Grand Etteilla (Tarots Egyptiens / Egyptian gypsies tarot) (Grimaud)

Grand Etteilla (Tarots Egyptiens / Egyptian gypsies tarot). Grimaud, France. Full divinatory tarot deck, Mediterranean suited, 80 single-headed cards + divinatory-meanings booklet. Size: 63mm x 120mm.

Deck make-up:
Trumps: 0-21.
Coins, clubs, cups, swords: 1-10, foot jack, mounted jack, queen, king.
Extras: Grimaud advertising cards (x2).

"Etteilla" was the spelled-backwards pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Alliette (1738-91). He was the French occultist who was the first to popularise tarot divination to a wide audience (1785), and therefore the first professional tarot occultist known to history who made his living by card divination. Etteilla published his ideas of the correspondences between the tarot, astrology, and the four classical elements and four humours, and was the first to issue a revised tarot deck specifically designed for occult purposes. The engraver of the original version was Pierre-François Basan, and the deck was released in 1789.

The version shown is by Grimaud, who have published it since 1890, and still do. Decks patterned broadly after Etteilla's original are categorised into three types: Etteilla I, Etteilla II and Etteilla III. This deck is type I, which is Etteilla's original. Type II is very similar* but came later. Type III is a different kettle of fish – rather grotesque to my eyes – and only vaguely related to the original.

Divinators like these decks as the interpretations are printed on the cards (both for when the card comes out upright, and when reversed), so no need to scrabble around for booklets of divinatory meanings!

Click on any card to explore the design.

(* Type II Etteilla features a few different images on the trumps, thus:
Card 10 – the temperance lady has an elephant beside her as she holds up its bridle (and she isn't filling a jug).
Card 12 – the lady isn't avoiding a snake on the ground but instead has one crawling up her arm, in the hand of which she holds a mirror. In her other hand she holds a book.
Card 15 – the magician stands on the right (instead of the left) and has a small statue (some say it's a homunculus) on the table in front of him.
Card 21 – the charioteer is driving right to left (instead of left to right) and looks more of a middle-eastern type.
The differences also include the two (on cards 1 and 14) mentioned under trumps, below.
On the pip cards, there are sometimes different arrangement of the pips, and some of the smaller secondary images on these cards differ too.)

(Comments or corrections, please e-mail: Click to see e-mail address.)

Card image size, below: Normal Bigger

Trumps

Some of the initial trumps portray the biblical "six days of creation", thus:
card 2 – day 1: light
card 4 – day 2: the sky
card 3 – day 3: the Earth, seas and vegetation
card 6 – day 4: the sun and moon
card 7 – day 5: animals of the air and sea
card 5 – day 6: land animals and humans
card 8 – day 7: rest/the Sabbath
Over the many years this deck has been available, a couple of features of the drawings have changed. The pre-creation void on card 1 originally didn't show the sun (logical, perhaps, since it hadn't been created yet!) and the two figures on card 14 didn't wear loincloths.

Coins

Clubs

The ace here causes some confusion. The two given meanings (naissance/birth and faillite/bankruptcy) have somehow become swapped between the upright and reversed positions (a mistake which was there from the start in 1789). According to other sources of divinatory meanings (and, indeed, Etteilla II decks), bankruptcy is the upright meaning; birth, the reversed.

Cups

Swords

Extras

The box blurb and little white booklet rattle on about Egyptians, gypsies and the Kabbalah, all of which have nothing whatsoever to do with tarot: they were grafted on a couple of hundred years ago in an attempt to give the whole thing more of a pedigree. Meanwhile, the divinatory meanings given in the booklet (see scan) appear to be for a different deck of cards completely! The Mopses??