Why did Eliphas Lévi link Le Mat with Shin?

Huck

Alright ... I searched:

etteilla-14.jpg


etteilla-13.jpg


I found:

etteilla-20.jpg


etteilla-19.jpg


http://books.google.de/books?id=KW4...wBA#v=onepage&q=editions:28mZjPrif5gC&f=false

PAGE 115

**************

I found another entry in the following year, this time referring to Gueffier:

http://books.google.de/books?id=tDw...Bw#v=onepage&q=petit oracle des dames&f=false

etteilla-18.jpg


etteilla-17.jpg


I searched for the right book and for page 141: NEGATIVE at Google
POSITIVE at Gallica.fr

etteilla-22.jpg


etteilla-21.jpg


http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5483400g/f5.r=oracle.langEN
 

kwaw

Re: Mme. Finet - I can only find one record for her in the Cary-Yale collection:


Record ID
688

Country of Manufacture
France

Standard
N

Suit System
French

Type
Cartomancy

Catalog Number
FRAsheet176

Maker
Mme. Finet, rue de l'Arbre Sec No. 26, Paris

Date of Manufacture
1840(circa)

Originator
None

Name of Originator
None

Title
NOUVEL ETEILA

Dimensions
73 x 49 mm. (card); standard cards 11 x 9 mm.; 450 x 327 mm. (sheet).

Stance of Court Cards
Single Figure

Process
Engraving, hand coloration of one sheet.

Back
plain

Borders
Square

Composition of Deck
Two sheets, each: 36 [A, K, Q, J, 10-7], with 4 Consultante cards.

Notes and References
D. Hoffmann and E. Kroppenstedt 1972, pp. 140, 144, nos. 65, 68.

A search on the (misspelt) name 'Eteila' at the British Museum collection brings up one set of cards (description only, no pictures):

Object types
print (all objects)
playing-card (scope note | all objects)

Materials
pasteboard (all objects)
Techniques
etching (scope note | all objects)
Production person
Print made by Anonymous (all objects)
Production place
Published in France (scope note | all objects)
(Europe,France)
Date
18thC(late)
Schools /Styles
French (all objects)
Description
Complete piquet pack of 36 playing-cards for cartomancy (Etteilla)
Etching, uncoloured
Backs marbled
Late 18th Century

Inscriptions
Inscription Content: The cards, numbered throughout, are all emblematical or fanciful figures with titles including "L'Amour", "Protecteur", etc. There are four cards outside the 32 ordinary suits entitled "consultant Eteila" and "consultant pour la reussite Eteila" (2).


Dimensions
Height: 73 millimetres
Width: 49 millimetres

Curator's comments
The value of each card is indicated by a miniature card in the lower right corner.

And a search on the same misspelling at BnF brings up:

9. Nouvel Eteila ou le petit nécromancien. (Jeu du Consulat.)

From:

TITLE : Le Cabinet des estampes de la Bibliothèque nationale : guide du lecteur et du visiteur, catalogue général et raisonné des collections qui y sont conservées / par Henri Bouchot,... ; table générale par Louis Morand et Mme Hervian
Author : Bouchot, Henri (1849-1906)
Author : Herviant, Mme
Author : Morand, Louis
Publisher : E. Dentu (Paris)
Date of publication : 1895
 

kwaw

Re: Devil as 'zero'

At the British Museum:

"Tarot pack: complete pack of 55 mounted playing-cards for cartomancy (Etteilla), pasted (at the British Museum) into a book with each page containing one card. The pack consists of 52 numerals with French suit-marks, and 3 additional cards, a "Consultant", "Consultante" and a "Diable" or zero, the symbol of negation. Included is a book of directions and solutions entitiled "Livre du Grand Oracle avec Le Jeu Explicatif Composé des 55 Cartes" with "Paris Chez Gustave Arnoult 24 Rue des Fossés-Saint-Victor 1858"

AN01105591_001_l.jpg


British Museum Image Collection
 

Huck

hi Stephen,

Well, Etteilla made something with 32 cards + the 1 Etteilla card, so 33 elements. So the 4 consultants are just the expansion of the 1 consultant before, as it seems.

Veuve Guessier also announced Etteilla cards, together with Le Petit Oracle des Dames, with the latter being the first and more expensive. The Etteilla cards seem to have been less announced as the Petit Oracle.

Meanwhile I know about a 4th version of Le Petit Oracle. I think, we can leave Mme Finet out of the consideration.

The deck of 1807 is the version, that I presented first. I give this at the other thread, Le Petit Oracle des Dames.

**********

Added: nice finding with the devil. Do you have a link?

Here a typical Etteilla card (33 card version):

AN01083166_001_l.jpg

http://www.britishmuseum.org/resear...ction_database.aspx&numpages=10&currentPage=1
 

kwaw

Re: Mme. Finet - I can only find one record for her in the Cary-Yale collection:

Maker
Mme. Finet, rue de l'Arbre Sec No. 26, Paris

Date of Manufacture
1840(circa)

NOUVEL ETEILA

The cards, and same address:

138 Exposition du corps de Mgr le duc de Berri dans la chapelle ardente - Assassinat commis sur Mgr le duc de Berri. Le Nouvel Eteila ou le petit Nécromancien A Paris chez Robert rue de l Arbre Sec n 26.

Bibliographie de la France, 1820

(I am thinking this thread has gone so far off topic as to need splitting and reorganising somehow. . .)

crossposted : Huck, I shall edit in link for devil image - it is British Musuem.
 

Huck

(I am thinking this thread has gone so far off topic as to need splitting and reorganising somehow. . .)

crossposted : Huck, I shall edit in link for devil image - it is British Musuem.

... :)
Well, we're still in the question, if Fool/Magician at position 21 in Petit Oracle has anything to do with Fool between 20 and 21 in Eliphas Levi's construction. We just have to clear, what the Petit Oracle is, before we can decide, if this makes sense ... .-)

Found it ..

AN01102057_001_l.jpg


... that's a special branch, DDD talks about it. Really another world. "Grand jeu de Mlle Lenormand", p. 140. This started in the 1840s.
 

Cerulean

Compare with my circa1850 Lismon Petit Etteilla book pages

http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=3024453&postcount=196

My four posted pages of all 32 cards in engravings from the circa 1850 Lismon Petit Etteilla book (Simon C. Blocquel, Editions Delarue) show similar assignments. Please see post 196 in the Etteilla Timeline thread.

My engravings are not handcolored from the circa 1850.

I gave MikeH permission to post the handcolored engraving samples I sent him from my 1773 Etteilla book -- that is an original Amsterdam-printed 1773 text. The handcoloring is not explained, nor is some mysterious tiny shorthand in French(?) if MikeH gets time to post those pages as well.

I realize that there's a myriad of topics here, so I may need to repeat or find a way to index all these variations of the Petit Etteilla and Oracle des Dames oracle decks -- which may well have coincided or preceded variations of the three Grand Etteilla I, II, III and Jeu des Princesses Tarots.

Since the variations of editions of both Petit Etteillas, Oracle des Dames and Grand Etteillas dating seems to be from the 1700s throughout the 1900s--and their minor schemes to match or mirror one another--

so I am puzzled when DDD mentioned on page 94 of A Wicked Pack of Cards in Chapter 4: Etteilla: the First Professional Cartomancer


"Etteilla's card are really disconcerting. They offer pictures which do not conform to any known system or artistic standard. Their iconography has no equivalent in any of the widespread books of emblemata or symbols. They obviously have not been found in Court de Gebelin's text, which kept close to the traditional Tarot de Marseilles (even in reversing the Hanged Man, for there are examples of such a mistake). Even the virtues are not classical at all, in spite of a rich range of representation. However it is known for certain that Alliette already had these pictures in mind as early as 1783. His direct iconographical sources are as yet unknown.."

Cerulean's note here (perhaps to be moved later):
But as we see with the various samples of French gaming, allegrical cards, texts and samples we are unearthing, there is an observable development of patterns in oracles and tarot for the Etteilla cards. They (the cards of the oracles and tarots) do historically develop and mirror the patterns, games, thinking and times

I do apologize, I am out of town and need to post this developing information together--I will move to another thread or link/add as needed--please pm me if you need more samples from the two texts that I mentioned above or link to me where to post these ideas more appropriately.

Cerulean






hi Stephen,

Well, Etteilla made something with 32 cards + the 1 Etteilla card, so 33 elements. So the 4 consultants are just the expansion of the 1 consultant before, as it seems.

Veuve Guessier also announced Etteilla cards, together with Le Petit Oracle des Dames, with the latter being the first and more expensive. The Etteilla cards seem to have been less announced as the Petit Oracle.

Meanwhile I know about a 4th version of Le Petit Oracle. I think, we can leave Mme Finet out of the consideration.

The deck of 1807 is the version, that I presented first. I give this at the other thread, Le Petit Oracle des Dames.

**********

Added: nice finding with the devil. Do you have a link?

Here a typical Etteilla card (33 card version):

AN01083166_001_l.jpg

http://www.britishmuseum.org/resear...ction_database.aspx&numpages=10&currentPage=1
 

kwaw

grandpretre-fool-devil.jpg


Be ye sober, and wake ye, for your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion goeth about, seeking whom he shall devour. 1 Peter 5:8

(I am not sure how Levi would have felt about the elevation of state above religion in this deck - but I think he would have appreciated its elevation of the woman - high priestess above high priest and the queen above the king!)

The Devil is the Madman (le fou) of the catholic religion:

"Dans une lettre adressée à M. Gougenot Desmousseaux et publiée par ce dernier en tête d’un de ses principaux ouvrages, le savant théatin ne craint pas d’affirmer que le diable est le fou de la religion catholique (telle du moins que l’entendait le père Ventura).

Eliphas Levi Le Grand Arcane
 

kwaw

You make a good point here, as Shin is supposed to transform the God of the Old Testament into that of the New. Is there anything else in Lévi's writing that would support his seeing Christ in this way? It doesn't seem to fit with the rest of his discussion on Shin.

Does he talk about the inserting of Shin into the Tetragrammaton anywhere?

Dogma and Ritual of Transcendental Magic, P. II p.23:

"The triad, being the foundation of magical doctrine must be necessarily observed in evocations; for it is the symbolical number of realization and effect. The letter eShin is commonly traced upon kabalistic pantacles which have the fulfilment of a desire for their object. It is also the sign of the scapegoat in mystic Kabalah, and Saint-Martin observes that inserted in the Incommunicable Tetragram it forms the Name of the Redeemer. It is this which the mystagogues of the Middle Ages represented in their nocturnal assemblies by the exhibition of a symbolical goat, carrying a lighted torch between its two horns."

Re: His reference to Saint-Martin, he is quoted in the Martinist Operative and General Ritual on the name JHShHV:

"... when the Christ came, He made the pronunciation of this word still more central and interior, since the Great Name expressed by those four letters was the quaternary explosion, or the crucial sign of all life; whereas Jesus Christ, by exalting the Hebrew SHIN, or the letter 'S', united the holy ternary itself to the great quaternary name of which three is the principle. Now, if, in the ancient ordinations, the quaternary had to have its own source in us, with much greater reason should the name of Christ take from Himself alone its whole efficacy and light ..."

"... No doubt, a great virtue is attached to this true pronunciation whether central or oral, of that Great Name, and that of Jesus Christ, which is as its flower. The vibration of our elementary air is a very secondary thing in the process by which these names make sensible what was not so before. Their virtue is to do to-day, and at all times, what they did at the beginning, in creating all things; and, as they made all things before the air existed, no doubt they are still higher than the air when they perform the same functions now; and it is no more impossible for this divine word to make itself audible, even to one who is deaf and in a place the most deprived of air, than it is difficult for spiritual light to make itself visible to our physical eyes, even though we be blind, and shut up in the darkest dungeon..."

Kwaw

The full notes on the Divine Name from the Martinist ritual:

"INTRODUCTORY NOTES ON THE DIVINE NAME "IESHOUAH": IOD-HE-SHIN-VAU-HE.

The following notes concern a very ancient Divine Name called at times the Pentagrammic Name which was well known to the Kabbalists, especially Christian Kabbalists, as well as to the Doctors of the original Christian Church.

The letter SHIN : Hebrew Kabbalists knew this letter Shin as one of the three mother-letters (with Aleph and Mem) and that it signified the FIRE. St. Jerome in his "Mystic Interpretation of the Alphabet" defined this letter Shin as the symbol of the Vivifying WORD. Much later, Papus tells us that this letter Shin, inverted, in the Flamboyant Star (the Pentagram) with its point up, represents to the Rosicrucian Initiate the Incarnation of the Divine Word in the Human Nature.

Dr. R. Allandy, in his work on the symbolism of numbers, adds this to what Papus had already said: "... the addition of SHIN to the sacred Tetragram (I.H.V.H.) marks the passage of the Quaternary into the Quinary for the formation of the living Creature. Jesus, the Word made flesh, kabalistically represents all Creatures, but particularly MAN, as Man is the most evolved of all creatures ..."

Having been taught, and which is in accordance with the general Christian tradition, that the entire Nature had fallen with Adam as a result of his own Fall, we can easily understand how in effect this same Nature can evolve, with Man, back to its original state, starting with the Redemption of Man by the Word. Henry Cornelius Agrippa tells us in his famous Occult Philosophy "... during the time of the Law, the Ineffable Name of God was composed of four letters : IOD-HEVAU-HE, in place of which and out of respect, the Hebrew simply read ADONAI (the Lord) and which is composed of ALEPH-DALETH-NUN-IOD. During the time of the Grace, the Name of God becomes the Effable Pentagram IOD-HE-SHIN-VAU-HE which, by a mystery which is no less great, is invoked also under the Name of Three Letters IOD-SHIN-VAU ..."

Let us note that the Name of Five Letters is IESHOUAH, while that of Three Letters is ISHOUH.

In his recapitulating table, 'The Ladder of the Quinary', this famous occultist shows us that IESHOUAH is a synonym of ELOHIM - (ALEPH-LAMED-HE-IOD-MEM), and also of ELION (AYIN-LAMED-IOD-VAU-NUN), and that these two Divine Names deal with the Archetypal World.

Shortly after Agrippa, Heinrich Khunrath in his famous work "Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom" (Hanau, 1609), placed the Divine Name of Five Letters-IESHOUAH - in the centre of the fifth plate representing Christ on the Cross, and on the twelfth and the last plate called the Pentacle of Khunrath (see page 6 of this issue for its drawing). Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin expresses very precisely his thoughts on this Name in one of his letters:

"... when the Christ came, He made the pronunciation of this word still more central and interior, since the Great Name expressed by those four letters was the quaternary explosion, or the crucial sign of all life; whereas Jesus Christ, by exalting the Hebrew SHIN, or the letter 'S', united the holy ternary itself to the great quaternary name of which three is the principle. Now, if, in the ancient ordinations, the quaternion had to have its own source in us, with much greater reason should the name of Christ take from Himself alone its whole efficacy and light ..."

"... No doubt, a great virtue is attached to this true pronunciation whether central or oral, of that Great Name, and that of Jesus Christ, which is as its flower. The vibration of our elementary air is a very secondary thing in the process by which these names make sensible what was not so before. Their virtue is to do to-day, and at all times, what they did at the beginning, in creating all things; and, as they made all things before the air existed, no doubt they are still higher than the air when they perform the same functions now; and it is no more impossible for this divine word to make itself audible, even to one who is deaf and in a place the most deprived of air, than it is difficult for spiritual light to make itself visible to our physical eyes, even though we be blind, and shut up in the darkest dungeon..."

It is noticeable that all great names of the Kabbala of the 16-th, 17-th and 19-th centuries knew the profound value of the Pentagrammic Name. Sedir, in his "History and Doctrines of the Rose-Croix", quotes a disciple of the Rose-Croix, Wilhelm Menens of Antwerp, who:

"... says in his Aureum Vellus about the great force which is hidden in the Name I.H.S.V.H. ..." which is, evidently, IOD-HE-SHIN-VAU-HE.

It should be noted that IESHOUAH (Jesus in Hebrew), has the same phonetic
pronunciation as IESHOUAH (Joshua in Hebrew), although the latter is spelled IOD-
SHIN-VAU-AYIN. Moreover, an identical word but spelled IOD-SHIN-VAU-AYIN - HE, signifies in Hebrew welfare, help, assistance, deliverance, salvation, victory. (Ex.14.15, Job30.15, Is.26.l).

All this points to the fact that all Christian Kabbalists have known and utilised the profound mystery enclosed in the Divine Name IESHOUAH. It is by the virtue of all this that MARTINISM of TRADITION made from it its mysterious "WORD", and it imprints Martinist prayers with a true esoteric character and with an indelible possibility. To know that the Kabbalists of the calibre of Pic de Mirandola and Reuchlin worked on the mystery of the Pentagrammic Name, is enough to dismiss some malicious and/or curious and misinformed critics. Finding among students of the Mystery of Divine Name - names like A. Kircher with his 'Oedipus Aegyptiacus' (Rome, 1655), or that of Archangelo de Borgonovo, we see that Martinists of Tradition using the Divine Name - IESHOUAH - are in very good company.
To use a metaphor, just like the Angel separated the Israelites from the Egyptians at the time of the symbolic crossing of the Red Sea, so also the letter SHIN separates, into two parts, the four letters of the initial Tetragram I.H.V.H., expressing the Living God, God of the World, the Manifested God; the two numerical values thus obtained are very significant.
Yet, how more significant is this insertion of SHIN, the mother-letter designating the FIRE, into the centre of the Tetragram, when one recalls the words from the Gospel:

"I am the Bread and I am the Life ...
I came to put the Fire into the bosom of things ..."

Lastly, it is undeniable that this Divine Name unites all Martinists dispersed all over the world, regardless of their religious or philosophical beliefs, and as such, it is thus a factor of unity.
 

kwaw

A search on the (misspelt) name 'Eteila' at the British Museum collection brings up one set of cards (description only, no pictures):

Object types
print (all objects)
playing-card (scope note | all objects)

Materials
pasteboard (all objects)
Techniques
etching (scope note | all objects)
Production person
Print made by Anonymous (all objects)
Production place
Published in France (scope note | all objects)
(Europe,France)
Date
18thC(late)
Schools /Styles
French (all objects)
Description
Complete piquet pack of 36 playing-cards for cartomancy (Etteilla)
Etching, uncoloured
Backs marbled
Late 18th Century

Inscriptions
Inscription Content: The cards, numbered throughout, are all emblematical or fanciful figures with titles including "L'Amour", "Protecteur", etc. There are four cards outside the 32 ordinary suits entitled "consultant Eteila" and "consultant pour la reussite Eteila" (2).


Dimensions
Height: 73 millimetres
Width: 49 millimetres

Curator's comments
The value of each card is indicated by a miniature card in the lower right corner.

There are now pictures at the BM:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/resear...tId=3097842&partId=1&searchText=eteila&page=1

They contain pictures similar to those of the Petit Oracles des Dames; and also some from the 1791 Jeu divinatoire révolutionnaire at the BnF.