"Etteilla", the pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Alliette (1738 12 December 1791), 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. [1] Etteilla
published his ideas of the correspondences between the tarot, astrology, and the four classical
elements and four humors, and was the first to issue a revised tarot deck specifically designed for
occult purposes (1791).

Personal life[edit]
Aside from the birth certificate recording his birth in Paris in 1738, very little is known about JeanBaptiste Alliette's youth. His father was a matre rtisseur, a caterer, and his mother was a seed
merchant.[2] He married Jeanne Vattier in 1763, a marriage that lasted half a decade, during which he
worked as a seed merchant, before publishing his first book, Etteilla, ou manire de se rcrer avec un
jeu de cartes ("Etteilla, or a Way to Entertain Yourself With a Deck of Cards") in 1770.[3] Etteilla is
simply the reverse of his surname.

Works[edit]
Etteilla, ou manire de se rcrer avec un jeu de cartes was a discourse on the usage of regular
playing cards (the piquet deck, a shortened deck of 32 cards used in gaming, with the addition of an
"Etteilla" card). Features included the "spread", or disposition on the table, and strictly assigned
meanings to each card both in regular and in reversed positions, characteristics that are still central
to tarot divination today. In his preface, "Etteilla" explained that he had learned his system from an
Italian; it remains unclear to what extent his assigned symbology was his own contribution. The book
was reprinted the following year. He was working as a printseller, but from this time, approximately, he
earned his livelihood by working as a consultant, teacher and author.
In 1781 the French Swiss Protestant clergyman and occultist Antoine Court who named himself Court
de Gbelin published in his massive work Le Monde primitif his idea that the Tarot was actually an
ancient Egyptian book of arcane wisdom. There is no evidence to support the notion that tarot has
an Egyptian lineage,[4] but in the credulous stir that followed, Etteilla responded with another
book, Manire de se rcrer avec le jeu de cartes nommes Tarots ("How to Entertain Yourself With the
Deck of Cards Called Tarot") in 1785.[5] It was the first book of methods of divination by Tarot. In it
Etteilla claimed that he had been introduced into the art of cartomancy in 1751, long before the
appearance of Court de Gebelin's work.
In 1788 he formed 'Socit des Interprtes du Livre de Thot', a group of French-speaking
correspondents through which he continued to disseminate his teachings. [6]
By 1790, he was interpreting the hermetic wisdom of the Egyptian Book of Thoth: Cour thorique et
pratique du Livre du Thot, that included his reworkings of what would later be called the "Major" and
"Minor Arcana", as well as the introduction of the four elements and astrology. Towards the end of his
life Etteilla produced a special deck for divination that syncretized his ideas with older forms of French
cartomancy, the first deck of cards specifically designed for occult purposes. [7]