Lee
The timeline goes like this (I've excerpted this from Mary Greer's A Timeline of the Occult and Divinatory Tarot from 1750 to 1980:
1781 8th volume of Le Monde Primitif by Court de Gébelin, claiming Egyptian origin of Tarot, as a book of wisdom.
1783-86 Publication of Etteilla’s Manière de se ré créer avec le Jeu de Cartes nommées Tarots (A way to entertain oneself with the pack of cards called Tarots) in four parts. He claims it was devised by a committee of seventeen magi, presided over by Hermes Trismegistus nearly 4,000 years before.
1887 [William W.] Westcott obtains papers from Mrs. [Kenneth] Mackenzie and soon after asks [Macgregor] Mathers to help him write up rituals based on a cypher manuscript. Mackenzie crafted many of the core rituals for the Sat B’hai. [This is the origin of Book T.]
1888 The Tarot: Its Occult Signification, Use in Fortune Telling, and Method of Play, Etc. by MacGregor Mathers. [This book, meant for public consumption, contains fortune-telling meanings based on Etteilla, not the Book T meanings which Mathers was working up based on Mackenzie's cypher documents, which were meant for the extremely private Order of the Golden Dawn.]
1888 Founding of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn on March 1.
1891 A.E. Waite joins the Golden Dawn.
1901 Pamela Colman Smith joins the Golden Dawn.
1909 First publication of the deck conceptualized by A.E. Waite, art by Pamela Coleman-Smith, published by Rider & Co. London. [The interpretations of the pip cards, both in Waite's book and in Smith's illustrations, are demonstrably derived from Etteilla's and Mathers's fortune-telling meanings and from Book T.]
-- Lee
1781 8th volume of Le Monde Primitif by Court de Gébelin, claiming Egyptian origin of Tarot, as a book of wisdom.
1783-86 Publication of Etteilla’s Manière de se ré créer avec le Jeu de Cartes nommées Tarots (A way to entertain oneself with the pack of cards called Tarots) in four parts. He claims it was devised by a committee of seventeen magi, presided over by Hermes Trismegistus nearly 4,000 years before.
1887 [William W.] Westcott obtains papers from Mrs. [Kenneth] Mackenzie and soon after asks [Macgregor] Mathers to help him write up rituals based on a cypher manuscript. Mackenzie crafted many of the core rituals for the Sat B’hai. [This is the origin of Book T.]
1888 The Tarot: Its Occult Signification, Use in Fortune Telling, and Method of Play, Etc. by MacGregor Mathers. [This book, meant for public consumption, contains fortune-telling meanings based on Etteilla, not the Book T meanings which Mathers was working up based on Mackenzie's cypher documents, which were meant for the extremely private Order of the Golden Dawn.]
1888 Founding of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn on March 1.
1891 A.E. Waite joins the Golden Dawn.
1901 Pamela Colman Smith joins the Golden Dawn.
1909 First publication of the deck conceptualized by A.E. Waite, art by Pamela Coleman-Smith, published by Rider & Co. London. [The interpretations of the pip cards, both in Waite's book and in Smith's illustrations, are demonstrably derived from Etteilla's and Mathers's fortune-telling meanings and from Book T.]
-- Lee
