Wow! I leave for a couple days, and this thread really blows up. I'll try to respond to everyone in an orderly fashion. =)
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Thanks for taking a look at the title page, Ross!
If only we could examine the page with a spectroscope; it'd be a hell of a lot easier to see those obscured letters... I'll take your flipped image and see what I can do with Photoshop. I might be able to make whatever's there more visible if I play around with the levels of the image histogram.
I also completely forgot to take a look at the binding of the book! I can just make out the letters "Tablette Categori" which come from the new title.
I'm not entirely sure why the title was changed. Could be the original author simply changed his mind. Or perhaps someone was creating the title page on his behalf and screwed up. Or maybe the censors blocked the usage of the original title. I don't know... The formal layout of the title page and the page numbers throughout suggest that someone was preparing this for publication. However, I find it strange that there is no mention of a publisher. Usually the phrase "Chez so-and-so" appears at the bottom of the title page. Maybe the author was shopping around for a printer/publisher and figured this information would be added later when they did the typesetting. Or maybe the author was a printer themselves (like Etteilla's student Hugand), and felt no need to include that information at this time. I'd just be guessing.
Thanks also for doing a search on the original title! Interesting that you found other instances of "Cartonomantie." We now have three different spellings of Etteilla's word: Cartonomantie, Cartonomancie, and the later Cartomancie. Etteilla was pretty upset about his neologism eventually getting corrupted into "Cartomancie." He repeatedly emphasized that numbers played a part in his system and that the "no" in the word "Cartonomancie" reflected that. It's interesting that this document appears to follow his original intentions.
Although there's no sign of the original title of this document appearing online, the revised title does make an appearance in an 1805 auction list (see the link in my first post). The document is listed in the second Appendix, which may have been added to the book later than 1805. Indeed, a note in the first Appendix mentions a sale taking place on Monday, 14 April 1806. The list contains books from the large library of Mr. André-Augustin Du Bois Schoondorp, de Gand, and is augmented by select books from the library of Mr. Joseph de Ban, and from that of Mr. P. de Gruyter. It could be that one of these three people had dealings with the original author. I'll look into it...
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Hey Mike!
I compared the numbering and placement of the Fool in various Etteilla documents.
1783 - In the Third Cahier, it's numbered 0 and placed between cards 21 and 22.
1783 - On page 39 of the First Cahier, Etteilla mentions something along the lines of the Fool being able to be placed in several locations (including at the end of the deck) but that its dominant position is the 22nd place (i.e. between cards 21 and 22).
1784/5 - In the Supplement to the Third Cahier, the Fool is numbered both 0 and 78 and is listed at the end of the deck. (See the tables showing the attributions.) Etteilla appears to be explaining the additional numbers (Elements, Days of Creation, and Signs of Death) and the astrological associations of the cards here. His placement of the Fool may have been done simply to remove the card from the range 18-67, so that he could describe these cards as having only one number and two meanings with regard to divination. In other words, he didn't specifically mean to place the Fool at the end of the deck. He temporarily moved it so he could better comment on the different groups of cards.
1785 - There is no explicit mention of the placement of the Fool in the Fourth Cahier, however a couple of diagrams show the numbering. In one diagram, the Fool is numbered 0. In the other, it's numbered 78.
1785 - In the Second Cahier, he numbers it 0 and places it after card 21.
1787 - In
Science. Leçons théoriques et pratiques du livre de Thot, he numbers it 0 and places it between cards 21 and 22. On the "Temple of Fire in Memphis" diagram, he places it near cards 18-21, probably to suggest that it comes after card 21.
1788/89 - On the BnF's uncut sheet of Etteilla's original deck, the Fool card is numbered 0. Along with card 17 (Death) it appears on the last sheet of cards. Etteilla pays special attention to these two cards in his other work and seems to emphasize their separation from the other 76 cards.
1790 - In
Cours théorique et pratique du livre de Thot, Etteilla associates the card with both numbers 0 and 78, but doesn't explicitly place it anywhere in the deck. In describing the Livre de Thot, he talks about 77 cards plus the Fool for a total of 78 cards. Not sure if we can interpret this as meaning that it should be placed at the end.
1791 - In the
Dictionnaire synonimique du livre de Thot, La Salette continues to number the card as 0 and places it between cards 21 and 22.
1793 - Hisler publishes a German translation of
Cours théorique et pratique du livre de Thot and creates a German Etteilla deck. The Fool from the German Etteilla in Kaplan II has no numbers on it at all. A later deck (currently held in the British Museum) printed from the same plates adds the number 78.
![](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JXjXJwXv0zA/XlzZGArx-SI/AAAAAAAAAJ0/o6vHeeZZnE4YLC-p4jk4-MBMzdCjcoe-gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/1793-78.jpg)
1804 - In the first volume of
Science des Signes, d'Odoucet numbers it 0 and places it between cards 21 and 22.
1806 - In the second volume of
Science des Signes, d'Odoucet neglects to number the woodblock picture of the Fool, but he does mention the number 0 in the text. He places it at the end of the deck. However, later he groups it with cards 18-21 and mentions it preceding the remaining 56 cards. Go figure...
1807 - In the third volume of
Science des Signes, d'Odoucet talks about how the 77 cards + 0 makes 78. Not sure if this qualifies as placing the Fool at the end of the deck.
1826 - Both the book by Aldegonde Perenna and the deck by Pierre Mongie l'aîné number the Fool as 78 and place it at the end of the deck.
![](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RoAfkh3izds/XlzbZktvojI/AAAAAAAAAKQ/JRCDcICX9l0BubPvzEhToTH36Lj5fp9uwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/LartFool.jpg)
1838 - Julia Orsini (Simon Blocquel) puts the Fool at the end of the deck and numbers it 78. All subsequent variants of Grand Etteilla II seem to follow his lead.
1843 - Johannès Trismégiste (Lorambert) puts the Fool at the end of the deck and numbers it 78. All subsequent variants of the Jeu de la Princesse Tarot follow this convention.
1856 - Mlle. Lemarchant/d puts the Fool at the end of the deck and numbers it 78. All subsequent variants of Grand Etteilla III follow this convention.
1857 - Johann Scheible's reprint of the German version of
Cours théorique et pratique du livre de Thot numbers the Fool as 78 and places it at the end of the deck.
1874/5 - Antonio Magus puts the Fool at the end of the deck and numbers it 78. Esmaël follows this convention the following year.
As far as I can tell, Etteilla and his students are pretty consistent with putting the Fool between cards 21 and 22. They occasionally imply that it can be placed at the end of the deck, but don't state this explicitly. Hisler's unnumbered German Fool and d'Odoucet's conflicting statements in his book
Science des Signes may have resulted in the permanent relocation of the Fool to the end of the deck in every version of Etteilla thereafter. There are three "branches" of decks in the
Grand Etteilla I family:
- German Etteilla (1793-present), which use the number 78 on the Fool and place it at the end of the deck
- d'Odoucet Etteilla (1804-present), which use both 0 and 78 on the Fool and place it at the end of the deck
- Pierre Mongie l'aîné Etteilla (1826, followed by the Grand Etteilla II family of decks), which use 78 on the Fool and place it at the end of the deck
Note: When I refer to d'Odoucet's Etteilla decks, I'm referring to both his rare 1804 deck created using woodblocks and the later set of lithographs that were based on them. The lithographs appear to have been created after d'Odoucet's death and passed through a number of different owners: Alphonse Arnoult, Lequart et Mignot & H. Pussey, and lastly, Grimaud. (And yes, Mike, I did find some evidence that supports your theory that Alphonse Arnoult may have been involved with the production of an Etteilla deck. I will email it to you as soon as I've scanned it.)
Moving on to the handwriting...
For the most part, there appears to be only one person writing longhand. I did notice a couple instances (especially in the description of Card 1) where it looked like the text had been smeared/erased and then written over with darker ink, but I'm not sure if this was done by a different person or not. They may have just used a different pen and/or bottle of ink to fix mistakes at some later date. The original ink has a brownish color to it. In my own art career, I've experimented with different inks and compared their archival quality. Some types of "black" ink will turn brown over time. Others turn blue. I've seen a few that retain the black color. It all depends on the mixture. The amount of water added to the ground particles can also vary the color. I suppose it's possible that our mystery writer may have mixed their own ink. They may not have been consistent in their process...
The "annotations" appear at the end of each card description. They look like they were written by the same person. Our mystery author may have been transcribing notes that were written by Etteilla while he was still alive.
Thanks for the additional handwriting samples, Mike! My online search only turned up a horoscope written by Etteilla. See here:
http://www.massimomarra.net/dettaglio.p ... 018&prev=1 The way Etteilla curls the top of his letter "d" looks similar to the way our mystery author writes.
I also have a sample of Hugand's writing. He published a mathematics book under his real name in either 1797 or 1798 (An VI, according to the French Republican calendar). His signature appears on one of the pages. See here for B&W:
https://books.google.com/books?id=VwYHA ... &q&f=false, or here for color:
https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de// ... 82073.html. It doesn't look like the handwriting of our mystery author, however signatures can sometimes differ from one's regular writing. The signature could also have been written by a librarian.
Our mystery author's handwriting does have a passing resemblance to Etteilla's. However, I'm not sure if the similarities are due to them being written by the same individual or due to them belonging to a particular "style" of handwriting that was popular in that time period. I'm no handwriting expert. =) The other problem with this theory is that Etteilla is spelled "ETTEILA" (with one "L") on the title page of our mystery document. Etteilla and his students (La Salette, d'Odoucet, and Hugand) all seem to spell his name properly in their publications. I suppose this misspelling could be the fault of a third party constructing the title page on behalf of the original author.
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Nice find, Steve!
I hadn't thought to look at the dates of the asteroid discoveries. Per your suggestion, I did some more digging and here's what I found in regards to the astronomical symbols/glyphs:
According to the now-discredited Titius–Bode law, there was a regular pattern in the size of the orbits of known planets. Astronomers noted that the otherwise perfect pattern was disrupted by a large gap between Mars and Jupiter and sought to explain this discrepancy. In 1800, Baron Franz Xaver von Zach, the editor of the scientific journal
Monatliche correspondenz zur beförderung der erd- und himmels-kunde, organized a group of 24 astronomers to search for a hypothetical planet between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
A member of this group, Catholic priest Giuseppe Piazzi, discovered
CERES in 1801. He named his discovery "Cerere Ferdinandea" after the Roman goddess of agriculture and King Ferdinand of Sicily. Later, astronomers dropped the "Ferdinand" from the name. I'm not sure who came up with the astronomical symbol, but Johann Elert Bode records the sickle symbol as early as 1804. See here:
https://books.google.com/books?id=6GElA ... &q&f=false
PALLAS was discovered in 1802 by another member, Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers. Olbers named the "planet" after Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. Von Zach introduced the spear symbol in his publication in 1802. See here:
https://books.google.com/books?id=nR04A ... &q&f=false Olbers approved of the Pallas symbol, but complained to von Zach that the symbol for Ceres was too similar to the symbol for Venus. Therefore, von Zach may also have been the creator of the Ceres symbol.
JUNO was discovered in 1804 by German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding. He named it after Juno, the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Hera. According to von Zach, Harding also designed the symbol of a star mounted on a scepter. See here:
https://books.google.com/books?id=vnIEA ... &q&f=false
VESTA was discovered in 1807 by Olbers. As he had previously discovered and named Pallas, Olbers gave the honor of naming his newest discovery to German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, whose calculations had been instrumental in finding the new planets. Gauss named it Vesta after the Roman goddess of home and hearth, and designed the symbol, an altar with fire. Van Zach reports this in 1807. See here:
https://books.google.com/books?id=_Rw4A ... &q&f=false
During the Napoleonic Wars, French troops burned the town of Lilienthal, which was home to the greatest observatory in the world. Although it survived the fire, the observatory was looted and important records were destroyed. After the death of the builder Johann Hieronymus Schröter in 1816, the observatory fell into disrepair. This brought astronomical discoveries to a halt. Thus, Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta were classified as planets between 1807 and 1845. Starting in 1845, additional celestial bodies were found. The discovery of Neptune in 1846 resulted in the discrediting of the Titius–Bode law and the reclassification of the smaller bodies as asteroids. The astrological symbols were changed to encircled numbers, however some astronomers continued to use the original glyphs.
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Assuming that the astrological symbols weren't added by someone else, I would tentatively date this document to 1807 or later. Whoever our mystery author is, they seem to have been excited by the new scientific discoveries and taken it upon themselves to update and extend Etteilla's astrological attributions.
Altogether, the book has some features that suggest an intimate connection with Etteilla's tradition and others that suggest that the author knows very little about Etteilla. This could indicate two different contributors. I think comparing the content of the document with other Etteilla publications is our next step. I'll keep working on the transcription. =)