There is more, which I will get to (including, for DDD a possible connection to geomancy), but in this post I have more than enough to deal with already.The style strongly resembles Etteilla's own very peculiar style. Would it be the "Abrégé de la cartonomancie" that our magus has always claimed to have written in 1753? The writer reveals that he was inspired by "a very old manuscript" he owns and that "card reading does not derive from [playing] cards, but from the game of 33 sticks of 'Alpha' [*], name of a Greek refugee in Spain who predicted the future".
At the beginning of the above quote, you will have noticed that DDD speak of an "Abrégé de la Cartonomancie", i.e. "Synopsis of Cartonomancy", that Etteilla "always claimed to have written in 1753". I cannot find where they document that Etteilla ever made such a claim, much less that it concerned a Greek refugee in Spain. On p. 78 they do say that in the 1785 book Philosophie des Hautes Sciences "Etteilla speaks of 1753 as the date of his first writing." But no title is mentioned, much less a completed work or anything else about it.
DDD also, on pp. 96-97 (viwableat https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NcRHuDII2Qo/ ... ge-012.jpg), discuss a 1791 book called Etteilla, ou l'art de lire dans les cartes, which they translate as "Etteilla, or the art of card reading". It is apparently not written by Etteilla, but it is endorsed by him. Its forward, entitled "Le Censeur" -an ironic title, DDD say - claims "Therefore I make myself a guarantee. This is why I approved it and signed. Etteilla. 7 August 1791"). A lengthy quote from this forward speaks, at the end, of Etteilla beginning his method of card reading in 1753:
But there is no mention of any "abrégé", here or anywhere else DDD talk about this book.As early as 1753, our scholar and Renovator of Cartonomancy had begun by discarding the art of reading cards one by one, substituting the art of card reading from the whole pack laid out on the table.
However there is a selection, unidentified as to source, contained in the Little White Book (LWB) to the Petit Etteilla pack currently published by France Cartes (henceforth FC), which corresponds more or less to what DDD quote and summarize. Here we do find the claim that Etteilla wrote such an "abrégé" - abridgement or synopsis - giving its date as 1757.
A complication in using the LWB to flush out DDD's account is that there are differences between what is there and the excerpts that DDD give in English translation. The main one is that Etteilla's neologism "cartonomancy" does not appear in the LWB version, but the normal French word "cartomancy" in precisely the same places.
The explanation for this difference is probably that the LWB used, not the original of 1791, but a reprint which "corrected" the spelling. In a footnote (note 64, pp. 274-275, viewable at https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XCugfydY7RM/ ... ge-007.jpg) DDD say that there was in fact such a reprint in c. 1800, and that the spelling was changed in precisely that way.
Some years later, the same book was reissued - the word cartonomancie being systematically substituted for cartonomancie: L'art de tirer les cartes, au moyens de lirer dans l'avenir par le rapprochement des evenemens qui demontrent sans replique l'art chronomanique ...Traduit d'un manuscrit arabe. - A Paris, n.d., [c. 1800], 126 pp. 12mo.
So FC's LWB is probably reproducing that one of c. 1800. The title translates literally as "The art of drawing cards, by means of reading in the future by the approximation of events which demonstrate without replication [or, replicating] the chronomanic art ... Translated from an Arabic manuscript."
The work, if it is the same as the 1791, is obviously not from an Arab manuscript. I do not know what the "art chronomanique" would be, unless it is a general term for divining the future by means of "reading" the generation of apparently random events in the present, such as the patterns made by coffee grounds or the lines in a person's hand. The word "chronomanique" would seem to be derived from the Greek "chronos" - time - and "manike" - madness. I do not find the word in any online French dictionary. Google brings up 9 results, rather a change from the usual million or so. The majority discuss extremely accurate watches made commercially today. The word might refer to a dealer in such watches. On another site, it is used to describe an interior decorator who is "légèrement chronomanique", slightly chronomanic. Perhaps she is obsessed with being on time, or knowing the exact time, I do not know. Another site has the spelling "chronomonique", which seems to be a species of the genus "gnomonique", a branch of engineering that has to do with constructing sundials. That would seem unrelated as well. What the word meant in c. 1800 is so far another of life's mysteries.
I have located an 1802 reprint of the 1797 book to which DDD refer, which seems to be the one referred to by DDD in their footnote 65, p. 275 (see again https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XCugfydY7RM/ ... ge-007.jpg). It is possible that its author was Saint-Sauveur, as I will explain. Again DDD have greatly condensed their source. I will get to the 1797 text in another post. It is not reproduced in FC's LWB. In this post I want focus on the 1791 work as I find it in DDD and the LWB, in the latter both in French and English.
Another problem, besides the changed spelling of "cartonomancy", with using the LWB version is that DDD's bits in English do not always precisely correspond to what is in FC's French, or their English translation--at least not to my literal-minded self. The differences are minor, but one of them is in what I have already quoted, where DDD erroneously have it said that Etteilla's difference with his predecessors is that he spreads the whole deck out on the table. That mistranslation could give rise to some confusion about Etteilla if taken at face value.
Below I have transcribed FC's French text, from pp. 5-10 of the French side of the LWB, corresponding to 9-14 of the English side. To make things easier for the reader (and me), I will divide it into two parts and deal with only the first part in this post. It is this part that discusses the "abrégé". After the French, I give an English translation - actually three of them, for some sentences. I have put DDD's translations in bold, with alternative readings, from the LWB and my own judgment, in brackets and not in bold. But there is a lot more in the LWB version, which DDD either omit or summarise. For this my translation is in ordinary print, but also including FC's translation in brackets where I differ from it. The chance of accuracy is thereby increased, but I hope this way of proceeding proves not to be too confusing.
DDD's slip of mixing up Hearts and Spades is a small error, although one they could have seen for themselves if they had looked at the table at the beginning of the chapter, where Victory is clearly associated with the 9 of Hearts.L'Art de Tirer les Cartes
En 1750, on ne connaissait pas en France l'art de tirer les cartes; mais in 1751, 1752, et 1753, trois personnes âgées se donnèrent pour les tirer.
Elles avaient raison, quisqu'àpres avoir mêler et fait couper un jeu de trente-deux-cartes, elles faisaient tirer à une du jeu; et lorsque le questionnant avait sorti in pique, cela (prétendaient ces vieilles gens) annonçait du chagrin: de même que les coeurs annonçait de la joie, les carreaux de la campagne et les trèfles de l'argent.
Le fanatisme cria au sacrilège, et la police, pour sauver ces prétendus [start p. 10] sorciers de la main des dévots, les faisent renfermer, sans les entendre, à la Salpàtrière.
Cette tyrannie dura jusqu' en 1770, où Etteilla, qui avant réfléchi, étudié, et enfin reconnu que le faux art de tirer les cartes provenait de la plus utile et de la plus sublime des sciences, s'oppose, avec autant de force que de raisonnement et d'adresse, à l'ignorance du fanatisme.
Dès 1753, notre savant rénovateur de la cartomancie avait débuté par jeter en bas l'[/i]Art de tirer les cartes un à un[/i], en y suppléant l'art de lire dans l'ensemble des cartes amenées sur la table. Mais (c'est notre avis) de même eùt-il, au premier abord, par le titre que nous prenons, []l'Art de lire dans les cartes[/i], empêcher [start p. 11] que le faux titre de l'Art de tirer les cartes, se perpétuât!
Notre auteur, dès 1753, en donnant la manière de lire les significations adaptées aux cartes, avait non seulement rédigé les fausses significations que les trois personnes leur admettaient, chacune de leur côté; mais en outre accordé ces significations, en prenant légitemement pour le neuf de coeur celle de la victoire, qui, par une autre de ces trois personnes, était mal à propos attribuée au neuf de carreau, etc.
L'art de tirer les cartes, suivant Etteilla, ne peuvait être d'une invention aussi moderne que les cartes françaises. D'après un manuscrit ancien, il le crut prevenir des trente-trois bâtons d'un Grec, que dans la [start p. 12] Gaule, s'en servant pour rendre des oracles, avait pris ou avait naturellement pour nom Alpha.
Cette origine n'était pas juste, mais elle n'était pas non plus dénuée de rapport, puisque les bâtons d'Alpha et l'art de tirer les carts sont ce que l'on peut dire, les tables qui ont succédé à la vérité de la cartomancie égyptienne. Mensonge heureux s'il en peut être puisque, sans l'art de tirer les cartes, notre siècle n'eût peut-être pas eu l'avantage de mettre au rang de ses découvertes, la plus utile de toutes les sciences, la Cartomancie.
Dans l'abrégé de 1757, notre auteur ne manqua pas d'appuyer de nouveau, que tirer les cartes une à une du jeu, pour les expliquer une à une était une ignorance imitée de la manière de l'Odyssée d'Homer, les vers de Virgile, et l'abus de Sort des Saints.
(In 1750, the art of card reading[/b] [FC: drawing cards (tirer = drawing)] was unknown in France; but in 1751, 1752, and 1753, three aged people [DDD add: , among them two women and a man] offered to read the cards [se donnèrent pour les tirer = literally, "gave themselves for drawing them"; FC: worked at drawing them].
They were right, however, because after having shuffled and cut a deck of thirty-two cards, they had the person draw [FC: they would have them drawn] one by one from the pack; and when the questioner had drawn a Spade, this (as these old people used to say [FC: according to these elderly people]) announced sorrow: so Hearts announced joy, Diamonds country, and Clubs money.
Fanaticism cried [FC: called it] sacrilege, and the police, in order to save these so-called sorcerers from the hands of the devouts [FC omits "the hands" and has "of these devout people"], has them locked up, without listening to them, in the Salpetrière [FC: in the prisons of Bicêtre and the Salpetrière].
This tyranny lasted until 1770, when Etteilla, having reflected, studied, and finally recognized [FC: who had given the matter much thought, studied and finally admitted] that the false art of drawing cards came from the most useful and sublime of the sciences, oppose himself to the ignorance of fanaticism, with as much force as reason and skill.
As early as 1753, our scholar and Renovator of Cartonomancy [FC: Cartomancy] had begun by discarding the art of reading cards one by one, substituting the art of card reading from the whole pack laid out on the table [lire dans l'ensemble des cartes amenées sur la table = reading as a whole the cards brought to the table; CF: interpreting the drawn cards as a whole] . But (it is our opinion) it is in the same way, by the title we take, the Art of reading [lire dans, literally "reading in" or "reading into"] the cards , that prevents the false title of the Art of drawing the cards from perpetuating itself! [This is my guess: neither DDD and Cartes France translate this last sentence. I have no idea what its point is.]
Our author, from 1753, in giving the manner of reading [lire] the meanings adapted to the cards, not only wrote up the false meanings which the three persons gave to them, each in their own way, but in addition restored the legitimate meanings, giving the meaning of victory to the nine of hearts [coeurs], which, by one of these three persons, was improperly attributed to the nine of diamonds [carreaux], etc. [DDD: "Then it is said that Etteilla restored the 9 of Spades' true meaning - Victory - which had wrongly been assigned to the 9 of Diamonds by the three aged persons"; CF: "..the author wrote up not only the false meanings given separately by each of the three elderly people, but also granted these meanings, legitimately taking that of victory for the 9 of hearts, which was wrongly allocated to the 9 of diamonds by one of the three people, etc." ]
The art of drawing cards, according to Etteilla, could not be of an invention as modern as the French cards. With the backing of an ancient manuscript, he thought it came from the 33 sticks of a Greek, who used them in Gaul to pronounce oracles and had taken or had naturally the name of [FC: had taken the name or was called naturally] Alpha. [DDD for this paragraph omit the first sentence and have only: From an ancient manuscript, he thought it came from the 33 sticks that a Greek, in Gaul, used in order to give oracles; he had taken or had by birth the name of Alpha.]
This origin was not correct, but it was not without relevance either [dénuée de rapport; FC: not devoid of connection] since the sticks of Alpha and the art of card reading [FC: drawing cards] are, as one can say [FC: what one could call], the fables which in fact succeeded to Egyptian cartonomancy [les fables qui ont succédé à la vérité de la cartomancie égyptienne; FC: the fables which followed the truth of Egyptian cartomancy]. A fortunate lie as it were, because without the art of drawing cards, our century might not have had the advantage of putting in the rank of [FC: probably would not have had the chance of ranking among] its discoveries the most useful of all sciences, Cartomancy.
In the abridgment of 1757, our author did not fail to press again [FC: In the synopsis of 1757, Etteilla points out once again] that drawing the cards one by one from the pack, in order to interpret them one by one, was an ignorance imitating the manner of [FC: similar to the method of searching for oracles in] Homer's Odyssey, the verses of Virgil, and the abuse of the Lots of the Saints.)
The error about reading from "the whole pack laid out on the table" is a larger one, in that Etteilla did not in most cases lay out the whole pack on the table, but only some of them. In the 1773 book there is one "spread" that does use the whole piquet deck, but that is an exception, only recommended for virtuosos.
Etteilla was very proud of his innovation, that of reading combinations of cards. In actual fact his examples, and those of his followers, did go one card at a time, turning the sequence of cards into a single sentence, each card from right to left corresponding to a single word or idea of the sentence in order (French word order, of course, at least for French readers and their questioners). However sometimes the meaning of a particular card was affected by the cards before or after it--especially the one immediately before or after, but sometimes others. So it would not be possible to give a sure meaning to one card until all had been seen.
Then there is the question of whether the abrégé was done in 1757 or 1753. 1757 would seem to be the more reliable date. I notice that in the introduction to the FC booklet, its editor in fact says that the abrégé was done in 1753, even though the text he is introducing says 1757. Perhaps DDD read that and misremembered it as what is in the text itself.
DDD mention that in the first edition of his book on card reading with a piquet deck, of 1770, there is a picture of someone with cards and the label "Alpha", otherwise unexplained in the text. In the 2nd edition of that book, published in 1773, he does speak of 33 sticks as "illusions of the Gauls". Here is DDD's translation, from p. xv of the 1773 book (https://books.google.com/books?id=CI85A ... is&f=false):
Of this DDD comments that this method of divination "is presented in a very negative light" and that "It nevertheless may be inferred that Etteilla had heard of some divinatory method with sticks as early as 1770 and that he had the name Alpha in mind, maybe as an alternative pen-name" (p. 97). )Later, when we get to the 1797 document, we will see that they find grounds there that he might have been thinking of Alpha even in 1757 (or 1753, as they think).)The 33 sticks thrown in a circle from breast height: Illusion of the ancient Gauls. I say: illusion, because they imagined they actually saw the Soldiers or Generals they had designated with their sticks run away, when these sticks fell out of the circle.
Andrea Vitali talks about this method of divination in an essay that I translated at http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page. ... 49&lng=ENG:
What "carte" means here (in Italian it can mean "papers" or "pages"), and if its equivalent was in the original poem, is not clear. In 14th century Spain, cards would have been quite new, if known at all by the Spanish author. Moreover, all the other editions of the poem have "arte", not "carte", i.e. "cast the art" (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1019&p=15404&hilit ... rds#p15404; in that post Ross also goes further, hypothesizing that "threw the carte", meant "threw open the book"; but Vitali assures me that the Italian verb "gettare" used there, to throw, could not mean "throw open"). We might wonder if there is some relationship to Etteilla's sticks, as another version of the story that he might have heard, one about throwing objects into a circle to divine the movements of the enemy. There is no mention in Andrea's version of 33. I suspect that to be Etteilla's addition, if not also the part about sticks.... a verse of Canto XX of the poem Storied Spain, a chivalric romance composed in the fourteenth century but only printed in Milan in 1519, makes reference to the sortilege with which Roland sought to discover the enemies of Charlemagne: "He made a circle and afterwards threw the carte", which means, as Lozzi pointedly suggests in his article of 1899, that "he threw the cards as is done in a game, or in the throwing of dice, but threw them within the circle, to discover from their arrangement, as determined by magic power (sortilege) who were the enemies of the Emperor and where they were to be found" (9).
DDD invariably speak of "card reading", whereas the French says sometimes "lire" (reading) but more often "tirer" (drawing). In English, it is true, we usually say "reading the cards". That is probably due to Etteilla's method, by which cartomancy became less like drawing lots and more like reading a sentence, whose words, reading right to left, were the cards. Before then, it was indeed like "drawing lots", where the lots drawn would be a prediction instead of a person's name, as in the case where in Athens jury members were chosen by lots drawn from an urn, or a saying in a lot-book. The lot-book of the saints to which the text refers would have been an updating of the ancient Greco/Roman lot-books, which tied roles of the dice to particular gods and fortunes related to those gods, now Christianized so that instead of gods the roles of the dice were tied to particular saints. I am not aware of any lots being drawn in the Odyssey; it is in the Iliad where that happens, drawing lots for a dangerous mission against Troy. I do not know the reference for Virgil.
I will continue with the second part of the 1791 forward in another post. And after that, there is more to be investigated regarding this Alpha and his 33 sticks, namely, the asterisk in the quotation with which I started this thread, which is from the work of 1797.
Added later: To summarize thus far: the 1791 document endorsed by Etteilla says that he began his work in cartonomancy in 1753, beginning with the meanings that three aged persons separately associated to the cards of the piquet deck.( Born in 1738, he would have been 15 or 16 at the time.) By 1757 he had corrected, in his view, what the old people had said, for example that the 9 of hearts and not of diamonds, as one of the people had said, meant "victory"; he had written a kind of abridged version of card-reading, also conveying that a group of cards had to be considered as a unit instead of just one at a time. He associated his system with an old manuscript which supported the idea that a Greek who had moved to Gaul had used 33 sticks, somehow corresponding to his 33 cards, to pronounce oracles, a story that even if untrue somehow derived from the true system he later recognized as coming from ancient Egypt. This same legend or "fable" corresponded to a practice of throwing 33 sticks into a circle, by which it had been thought in the same region that the movements of enemy troops could be seen. Such a practice, but with other objects and without a definite number, can also be found--as interpreted by Carlo Lozzi in 1899 and reported by Vitali--in a 14th century Spanish narrative poem, but using objects reported as "carte" in one edition (but as "casting the art" in other editions) of an Italian translation of early 16th century Milan.
Also later (another few minutes): I modified the presentation of Vitali and Lozzi to take into account the post by Ross linked to.
