Antoine Court de Gebelin
Encyclopedia
Tarot
The tarot |trionfi]] and later as tarocchi, tarock, and others) is a pack of cards , used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play a group of card games such as Italian tarocchini and French tarot...
as an arcane repository of timeless esoteric wisdom in 1781.
Early life
His fatherAntoine Court (Huguenot)
Antoine Court was a French reformer called the "Restorer of Protestantism in France." He was born at Villeneuve-de-Berg, in Languedoc, March 27, 1696. His parents were peasants, adherents of the Reformed church, which was then undergoing persecution...
was a famous religious leader of the Huguenots. Court de Gebelin had been ordained a pastor
Pastor
The word pastor usually refers to an ordained leader of a Christian congregation. When used as an ecclesiastical styling or title, this role may be abbreviated to "Pr." or often "Ps"....
in 1754 before departing Switzerland and remained openly Protestant, a rational advocate for freedom of conscience in Enlightenment France. In Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, he was initiated into Freemasonry
Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
at the lodge Les Amis Réunis, in 1771, and moved on to the lodge Les Neuf Sœurs
Les Neuf Sœurs
Loge Les Neuf Sœurs , established in Paris in 1776, was a prominent French Masonic Lodge of the Grand Orient de France that was influential in organising French support for the American Revolution. A "Société des Neuf Sœurs," a charitable society that surveyed academic curricula, had been active at...
where he welcomed Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
as a lodge-brother.
Career
He was a supporter of American Independence who contributed to the massive Affaires de L'Angleterre et de l'Amérique, of the new theories of economics, and of the "animal magnetism" of Mesmer (with whom he died in an electrical experiment, apparently of an electrically induced heart attack).His great project had for its goal to set out to reconstruct the high primeval civilization. Reinterpreting Classical and Renaissance evocation of the Golden Age
Golden Age
The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend and refers to the first in a sequence of four or five Ages of Man, in which the Golden Age is first, followed in sequence, by the Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, and then the present, a period of decline...
in mankind's early history, Court de Gébelin asserted that the primitive worldwide civilization had been advanced and enlightened. He is the intellectual grandfather of much of modern occultism. His centers of focus are the familiar ones of universal origins of languages in deep time and the hermeneutics of symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
ism. While his views on hermeneutics and religious matters were largely conservative, his original ideas and research on the origin of language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
earn him a place among pioneers of linguistics. Court de Gébelin presented dictionaries of etymology
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
, what he called a universal grammar, and discourses on the origins of language. his volumes were so popular he republished them separately, as Histoire naturelle de la parole, ou Précis de l'Origine du Langage & de la Grammaire Universelle ("Natural history of the Word, or a sketch of the origins of language and of universal grammar"), in Paris, 1776.
With regard to mythology and symbology, he discussed the origins of allegory in antiquity and recreated a history of the calendar from civil, religious, and mythological perspectives.
The tarot
De Gébelin in an essay included in his Le Monde primitif, analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne ("The Primitive World, Analyzed and Compared to the Modern World"), volume viii, 1781. The chapter on TarotTarot
The tarot |trionfi]] and later as tarocchi, tarock, and others) is a pack of cards , used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play a group of card games such as Italian tarocchini and French tarot...
with which his name is indelibly associated is a single section in his vast compendium that he published in series from 1773, to a distinguished list of subscribers, headed by Louis XVI.
It was his immediate perception, the first time he saw the Tarot deck, that it held the secrets of the Egyptians. Writing without the benefit of Champollion's deciphering of the Egyptian language, Court de Gébellin's developed a reconstruction of Tarot history, without producing any historical evidence, which was that Egyptian priests had distilled the ancient Book of Thoth into these images. These they brought to Rome, where they were secretly known to the popes, who brought them to Avignon in the 14th century, whence they were introduced into France. An essay by The Comte de Mellet included in Court de Gebelin's Monde primitif is responsible for the mystical connection of the Tarot's 21 trumps and the fool with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. An essay appended to this gave suggestions for cartomancy
Cartomancy
Cartomancy is fortune-telling or divination using a deck of cards. Forms of cartomancy appeared soon after playing cards were first introduced into Europe in the 14th century...
; within two years the fortune-teller known as "Etteilla
Etteilla
"Etteilla," the pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Alliette , was the French occultist who was the first to popularise tarot divination to a wide audience , and therefore the first professional tarot occultist known to history who made his living by card divination...
" published a technique for reading the tarot, and the practice of tarot reading was born.
External links
- Egyptomania of Antoine Court de Gébelin
- James W. Revak, "Biography of Antoine Court de Gébelin"
- Short Biography
- Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911: Antoine Court de Gebelin
- Du Jeu des Tarots. Monde primitif, analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne vol. 8, tom. 1, Paris 1781 (original French)
- Du Jeu des Tarots. Monde primitif, analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne vol. 8, tom. 1, Paris 1781 (English translation)
- Scholar cites Antoine Court de Gébelin as an important figure of the "Dark Enlightenment"