In my next video I had retracted what I said about believing Etteilla had anything to do with the deck. I can see now that he didn't. Although it is a very interesting deck still

Huck wrote:

These are just from the first 21 descriptions that Huck gave. They have nothing to do with Etteilla that I can see. I couldn't find Huck's descriptions of the other 9, before the zodiac.

I don't understand ... what do you mean? Poilly deck?
Here are 21 cards:
http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/CadresFenetre ... hemindefer
Some others, which I found elsewhere, I've given. I don't have all.

I am referring to the 21 descriptions you gave at

http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php? ... ostcount=3

Isn't that Poilly? Do you have descriptions for the rest?

Ah, I missed that other thread, Huck. Thanks, I'll look at it.

... :-) ... I thought, if you know the pictures, you don't need the description.

In know these 21 pictures, and some others, which I found here and there. I still don't know all. Actually you should have all here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=poilly% ... me0QW_6YAo

Short descriptions are in the mentioned articles and the list of tarot.org.il (see link) and in the list of Merlin. Link and list are in the thread.

Ah, I see now, you click on the little arrow at the bottom left to get more pictures. Well, for my purposes what I needed were the descriptions, since the pictures themselves are quite different from those of the Petit Oracle. I never would have connected the two, except for the descriptions. There seem to be 30. Well, only 9 to go. Why did you stop at 21? (I am assuming that you made up the desciptions yourself. If not, where did you get it?) If you have more, some description would be worthwhile.

Ah, I understand ...

There are three different Poilly decks, all with DIFFERENT NUMBERS, but all made with the SAME PICTURES. At this description I give the 22-card version (one card I can't describe; it's not there), the others are a 41-version and a 42-version.

The other versions are given by Merlin and tarot.org.il, just by a few words for each card.

Using your material in the Poilly thread, I constructed a list of descriptions for the other 9 cards of the Poilly (or 21, counting the zodiac). I posted it at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=782&p=12733#p12733. I get 21 in one list, 40 in another (Merlin), 42 for the third. Comparing the additional descriptions (besides your 21) to the Petit Oracle, I only found one additional similarity, in that Juno is in both. But this is of dubious significance, because the Petit Oracle could have gotten it (and its Jupiter) from the Besancon. It is the group of 21 that provides the correspondences to the non-Marseille, non-Etteilla images in the Petit Oracle des Dames. There remain many images in the Petit Oracle unaccounted for.

In short a likely development of the Poilly deck.

1644 ... there was creativity with cards for the young Louis XIV. There was also a mythology deck

1654 Poilly likely was involved in the production of 58 pictures for the Ovid edition of Marolles

c. 1660 There was a marriage of a French princess with Florence ... this likely brought up a confrontation of the with the Minchiate. Poilly transformed this to the Minchiate Francesi (likely the 41 cards version, Merlin list))


This image with visitors from 4 continents (published by Poilly) should have been produced "before 1666" (the deck has court cards with persons from 4 continents)

... (unknown date) the same deck was transformed to the 42 version, now with an additional card "Chaos", likely at the French court with some eye on the personality of Louis XI. The object had now 58 motifs (with court cards), like the Ovid version.

... (unknown date) the same cards were transformed to a Tarot version with 22 trumps

The Florentine marriage went totally wrong, and the women returned and became part of the gambling tables at the French court of Louis XIV.

Unluckily there's no clear view, if the deck was very common. It's rare, and it seems, that it partly was reproduced long after 1660 ... so it's difficult to say, if all versions were used already early.

Etteilla wished to reconstruct the "right order". But he brought a great confusion. Well, we don't know, if there were also other decks, which have disappeared to our eyes.

I have started looking at the booklet that comes with the "Petit Oracle des Dames" (which I will abbreviate as PODD). It on Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6 ... lla.langEN), erroneously attributed to Etteilla.

Although most of the material in it, at least in the first 21 cards, comes from Etteilla, de Gebelin, and de Mellet, a few things do not. I've gone through the first 21 while having the three known sources in front of me, seeing what couldn't be attributed to them. I have found a few things. I will not only list them but give possible sources that I have thought of. Why this is interesting is that the parts that are unknown may be part of a tradition then known but now not, as the writer of the PODD is anything but original.

For card 1, the PODD writes, in part:

The goddess Isis, in the middle of a circle formed by a serpent that is biting its tail, represents the universe. The circle is the emblem of the annual revolutions, the image of eternity, which has neither start nor finish. Isis, which the Egyptians considered the origin of all, seems ready to run.

In contrast, all de Mellet says is that the card "represents the Universe by the Goddess Isis in an oval, or an egg." De Gebelin says that the card represents Time. "In the center is the Goddess of Time, with her veil that floats about & that serves as a belt or Peplum[, as the Ancients called it. She is in the attitude of going around like Time, & in a circle that represents the revolutions of Time; thus the egg whence all is released into Time.[/quote]
Now the part of the PODD that talks about the serpent biting its tail might be from looking at it. But one would need to know something about its significance. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it was a common alchemical symbol. It meant something. For de Gebelin, it meant "the revolutions of time. But for PODD it is "the image of eternity", an explicit use of Plato's definition of time in the Timaeus, time as "the moving image of eternity" (see http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-te ... o-time.asp). The circle represents both Time and Eternity--a deeper interpretation than the other three give, that I can find. Where does this come from? I cannot imagine that the writer read Plato. I suspect some tradition pertaining to the Marseille Tarot.

Otherwise as I look through the first 21 PODD cards and the booklet's accounts, ignoring the suit card images for now, I see two new images, nor in our three sources: Fortune as a woman on a wheel with a small cupid-like figure grasping her clothing, and an allegorical figure sitting on a triangular block, called "Law and Faith." I recognize the first as related to an image of the 15th century "Mantegna school," showing a woman on a ball, being reached toward by a young man but restrained by another woman, standing on a cube. It was Occasion vs. Wisdom (for the image, see viewtopic.php?f=12&t=630&start=10#p9428 and find "Wisdom"). illustrating the motto Festina Lente, Hasten slowly. That image probably got slightly altered in some emblem book. The PODD calls it Occasion grasping at Chance ("Hazard"). Etteilla's figure of Temperance, one foot on a block and the other on a ball, is another use of the image, to convey "neither too much or too little". The other image probably comes from another emblem book, but if so I don't know it.

I know that there are Poilly influences in the PODD as well, but I am not convinced that they are in the first 21 images (excluding those associated with the suits). Both the image and the explanation of "Law and Faith" are different from "Faith" as a theological virtue. "Law and Faith" 's personification is sitting on something solid: she is the foundation of society, and of the "harmony of peoples" as the explanation says. And the two hands above her are not Law and Faith joined, but rather, the explanation says, a symbol of agreement and concord. I will be looking for other sources.

Only one other thing, in these 21 images, is not in de Gebelin, de Mellet, or Etteilla, that I can find. That is the idea of "protection" attached to Jupiter (keyword "Protecteur") and Juno ("Protectrice). Our author takes the titles Jupiter and Juno from de Mellet, and a positive appraisal of them from de Gebelin (borrowing mostly from his account of the Emperor and Empress, but a little from what he called the High Priest and High Priestess). But "protection" is not there, just "end of dissension". I assume it comes from a tradition about the Marseille cards. Etteilla omitted anything resembling either of these cards.

This will be continued.

Jupiter / Juno should have come from from their use in the Besancon Tarot. The Petit Oracle is partly skipped and runs from 22 to 1, if we compare it to Tarot (with changes). We have:

22 Consultant (with picture of "Chaos")/ Consultante
= 0 Fool (if you compare it consequently)

21 Fool / Magician
= 1 Magician

20 Juno
= 2 Popess = Juno in Besancon

19 La Loi et la Foi etc.
= 3 Empress (but in PODD meaning possibly also 4 Emperor)

18 Jupiter
= 5 Pope = Jupiter in Besancon

17 Marriage Union
= 6 Love

16 Partly Hermit (9) as Traitor (12), partly Love (6)as Hercules between Virtuseand Vice
= ????? ... France had killed their King and Queen

15 Partly Chariot, partly "Bellona"
= 7 Chariot

14 Fidelity, and "the Sage"
= partly 8 Justice (?), partly 9 Hermit

13 - 8 CHAOS with virtues

7 Devil
15 Devil

6 partly Tower (Adam and Eve)
16 Tower

5 creation of Man and woman
????????

4 Star
17 Star

3 Moon
18 Moon

2 Sun
19 Sun

20 ??????

1 World
21 World

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

Although there are variations, the relation between Juno and Jupeter to Pope and Popess is rather clear.

So have here in PODD 22 in 1-22 and 20 for the rest in 23-24. As in the opera "Stein der Weisen", 20 scenes in the first act and 22 in in the second ... if my description is the original.

forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=893&start=16

20 and 22 appears also in Old Egypt. And in the binary tree, we recently talked about.



viewtopic.php?f=12&t=880

Nice, Huck. For Jupiter and Juno in the PODD, I was going by the wording of the booklet, which I think mostly corresponds to de Gebelin's Emperor and Empress. But since the PODD has none of the four (including Pope and Popess), there is some wording from de Gebelin's discussion of the other two as well.

I was in general not focusing on the cards visually and their numbers, but on the booklet, which mostly derives from de Geblin, de Mellet, and Etteilla. It would be nice to have a booklet for the Poilly, but we don't. But for most of the first 21, even the images correspond to either the Besancon or Etteilla's (who also used the Bescancon images rather than the Marseille). I haven't explored how Etteilla images relate to the Poilly's.

To my earlier post I will add a bit about how the PODD Fortune image relates to the Poilly.