4. Did Etteilla's work inspired the Bologna document? Problems and responses

How could the 1757/1771 document in Paris of quite limited circulation have influenced a document in Bologna in the same decade? If at first glance the chances seem remote, in fact the opposite is true. The very person who had asked Etteilla's permission to distribute it more widely, even though only 15 years of age, had suddenly found himself removed from Paris and able to do so only far afield, in precisely what is now Northeastern Italy.

Saint-Sauveur's father was a career diplomat who, after years of suffering disgrace, even prison, in Paris was suddenly given a position as consul to Trieste, in March of 1772 (I get this information from the entry for Saint-Sauveur in an 1826 biographical dictionary that Steve linked to at http://tarotforum.net/showpost.php?s=38 ... ostcount=9). I would expect that the father would have gone first and then, perhaps at the end of the school year, his family would have followed, including 15 year old Jacques. If he acquired the booklet in 1772 as he says, he would have had it with him going to Trieste. Even though then Austrian, the city was quite close to Venice, which of course is not far from Bologna, and to which doubtless his father wold have had occasion to visit. If he ever reprinted it, it would have probably been in this new milieu. And since his father was in the process of grooming Jacques for a diplomatic career himself, the necessary introductions would have been made, including, as would be likely for a person of his class and profession, an entry into Freemasonry.

However this scenario raises other problems. For one, why would the meanings have shifted so much from the cards designated by Etteilla to those of the cartomancy sheet? While it is true that the same meanings wander among cards as we go through the history of cartomancy in Italy, these shifts are decades apart and probably due to errors in oral transmission rather than deliberate reinterpretations. On the other hand, after Etteilla's first cards in 1789 much the same keywords appeared in much the same places on Etteilla decks for 150 years, until 1977 for the Grand Etteilla I by Cartes France, but still not for Grand Etteilla II and III. The main shift was that on the Ace of Batons "Chute" became the Upright and "Naissance" the Reversed, and in a few cases when the word was the same Upright and Reversed, there was a different word for the Reversed. In an age when the written word is the primary means of transmission, variability is much less. My conclusion is that there was not enough time between 1770 and 1782, or 1760 and 1770, for the number of shifts that we see.

So we have to ask, why would there be so many shifts in card assignments, even if the meanings stayed more or less the same?  One answer might be that the person constructing the list had enough to do getting the meanings to fit the Italian cards. That will perhaps explain differences among the court cards. But what about the number cards? It might be that person simply saw the cards as sufficient to cover a range of answers to typical questions, and that was enough, without bothering to match the meanings card for card.

There is also another possibility: he might have been aware of a different method of card-reading, also French, one described later (1779) by another French diplomat in Northeastern Italy, this time France's representative in Venice from 1766 to 1770 (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Argenson), Marc Antoine René de Voyer de Paulmy d' Argenson. De Palmy writes (Mélanges Tirés d'une Grande Bibliothèque, Volume 2)

...The general rules: the hearts indicate happiness & success in gallantry, and the diamonds, of one’s interests & finance; clubs are favourable to one’s ambitious views, and spades to war projects or military advancement: contrary, the spades are unfavourable in the affairs of gallantry, the clubs must give reason to fear that financial and business interests go wrong, the hearts announces big disappointment to projects of ambition, and the diamonds act contrary to soldiers. If it is a married man who questions & is distinguished, the king is the most favourable card there is, if it is a woman, it is the queen; & if it is a young person, it is the Valet. The tens signify the greatest happiness or misfortune, then the nines, eights or sevens in the decreasing order, and finally the ace is the smallest injury or slightest advantage....

You will have noticed that whereas Etteilla assigns money to Clubs, De Palmy assigns it to Diamonds. Clubs get "projects of ambition". Also, while Etteilla makes the Ace highest, de Palmy makes it the lowest. Also, it is not that money issues are not addressed by Clubs, but rather that they are addressed in a negative way. Likewise Love is addressed in Spades, but negatively, and so on for the other two suits. These considerations may have influenced our cartomancer in Bologna, if only not to take the particular assignments to individual cards too seriously.

Another difficulty with a French origin is one raised by Pratesi: its stated method of dividing a large number of cards - 35 - into 7 piles of 5 cards each. Such a procedure is not recorded in Etteilla or de Mellet. On the other hand, it is similar to laying out cards in a succession of rows, which is seen in pictures of cartomancy in France of c. 1800, and also to a spread known as the Celtic Cross in modern French cartomancy.

Finally, there is the difficulty that Etteilla himself attributed his method of reading the cards to an Italian source, one "Alexis", sometimes said to be from Piedmont, or of Piedmontese descent, other times said to have "Piemontese" as his last name. If so, it could have been Etteilla, or the two of them, adjusting the Italian method to French conditions,with the difference in space and time between Piedmont and Bologna accounting for some of them.

The problem is that Etteilla's own testimony by itself is of dubious value, given his relentless self-promotion. His "Alexis" may not have existed. As DDD point out (note 16, p. 272), "Alexis Piemontese" was the pseudonym of a well known 16th century Italian author of a book of home remedies still readily available in French translation in Etteilla's day. Etteilla even said, in his Second Cahier, that his Alexis was a descendant of that one (see my translation at https://etteillastrumps.blogspot.com/20 ... whole.html). As a purchaser of large lots of paper goods at auction (DDD p. 80) he could easily have run across the name and decided it would be a good one with which to hide the identity of his true informant, perhaps a Freemason who wanted his name kept out of it. In any case, he would have only been of relevance for the tarot interpretations, as Etteilla makes no mention of him in his 1770 or 1773 books. That tarot was related to Italian suits would have been obvious enough to a well-traveled dealer in old prints.

Nor can we argue from the fact that since the tarot was first in Italy, therefore cartomancy must have started there and migrated to France. The reason is that cartomancy with the Piquet deck may well have preceded cartomancy with tarot cards, in any form influencing Etteilla. French suits were invented sometime between 1465 and 1480, which is before tarot cards were even known in France (except perhaps in the hands of a few Italian ladies there). Enough of a mythology existed around the court cards and the symbolism of numbers in France to provide a basis for cartomantic interpretations.

Yet that a French nobleman, probably a Freemason, who later wrote about fortune-telling with cards, was in Northeastern Italy just before Etteilla came out with his book on the subject, still leaves open the possibility that the affinity between Etteilla and the cartomancy document went the other way, from Italy to France.

More needs to be known about the other documents that were part of the same group as the sheet in question. If there were letters, who were they to, where, and when? Perhaps there is nothing of interest; but perhaps there is a link to one of the two French individuals in the diplomatic community known later to have an interest in cartomancy. That would certainly help. In the meantime, the link to Saint-Sauveur makes the most sense. But the connection is circumstantial at best.