
In 1788, he gathered his most devoted students within the Literary Society of Interpreters of the Book of Thoth, a circle dedicated to the collective study of the tarot and the high sciences. Each member was initiated into the arcana under Etteilla’s guidance, deciphering the “Book of Thoth” as one would an ancient grimoire. The following year, in 1790, Alliette went further and founded in Paris a true occult school, which he named New School of Magic. In this esoteric academy, opened on July 1, 1790, he offered theoretical and practical courses to understand “with accuracy the art, science, and wisdom of rendering oracles.” In other words, he taught the art of divination in all its forms, with an emphasis on tarot, but also astrology, Kabbalah, alchemy, and other branches of occult sciences. This was one of the first attempts in France to institutionally structure esoteric teaching. Etteilla, now in his fifties, appeared as an initiated master transmitting knowledge once esoteric (reserved for a few adepts) to a broader audience of enlightened amateurs.
Alliette did not limit his influence to his own circle; he was connected with other initiatory societies of his time. For example, in 1787, the Philalèthes—a learned Masonic group founded by Savalette de Langes—invited him to participate in their convent dedicated to the “high sciences.” His reputation for occult versatility aroused the curiosity of these mystical Freemasons, who sought to confront different sources of esoteric knowledge. Etteilla is said to have contributed to their work, sharing his research on the tarot and likely his experiences in alchemy and Kabbalah. Likewise, it seems he founded on the margins of these circles his own Egyptian Masonic rite: a short-lived Rite of the Perfect Initiates of Egypt, established in Lyon in 1785. This rite, with Rosicrucian accents and “Egyptianizing” traits, fit into the fashion of high Masonic degrees inspired by Egypt (like the Rite of Misraïm or Cagliostro’s rite). Although it remained confidential and short-lived, it reinforced the idea that Etteilla saw himself as the bearer of an authentic Egyptian initiation, which he claimed to have received from secret Italian masters and intended to pass on. In a 1786 writing, he mentioned having the greatest respect for “true Masonry” while mocking the countless grades and titles flourishing at the time, judging them closer to madness than wisdom. This suggests that Alliette was not a Freemason himself—unlike Court de Gébelin—but moved on the fringes of this milieu, close enough to adopt some esoteric codes while maintaining his independence as a free-thinking mystic.
Despite the exoticism of his teachings, Etteilla did not cut himself off from the realities of his time. An observer of society, he was also interested in political and social “sciences.” In 1783, amid his occult work, he published a curious book titled The Man with Projects. Beneath this title were actually predictions and proposals for bold social reforms. Alliette claimed, for example, to have foreseen great upheavals coming to the Kingdom of France. Indeed, when the French Revolution occurred in 1789, Etteilla was not surprised; he even claimed to have predicted it in The Man with Projects. Moreover, far from being frightened by the revolutionary turmoil, he tried to contribute intellectually. In 1790-1791, he wrote a Projective and Patriotic Journal, a weekly bulletin where he presented, week after week, various social projects inspired by his clairvoyance. He defended ideas ahead of his time—the establishment of a universal pension for the elderly, social insurance for workers, abolition of the death penalty—utopian reforms for the era that would become reality much later. These initiatives show a humanist Alliette, who curiously combined his role as mage and prophet with that of a progressive social thinker. However, he would not see his ideas realized: exhausted by his intense activities, Jean-Baptiste Alliette died in Paris on December 12, 1791, at the age of 53. His passing went almost unnoticed amid the clamor of the Revolution, but the legacy he left to the occult arts is considerable.
Debates and Controversies Around His Theories
During his lifetime, Etteilla sparked as much fervent support as sharp criticism. One major controversy concerned the originality and legitimacy of his occult sources. He presented himself as a holder of ancient esoteric knowledge, received long before Court de Gébelin’s publications—recall his claim to have been initiated into the tarot as early as 1751 in Italy. He implied that his knowledge of the “Book of Thoth” came from mysterious Neapolitan masters or ancient writings that fell into his hands, not at all from Le Monde primitif. However, historians note that Alliette only embraced the tarot after Court de Gébelin’s 1781 publication and explicitly borrowed from him the idea of the tarot’s Egyptian origin. The probable reality is that Etteilla synthesized diverse inspirations: he drew from Court de Gébelin the Egyptian tarot myth, from other occultists (perhaps Masonic or Rosicrucian correspondences) the idea of Kabbalistic and astrological analogies, then added his own experience as a card reader. Nonetheless, as historian Thierry Depaulis writes, Etteilla was indeed, along with Court de Gébelin, a co-founder of tarot divination—one theorizing the concept, the other putting it into practice and expanding it.
Doubts also targeted Alliette himself, sometimes attacked ad hominem. In the 19th century, occultist Éliphas Lévi—who would later continue tarot work—severely judged his predecessor. Lévi disdainfully described him as “an old barber who never learned French or spelling.” This jab, largely imaginary (Alliette was never a barber by profession), reflected some scholars’ contempt for what they perceived as Etteilla’s lack of classical education. It is true that Jean-Baptiste Alliette was self-taught, without academic training, in a field—esotericism—where Masonic pedigree or knowledge of Latin and Hebrew conferred prestige. His writing style, sometimes digressive and fanciful, contrasted with the more scholarly tone of Court de Gébelin or other occultists. Nevertheless, Alliette had his own practical and symbolic erudition, forged by years of solitary work on cards and grimoires. His “philosophy of the high sciences,” presented in a 1785 work of the same name, reveals an original thought seeking to unify the hermetic arts into a single universal key.
Another criticism directed at Etteilla concerned his treatment of the tarot itself. By wanting to reform it, he broke with certain iconographic traditions of the Tarot of Marseille, which earned him reproach from 19th-century purists. Papus (Gérard Encausse), a major French occultist of the Belle Époque, even spoke of Etteilla’s modifications as a “mutilation” of the classic tarot. Éliphas Lévi saw Etteilla’s tarot as an aberration and did not hesitate to show his contempt for this deck with “displaced” cards. These posthumous judgments are partly explained by the fact that Lévi and Papus, attached to the esoteric symbology they read in the Tarot of Marseille, regretted that Etteilla had disrupted the “canonical” order and iconography. However, it must be remembered that when Alliette made his changes (1780s), no orthodoxy of esoteric tarot yet existed—it was he who was creating it. His choices followed an internal logic consistent with his sources and era: he placed the nameless arcana (Death) at the end of the series so it corresponded to the Hebrew letter Tau, the last of the alphabet, through correspondences he believed correct. He replaced the figure of the Popess (considered too Christian) with that of a high Egyptian priestess in his deck, to remain faithful to the pharaonic spirit. The future would prove Etteilla right on at least one point: the very idea of making the tarot a coherent esoteric system—albeit adjusted—would be taken up by all subsequent generations of occultists. Etteilla paved the way, enduring criticisms often directed at bold pioneers.
Legacy and Influence in the World of Esotericism
Jean-Baptiste Alliette permanently transformed the landscape of tarot and Western occultism. He is rightly considered the first occult tarot reader, the one who shifted the tarot from an ordinary card game to a full-fledged esoteric divination tool. His direct influence first manifested through the success of his cartomancy methods. In late 18th-century Paris, and even more so in the 19th century, card reading became an increasingly widespread practice, especially among women. Famous female card readers, starting with Mademoiselle Lenormand, followed in Etteilla’s footsteps. Marie-Anne Lenormand (1772-1843), who was the occult advisor to Joséphine de Beauharnais and many Empire personalities, certainly knew Etteilla’s writings—her senior—and drew inspiration from them to develop her own oracles with modified playing cards. She used a particular 36-card deck, but the very idea of codifying fixed meanings for each card and extending them to detailed predictions comes directly from Alliette’s work.
The Etteilla Tarot itself enjoyed a long posterity. After Alliette’s death in 1791, his disciples or associates continued to publish and refine his “Egyptian” deck. Throughout the 19th century, several versions derived from the Grand Etteilla were published in Paris, helping to popularize this occult tarot among esotericism enthusiasts. Notably, in 1807, the Petit Oracle des Dames appeared, a kind of simplified version of Etteilla’s tarot, adapted for a fashionable female audience. This divinatory card game, although published after Etteilla, fits into the lineage of his work by offering cards illustrated with prophetic scenes and easy-to-use interpretations. Etteilla’s name thus remained attached to the first popular divinatory tarots throughout the 19th century.
Moreover, 19th-century occultists largely built on the foundations laid by Etteilla. Éliphas Lévi, despite his mockery, inaugurated around 1854 an approach to the tarot as a “book of arcana” imbued with Kabbalah and mysticism, implicitly acknowledging Etteilla’s intuition about the esoteric nature of the deck. Lévi differed in returning to the Tarot of Marseille’s iconography and establishing a precise correspondence between the 22 arcana and the 22 Hebrew letters according to his own Kabbalistic calculations. But this very idea of a tarot-alphabet divinatory correspondence was already initiated by Etteilla. Papus (Gérard Encausse) and Oswald Wirth, leading figures of late 19th-century French occultism, also integrated Etteilla’s legacy. Papus, in The Tarot of the Bohemians (1889), extensively treated the history of esoteric tarot and, while criticizing Etteilla’s deviations, credited him for first envisioning the tarot as a network of universal symbols rather than a mere game of chance. Oswald Wirth, by designing in 1889 an initiatory tarot (under the guidance of Stanislas de Guaïta), positioned himself in a lineage where Court de Gébelin and Etteilla are the intellectual ancestors who “awakened” the tarot to its sacred dimension.
Outside France, Etteilla’s influence traveled through books and cards. By the late 18th century, his tarot was known abroad, thanks to editions in Amsterdam and the interest of European occultists. In the 20th century, the idea of an Egyptian tarot was taken up and popularized by Anglo-Saxon esoteric organizations: the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, then Aleister Crowley with his own Book of Thoth Tarot in the 1940s, drew from the Egyptian tarot myth widely spread by Etteilla and his successors. The very fact that Crowley named his deck “Book of Thoth” shows how much Etteilla’s legacy—transmitted through Court de Gébelin’s writings and French occultism—has permeated international esoteric culture. Today, every history of occult tarot, every tarot museum, reserves a place of honor for Jean-Baptiste Alliette. His name Etteilla is cited alongside the great initiators such as Court de Gébelin, Éliphas Lévi, and later Arthur Edward Waite—all indebted, in one way or another, to his original vision.
Ultimately, the figure of Etteilla remains fascinating and exemplary. Fascinating because it illustrates the unique encounter between a man of the people—a modest Parisian merchant—and the most esoteric arcana of occult knowledge. Exemplary because his journey traces the birth of a discipline: esoteric tarot reading. Alliette/Etteilla lived straddling two worlds: the rationalist one of the fading Enlightenment and the mysterious one of emerging occultism. With astonishing entrepreneurial spirit, he structured once scattered divinatory practices into a coherent corpus made of books, theories, and even institutions (schools, initiatory societies). His Etteilla Tarot, the fruit of his imagination and occult erudition, opened the door to more than two centuries of symbolic tarot interpretations. Even today, enthusiasts of occult history and tarot remember Jean-Baptiste Alliette as the great innovator who first made the cards speak with the voice of the ancients.
Sources:
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Thierry Depaulis – reference works on the history of tarot, notably his articles in Le Monde du Tarot and The Playing-Card Journal; recognized specialist in the history of playing cards and 18th-century French occultism.
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Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis & Michael Dummett – A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot (Duckworth, 1996): major academic work detailing the genesis of esoteric tarot, with an in-depth analysis of Etteilla’s role.
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Michael Dummett – The Game of Tarot (Duckworth, 1980): historical and critical study on the divinatory uses of tarot and its founding figures, including Etteilla.
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Bibliothèque nationale de France (Gallica) – digitized original editions of Etteilla’s works: Etteilla or a Way to Entertain Oneself with a Deck of Cards (1770), Theoretical and Practical Lessons on the Book of Thoth (1787), The Mysterious Zodiac (1772), The Man with Projects (1786), Projective and Patriotic Journal (1790–1791).
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Jean-Baptiste Alliette (Etteilla) – Philosophy of the High Sciences (1785): treatise in which he presents his global conception of the hermetic arts.
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Yves-Fred Boisset – Etteilla, Master of the Tarot (Éditions Trédaniel, 1993): popular but well-documented biography.
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Jean-Claude Flornoy – articles on the history of tarot and the iconography of the Etteilla Tarot, available on Tarot-history.com.
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Jean-Marie Lhôte – Cartomancy (PUF, coll. "Que sais-je?", 2001): serious introduction to the history of card divination, including a chapter on Etteilla.
