Etteilla Timeline and Etteilla card Variants - background

Huck

The first edition of Le Petit Oracle des Dames / Petit Etteilla was published in 1797 as:

Petit oracle des dames / Petit Etteilla, jeu de 42 cartes, avec livret Tableaux mobiles des jeux de fortune, ou l'Art de lire dans l'avenir avec sûreté par le rapprochement des événemens qui démontrent sans réplique l'art chronomancique. A Paris, Chez l'Auteur, rue Nicaise Nr. 513. An cinquième / 1797.
No publisher. (Two copies in private collections)
Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur is certainly the author.
The accompanying booklet hugely draws on Etteilla's "testament": Etteilla, ou l'art de lire dans les cartes, 1791, with the original cartonomancie being substituted for cartomancie.

That's certainly a big improvement .... 1797 instead of January 1800. And it seems to be the 42 card version, not the 36 cards .... if it wasn't an earlier different edition.
 

Huck

Indeed I also find the address noted in the footnote:

sauveur-5.jpg

http://books.google.de/books?id=Hz0...se, maison de la sectiondes tuileries&f=false

Rue Saint-Nicaise in Paris
sauveur-8.jpg

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Turgot_Place_du_Carrousel.jpg

This looks like a rather good address.

The plan is from 1736. The street name is Rue St. Nicaise then. Possibly the "St." was lost in the revolution.
The full plan is given here: http://www.oldmapsofparis.com/map/1736

Comparing it with Google map of nowadays, I don't find a rue Nicaise.

Comparing the map of 1736 with the Google view in Paris I get the impression, that the place, which is called the Place du Caroussel at the map of 1736 is not the place, which is nowadays called the Place du Caroussel, but it's somehow the Place du Louvre.

I'm confused by this.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue_Saint-Nicaise
La rue Saint-Nicaise est une ancienne rue aujourd'hui disparue du 1er arrondissement de Paris.

Historique[modifier | modifier le code]
Elle avait été ouverte au XVIe siècle le long de l’enceinte de Charles v, côté ville. Entre la galerie du Louvre et la rue Saint-Honoré. Elle bordait la place du Carrousel de l'époque sur le côté est. Elle était bordée de plusieurs hôtels particuliers.

Elle porte le nom de la chapelle Saint-Nicaise qui s'y trouvait à l'époque.

La rue est surtout célèbre par l'attentat de la rue Saint-Nicaise, quand une machine infernale fut lancée contre Napoléon Bonaparte. Celui-ci en réchappa, car la bombe fut lancée quelques secondes après son passage. Par contre, il y eut 22 morts, de nombreux blessés et 46 maisons de la rue du côté de la rue Saint-Honoré furent détruites ou rendues inhabitables1.

La rue a été détruite en 1853 lors du prolongement de la rue de Rivoli avec ses arcades.
 

MikeH

I am very confused by Depaulis's information, i.e.:
The first edition of Le Petit Oracle des Dames / Petit Etteilla was published in 1797 as:

Petit oracle des dames / Petit Etteilla, jeu de 42 cartes, avec livret Tableaux mobiles des jeux de fortune, ou l'Art de lire dans l'avenir avec sûreté par le rapprochement des événemens qui démontrent sans réplique l'art chronomancique. A Paris, Chez l'Auteur, rue Nicaise Nr. 513. An cinquième / 1797.
No publisher. (Two copies in private collections)
Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur is certainly the author.
The accompanying booklet hugely draws on Etteilla's "testament": Etteilla, ou l'art de lire dans les cartes, 1791, with the original cartonomancie being substituted for cartomancie.
The Petit Etteilla has 33 cards and is simply the ordinary piquet deck plus one more, the "Etteilla". with keywords added, upright, reversed, and in combinations. It is not the same as the Petit oracle des dames. I do not understand the / in his version of the title of the deck. Which of the two very different decks is it?

The booklet that goes with it surely has in it at least that which is reproduced in the booklet that accompanies the modern Petit Etteilla put out by France Cartes/Grimaud. (The / is equivalent to =: Fance Cartes bought Grimaud at some point, I think it was right after WWII.) Besides an Avant-Propos, it has a section called "L'Art de Tires Les Cartes" which talks about the three individuals in 1751-1753 who were arrested for fortune-telling with a piquet deck in Paris, reading cards one by one, and then Etteilla's encounter with "un Piemontais" in 1757, who explains tarot to him, and finally Etteilla's subsequent publications Then there is a section on how to lay out and read the cards, combining the suggestions from the keywords into a narrative. It is explicitly 33 cards. Then comes a "fragment d'Etteilla" on the same subject. Then comes a section on how to interpret dreams with the same cards. And finally a section called "Traite des Songes et des Visions, d'apres les Egyptiens et les Perses". It analyzes dream-subjects from "Abailles" to "Ulceres" (the latter, if on the arms, not a good omen in business). There is nothing about the lottery. It invariably uses the spelling "cartomancie". (Also, it seems to me that when Depaulis says "for cartomancie" he surely means "by cartomancie".)


Reading the review of the 1796 book (published at a different address), it seems to correspond to this modern reprint. So I am very confused about what it has to do with the Petit Oracle des Dames a year later.
 

kwaw

I am very confused by Depaulis's information, i.e.:

The Petit Etteilla has 33 cards and is simply the ordinary piquet deck plus one more, the "Etteilla". with keywords added, upright, reversed, and in combinations. It is not the same as the Petit oracle des dames. I do not understand the / in his version of the title of the deck. Which of the two very different decks is it?

One obviously has to beware of going by nomenclature alone. The Finet "Nouvel Eteila, ou petit necromancien", is also called "Le Petit Oracle des Dames", but clearly is of a different type to those for example by Gueffier, the Finet having only 36 cards, all with single figures, with inserts of the piquet cards in the bottom right-hand corner, plus four more 'Eteila' cards. It is this deck (and the Robert, which according to depaulis is the same as the Finet, but does not have the piquet card inserts) that is most obviously derivative of the c.1790 66 card deck.

Reading the review of the 1796 book (published at a different address), it seems to correspond to this modern reprint. So I am very confused about what it has to do with the Petit Oracle des Dames a year later.

The post just gives two references together, I did not mean to suggest they were the same.

There is the 1796, that came with a (non-decribed) game of cards, that was re-issued in 1798 from Deroy.

There is the confusingly named 1797, Petit oracle des dames / Petit Etteilla, jeu de 42 cartes, by Saint-Sauver.

(Assuming the deck contained piquet inserts, perhaps the suggestion is that it can be used as either?)

While not the same, it is worth noting I think the links between them in that Deroy was a publisher of Saint-Sauveur; the texts of both draw heavily from Etteilla's l'art de lire dans les cartes, 1791, and also the curious phrase in both l'art chronomancique, a phrase that so far I have only been able to find in reference to these two (Deroy & Saint-Sauveur) works. (Apart from the 1815 "Le Nouvel Etteilla, ou l'Art de Tirer les Cartes et de lire dans l'Avenir by Alliette; Thomas-Joseph Lecrêne-Labbey; Théodore Pitrat", but that is basically just a reprint of the Deroy.)

I'll have to look back through the thread but off the top of my head we so far have references from 1796 to 1800/02 for Saint-Sauveur & Deroy (either alone or together) for Le Petit Etteilla, the Petit Oracle des Dames, the confusingly named Petit Oracle des Dames / Petit Etteilla, jeu de 42 cartes, the non-described game that served the 1796 book...
 

Huck

The Finet "Nouvel Eteila, ou petit necromancien", is also called "Le Petit Oracle des Dames", but clearly is of a different type to those for example by Gueffier, the Finet having only 36 cards, all with single figures, with inserts of the piquet cards in the bottom right-hand corner, plus four more 'Eteila' cards.

I don't agree with this sentence.
I didn't see any "Le Petit Oracle des Dames" announced with 36 cards, only with 42.
Naturally one may assume "cause of strong similarity" between motifs of the 36- and 42- version , that a version with 36 cards might be older one and was earlier addressed as "Le Petit Oracle des Dames", but this stays only a hypothesis and is not more.


The post just gives two references together, I did not mean to suggest they were the same.

There is the 1796, that came with a (non-decribed) game of cards, that was re-issued in 1798 from Deroy.

There is the confusingly named 1797, Petit oracle des dames / Petit Etteilla, jeu de 42 cartes, by Saint-Sauver.

(Assuming the deck contained piquet inserts, perhaps the suggestion is that it can be used as either?)

While not the same, it is worth noting I think the links between them in that Deroy was a publisher of Saint-Sauveur; the texts of both draw heavily from Etteilla's l'art de lire dans les cartes, 1791, and also the curious phrase in both l'art chronomancique, a phrase that so far I have only been able to find in reference to these two (Deroy & Saint-Sauveur) works. (Apart from the 1815 "Le Nouvel Etteilla, ou l'Art de Tirer les Cartes et de lire dans l'Avenir by Alliette; Thomas-Joseph Lecrêne-Labbey; Théodore Pitrat", but that is basically just a reprint of the Deroy.)

I'll have to look back through the thread but off the top of my head we so far have references from 1796 to 1800/02 for Saint-Sauveur & Deroy (either alone or together) for Le Petit Etteilla, the Petit Oracle des Dames, the confusingly named Petit Oracle des Dames / Petit Etteilla, jeu de 42 cartes, the non-described game that served the 1796 book...

I don't understand the discussion completely.

We once started with a "1797" at ...
http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=169991&highlight=1797&page=15
... in the thread "Why did Eliphas Lévi link Le Mat with Shin? "

etteilla-15.jpg

https://books.google.de/books?hl=de...oracle+dames#v=snippet&q=oracle dames&f=false

The text claimed to be from 1797 [WRONG], but later researches found, that the book contained also dates of the year 1800, so that the google-dating was not reliable.

NOT RELIABLE DATE
Journal typographique et bibliographique:
ou Annonce de tous les Ouvrages qui ont rapport à l'Imprimerie, comme Gravure, Fonderie, Papeterie, Géographie, Musique, Estampes, Architecture, Librairie ancienne et moderne, chefs-d'oeuvre de Reliure, et de tous les Arts libéraux et mécaniques
by Pierre Roux, Dujardin-Sailly

Further there is your report of the Depaulis communication:

The first edition of Le Petit Oracle des Dames / Petit Etteilla was published in 1797 as:

Petit oracle des dames / Petit Etteilla, jeu de 42 cartes, avec livret Tableaux mobiles des jeux de fortune, ou l'Art de lire dans l'avenir avec sûreté par le rapprochement des événemens qui démontrent sans réplique l'art chronomancique. A Paris, Chez l'Auteur, rue Nicaise Nr. 513. An cinquième / 1797.

No publisher. (Two copies in private collections)
Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur is certainly the author.
The accompanying booklet hugely draws on Etteilla's "testament": Etteilla, ou l'art de lire dans les cartes, 1791, with the original cartonomancie being substituted for cartomancie.

I take the inner part as the announcement, that Depaulis found (would be nice to know, where he did found this).
We note, that the "42 cartes" are mentioned, nothing about a 36 cartes.
The address rue "Nicaise Nr. 513" makes it plausible, that it indeed is from 1797, cause since 1798 Saint-Sauveur has his address at rue Coq-Heron, Maison la France.

The number 513 is strange, I don't know, if it appears elsewhere. The street rue de Nicaise has about 200 meters and 500 house numbers are difficult to imagine. Possibly there is a very big house, and it has different appartements with an own number each. For the year 1800 I found (Sauveur seems to have left the place then to Coq-Heron), that the address Nicaise Nr. 513 belonged to a printer "Charles".
For this I studied the map of 1736. There, where I suspect, that the rue Nicaise had been, is such a big house on the old map.
Studying Louvre history a little bit, I got, that during the revolution parts of the Louvre and possibly the surrounding was given to preferred artists (? ... as far I understood this; one should study this more careful). St. Sauveur might have been inside this public programme. The following curious address "Maison La France", Rue Coq-Heron might have belonged to the same artists privileges. It's about 600 meters to the Louvre.

DEROY
German wiki, works of St-Sauveur:
Costumes des représentans du Peuple, membres des deux conseils, du Directoire Exécutif, des Ministres, des tribunaux, des messagers d'État, hussiers, et autres fonctionnaires publics, etc., dont les dessins originaux ont été confiés par le ministre de l'Intérieur au Citoyen Grasset-St-Sauveur gravées (sic!) par le cit. Labrousse, artiste de Bordeaux, connu par ses talens, et colorés d'après nature et avec le plus grand soin. Chaque figure est accompagné (sic!) d'une notice historique, Deroy, Paris, 1796, 31 S. und kolorierte Platten.
Encyclopédie des voyages contenant l'abrégé historique des moeurs, usages, habitudes domestiques, religions, fêtes, supplices, funérailles, sciences, arts, et commerce de tous les peuples: et la collection complette de leurs habillemens civils, militaires, religieux et dignitaires, dessinés d'apres la nature, gravés avec soin et colorés à l'aquarelle,Deroy, Paris, 1796, 5 Bände in 4° mit 432 Tafeln.
Recueil complet des costumes des autorités constituées civiles, militaires et de la marine, dont les dessins ont été confiés au Citoyen S. Sauveur par le ministre de l'intérieur, Deroy, Paris, 4°, 48 S. und Tafeln.

3 times Deroy, twice 1796, once 1798.
 

kwaw

I don't agree with this sentence.
I didn't see any "Le Petit Oracle des Dames" announced with 36 cards, only with 42.

The Finet, "Nouvel Eteila, ou Petit Necromancien", has 36 cards, and is also called 'Le Petit Oracle Des Dames', it is that I was referring too in reference to being aware of not relying too much on nomenclature,
re: Mike's observation about the Depaulis reference to the confusingly titled: Petit oracle des dames / Petit Etteilla, jeu de 42 cartes, 1797.
 

kwaw

I am very confused by Depaulis's information, i.e.:

The Petit Etteilla has 33 cards and is simply the ordinary piquet deck plus one more, the "Etteilla". with keywords added, upright, reversed, and in combinations. It is not the same as the Petit oracle des dames. I do not understand the / in his version of the title of the deck. Which of the two very different decks is it?

One obviously has to beware of going by nomenclature alone. The Finet "Nouvel Eteila, ou petit necromancien", is also called "Le Petit Oracle des Dames", but clearly is of a different type to those for example by Gueffier, the Finet having only 36 cards, all with single figures, with inserts of the piquet cards in the bottom right-hand corner, plus four more 'Eteila' cards. It is this deck (and the Robert, which according to depaulis is the same as the Finet, but does not have the piquet card inserts) that is most obviously derivative of the c.1790 66 card deck.

Correspondence from Thierry Depaulis (24th December, 2015)

quote:

Actually there are three (!) so-called 'Petit Etteilla'…

- 1) Etteilla's own 'Petit Etteilla', 33 cards (i.e. a 'piquet' pack + 1 card for 'Consultant', first edition 1791 (see Wicked Pack, p. 96 and pl. 5); these cards were reprinted many times during the 19th and the 20th centuries (notably by Grimaud), under this title ('Petit Etteilla'); a mere copy (or a re-issue?) of these cards appeared around 1797 under the name and signature of our dear friend "le citoyen Saint-Sauveur" (see Cary Coll., FRA 191; Les cartes de la Révolution 1989, n° 98)

- 2) 'Petit oracle des dames / Petit Etteilla' (both titles), later with "ou récréation du curieux" added, 42 cards, most double-headed, also issued by Grasset de Saint-Sauveur, "A Paris, Chez l'Auteur, rue Nicaise Nr. 513. An cinquième / 1797", re-issued as 'Petit oracle des dames, ou récréation du curieux' in 1799 ("A Paris, Chez l'Auteur, rue Coq-Héron, Maison de France ; Deroy, libraire, rue Hautefeuille, n° 34, an VIII de la Rép. fr. [1799-1800]"); and reprinted later under the same or variant titles, notably by Gueffier, his widow and his son

- 3) 'Nouvel Eteila [sic], ou le Petit nécromancien', also as 'Le Petit oracle des dames', 36 cards, single-headed, engraving and style rather late 18th C, but all copies known only by Robert (c.1820) and Mme Finet (c.1824).

end quote

Re: the c.1797 Saint-Sauveur copy/re-issue of the Petit Etteilla, possibly this is the 'jeu d'Etteilla' that was advertised with the 1796 L'Art de Tirer des Cartes published by Deroy?

The catalogue of donations to the BnF by Paul Marteau includes a 'Jeu d’ “Etteilla ou le Questionnaire”, de 32 cartes. (End of 18th century. Reissued by Grimaud, end of 19th century.)

La carte à jouer : donation faite à la Bibliothèque nationale par Monsieur Paul Marteau, maître cartier, juin 1966, No. 453
 

MikeH

Huck posted this image on another forum, presumably identified with a Sauveur "Petit Oracle des Dames" but not double-headed (unlike the one he posted a few days ago, together with the tiny black and white "nouvel eteilla" images. It does not seem to fit any of Depaulis's categories. Huck dated it to 1820.
sauveur-31.jpg


It in turn is similar to another image Huck posted at the same time, from the "Minchiate Francesi" of c. 1730, he said:
ConsulterElementNum.jpeg

If decks use images from previous decks, it is not surprising that the style is of the previous time.

The only other image from the "1820 St. Sauveur" he had is this one (it is a bit similar to one in the "Minchiate Francese", but not as close):
sauveur-32.jpg


And we should not forget the booklet with images of 1809 that Huck posted part of at http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=3091451&postcount=31
 

kwaw

Huck posted this image on another forum, presumably identified with a Sauveur "Petit Oracle des Dames" but not double-headed

See earlier posts in this thread, posts 342 & 343:

There was a 52 and a 33 card deck, the posts above give examples from both, plus link to 33 card deck at the Met. plus description from catalogue of private collector (who also had a Finet in the collection).

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=122602&page=35

In summary (without repeating the pictures there)

c. 1820 - Geographic Divination game which came in both a 52 card and a 32 card version. There is a copy of the 32 card version at the Met.

("Geographic divination game: France, c. 1820 etching and dotted, color brush, 52/52 cards, 81 x 54 mm, ens. fr. ; back has a network of blue stars; c. a character card offers Folk figures (identified by the legend at bottom), except those that are illustrated allegories; with divinatory sentences and numbers more or less "cabalistic" accompanying the cards, and a miniature insert of standard french suits; figures of folk are inspired by the paintings of the main plates of peoples Europe, Asia, Africa, America ... by Jacques grassetst-savior (Paris, Year VI) or an intermediary educational game.

"There is another version (MFCj-Depaulis 1989 No. 103), but which only has 32 cards and additionally a "white" card with "Etteilla Consultation".

It is almost certain that the famous cartonomancien, death in 1791, has nothing to do with this curious ethnographic game (cp. Keller 1981 Fra 192 and 193, both made of 32 v.). A few foxing here and there, but very good condition.)

The above description is from a catalogue for an auction of the collection of Claude Giuard, November 2011. The 'cabalistic numbers' referred too I think are more likely lottery numbers.

Here is the 33 card set at the Met:

http://www.metmuseum.org/collection...e/search?ft=+'Costumes+des+Peuples+Étrangers'

The 'Etteilla' card that came with the 33 pack is either not included or not on view with the 32 cards at the Met.
 

MikeH

Thanks, Kwaw. Well, I am just looking for other timeline entries. I forgot you had already written about the "Costumes des Peoples Etrangers" decks by St. Sauveur. A search using "1820" would have turned it up. I have to remember to do that.

Well, I have one more. I did a search on this forum for the author's name and came up empty. On p. 79 of Il Tarocchino di Bologna: Storia, Iconografia, Divinazione, by Andrea Vitali and Terry Zanetti, they have a picture from the book Le veritable cartomancie, by Louise Amron, Paris 1820. It shows the Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, and 7 of Diamonds, plus the Consultant card. So the same as Etteilla's Petit Etteilla cards. Many of the divinatory meanings derive from Etteilla's Petit Etteilla. It uses many of Etteilla's reversed meanings and meanings in combination simply as additional meanings. It also has departures from the Petit Etteilla, some borrowed from the Grand Etteilla (for courts) and some perhaps its own innovations.

Amazon.fr has this entry: "La Véritable Cartomancie expliquée par la célèbre sibylle française, mise en tableaux par l'héritière de Melle L. Norma, savante cartomancienne du XVIIIe siècle. Nouvelle édition"... Signé Louise Amron. Published 1898. All I can find in the BnF is a 1975 reprint. 1820 is credible to me.