How do you use ettellia?

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 30 Jun 2004, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Indigo_lady	30 Jun 2004
I hope I'm in the right Forum I just purchased the Ettellia deck without knowing much about it. I ran into it by coincidence and looked through the cards and found it very appealing. I was wondering what is your practical experience with this deck in readings? What spreads do you prefer to use with it? Any particular areas for which you prefer this deck to read??? I'm just very curious.. Thanks !!!!

Indigo_lady	01 Jul 2004
That's a big awkward silence ...

Rusty Neon	01 Jul 2004
:) Given the large number of replies to date, I have no signficant 'practical' experience but I will speak .... I find this to be a deck where divination is done by way of 'word association' with the Etteilla printed cards on the cards. This word association could yield more psychologically-interesting meanings than the original keywords themselves which certainly betray their fortune-telling origins. There are many certain cartomancy spreads, and certain position-based card meanings, but that doesn't interest me much. To my mind, excessive attention paid to historical divination practice is a dead end when you want interesting, contemporary raadings. Thus, I would suggest that you use whatever 'contempary' spreads or reading techniques you find you useful. I've found that, even with free association, what is most interesting with this deck (as with the Osho Zen Tarot) is to use the deck as a spread position deck. You pick the number of cards in the spread and lay out the cards with the Etteilla deck; the Etteilla keywords will give the spread position names; then use another deck - your actual reading deck - to fill the working cards for each such position. Thus, this is a two deck reading approach.

Indigo_lady	03 Jul 2004
where can you find traditional spreads for the Ettellia? I've got the LWB and that's it But your idea of using the Ettellia as the spread itself sounds very interesting. I will try using the Robin Wood for that purpose. It's weird, but the trumps seem deeper to me that in other decks I have seen. One thing I'm yet to comprehend is the "African despote" thing I know France had colonies in Africa, and of course you can imagine what happened in them, but still the card is completely blank for me What do you think about the male and female querent cards??? I've been looking through the net finding the correspondence between the Ettellia trumps and the RWS trumps and I decided to give up on it. Besides being somewhat complicated I feel it takes away the whole nature of the Ettellia trumps.

lionette	03 Jul 2004
Hi -- I too bought the deck w/o much knowledge of Ettellia or the deck. Found some interesting, in-depth info on the Villa Revak site. Biography : http://www.villarevak.org/bio/etteilla_1.html DM Comparison with Waite and Mathers : http://www.villarevak.org/td/td_3.htm Haven't seen any spreads specific to the deck. My intention, when I finally get around to studying and using this deck, is to just use the cards in spreads as any other deck. Have you started working with it yet?

Indigo_lady	05 Jul 2004
Thanks Lionette! I saw those pages as well and read through them. but I don't like the correspondences with the other decks, they really confuse me I tried the spread in the LWB. Which actually reminded me of Rusty Neon's reccomendation, of combining two deck, since it divided the trumps and the pips out. For some reason the traditional spreads don't seem to cut it for me in this case. I think for example of using a CC with the Etteilla and I feel it's restricting it... odd PS, how can I change the tittle in the forum since I just noticed it's not spelled right? -oops

Cerulean	05 Jul 2004
In Arthur Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot, he has the same spreads as in the Julia Orsini's Etteilla, which is the Jeu des Dames or Etteilla III. I'll link to spreads he suggests--kind of funny he denounces the Etteilla deck but uses the spread that Julia Orsini had developed. http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/pkt0306.htm The problem is that I think you are talking about the earlier pattern known as Grand Etteilla, Tarot of the Egyptian Gypsies, and the only modern books I've seen are in French...I did receive the Grimaud Etteilla in a trade and even in English, it was a bear to read, a Napoleanic cross-eyed bear. It's like a Leonormand deck trying to grab on to tarot and blind you with number patterns... I haven't taken that leap yet. I tried once to do two lighthearted readings but even then it took a lot of work. I could not make out the astrological decanates at all on my own. http://67.19.40.82/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26964&highlight=etteilla+tarot The Lo Scarabeo Book of Thoth Tarot is an almost exact copy of the Jeu des Dames and has meanings that relate to...I am not exactly certain, but the keywords seem similar to the Jeu des Dames. I can pull one court, one major and one minor and come up with an okay reading from the Jeu des Dames One or two modern Italian cartomancy decks, the Laura Tuan's Egyptian and the Giorgio Tavaglione's Porta del Stella or Tarot of the Celestial Gate/Stars has the same numbering from 1-78 and has a vague mirroring of structure. I've only managed to locate a court, major and minor and pull one from them. At some point, I think if you were going to do a historical reading, the Grand Etteilla Gypsies Tarot and the book Jane Eyre came out about the same time... I don't know if what I posted is helpful, so I was rather quiet...you can see I'm still puzzled in regards to this style of deck. Although the quaint pictures seem rather interesting and lovely in an old way.... Regards Cerulean Mari

The How do you use ettellia? thread was originally posted on 30 Jun 2004 in the Using Tarot Cards board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Using Tarot Cards, or read more archived threads.