Tarot History Forum

Over the years many people have proposed a connection between the Hebrew letters and the 22 major arcana.

But the association was always rejected as a historical absurdity as they were presented as evidence of a form of syncretic magical Kabbalah that did not exist prior to the 1800s. It was precisely this argument that drove Dummett a bit mad with rage for the Tarot occultists.

What's new is that I am asking: Since we can actually see Hebrew letters in the cards, who in the 16th century would actually have a motivation to hide Hebrew in a deck of playing cards?

When we place that question in its proper historical context the answer is fairly obvious.

The absurdity of Levi's magical imaginary Cabalists blinded the entire field to the very real Jews of Italy and France.

The first author is indeed Moreau de Dammartin - but nuance - he does not propose that the cards are directly inspired by the shapes of Hebrew letters, but rather that the shapes of most if not all alphabets and writing systems, as well as Tarot cards, are ultimately derived from the shapes of constellations.

His work, which is decidedly not occultist, went on to influence Lévi's, which is. Obviously, a lot more could be said about this work.

Here is the plate with the table of correspondences for the letter a, aleph, and the constellation in question.

mikeh wrote: 20 Sep 2025, 23:40
The first author may well be Dammartin, 1838, translated by SteveM at viewtopic.php?p=21121#p21121.

The whole thread - rather short - is well worth reading. Ronan gives links to a description of the published book (1839) with several images. https://hellfireclubbooks.com/product/h ... rtin-1839/. There is one of the Bateleur, but as the constellation Perseus, I think. I remember that Levi did one of the Bateleur as Aleph. I have the image but not where it occurs in Levi's work. (well, I find the site where I got it, at "green-door.narod," but the search engine warns me not to open it; I see elsewhere that the author has died).
levi1.jpg

Ronan also links to an English translation of Dammartin, https://hellfireclubbooks.com/product/h ... rtin-1839/.

In around 2009 the online journal Tarot Studies discussed this issue. Mark Filipas re-proposed visual correspondences for all 22. Jean-Michel David offered a critique. Here at THF there is a link, but it no longer works. The idea was also discussed on Reddit - it says 9 years ago.

Tav wrote:

Over the years many people have proposed a connection between the Hebrew letters and the 22 major arcana.

But the association was always rejected as a historical absurdity as they were presented as evidence of a form of syncretic magical Kabbalah that did not exist prior to the 1800s. It was precisely this argument that drove Dummett a bit mad with rage for the Tarot occultists.

If by such a form, you mean one that included tarot cards, that is true. But not otherwise, and not as a historical absurdity, but simply as one that he could not find in Renaissance occultism and that he did not expect to have been present. Except for the inclusion of tarot cards, Dummett considered that Levi's occultism was much the same as that of the Renaissance. On pp. 115-116 of Game of Tarot, Dummett asserts that Levi used the same sources as the Renaissance syncretists did, with one exception (the Corpus Hermeticum, I think he means):

With one exception, therefore, Levi's sources, and those of his neo-occultist followers, were the same as those of the Renaissance magicians.

Dummett explicitly mentions the Renaissance's inclusion of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet: as paths between sefiroth, he says. Whether all of the syncretists would count as "magicians" I am not sure, and I can't find the doctrine of the 22 letters as paths between sefiroth until the 17th century, in Kircher's translation of Codovero; but these are minor points.

What Dummett objected to was that Levi continued to use such sources as a basis for magic in the age of science and included the tarot as a "source of magical doctrine and symbolism", in fact a key part of it (p. 117), the first to do so. Some will disagree with him on the incompatibility of magic and science, with perhaps a different understanding of "magic," but that is not the same as denying that this form of occultism didn't exist until the 1800s. Whether Levi was the first I don't know; Etteilla speaks of cabala often; I can't see that he uses it (despite his claims), but perhaps others did.

It is true that Dummett didn't look at Jews in Italy and France as possible contributors to the designs of the tarot cards. It is not because he thought that Renaissance occultists didn't value Jewish wisdom and symbolism, but because he couldn't find any evidence that they included tarot cards in their occultism. It is true that he didn't find any distinctively Jewish contributions to the design of tarot cards, including the Tarot of Marseille. He does not seem to have paid attention to any distinctive features of the Noblet. He knew of a presumably Jewish card maker, "Agnola.Hebreo" (pp. 316, 393) of around 1500, so named on the back of the one surviving card, the Devil; that Devil didn't look significantly different to him from that on the Rothschild Sheet, of Bologna. If you see anything particularly Jewish about either of them, let us know.

Tav wrote,

What's new is that I am asking: Since we can actually see Hebrew letters in the cards, who in the 16th century would actually have a motivation to hide Hebrew in a deck of playing cards?

When we place that question in its proper historical context the answer is fairly obvious.

The absurdity of Levi's magical imaginary Cabalists blinded the entire field to the very real Jews of Italy and France.

On THF, some of us have been exploring for some time the possible contribution of Jews in Italy to the tarot early on, if mostly with Christian intermediaries. What is obvious is that Renaissance syncretists valued the Jewish tradition, and that tarot card production was overwhelmingly for Christian consumption. Huck has argued that the number 22 of the special cards is precisely because of its significance for Pico, studying Jewish thought in the years around 1487. I don't agree, but I do think it is plausible that this number became dominant because there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, as I have already explained, although a Christian recognition of their significance is sufficient. You can find the argument on p. 3 of Vitali's opening essay in Bologna and the Tarot; it is a position he has expressed for decades. As far as an awareness of Jews in Italy, the thread "Jewish-Christian interactions in Italy before 1500," mostly posted to in 2014 and early 2015, goes on for twenty-one pages. There I have argued for a possible relationship between Jewish letter-permutation magic/meditation (part of the occultist syncretism but not mentioned by Dummett) and cartomancy with the 22 special cards of the tarot. Now we are discussing 17th-century Paris and a possible context beyond that of Jewish-Christian syncretism. That is different, yes. Let us continue.

SteveM wrote: 19 Sep 2025, 10:58
GUARDIANSHIP ORDER 18TH OF OCTOBER 1687
In the year above (1687), on the eighteenth day of the month of October, in the afternoon, before us, the undersigned royal notary, personally appeared the honest woman Jeanne Fournier,

widow of the late Master Noël Grenouville, in his lifetime master card-maker, and now wife of Louis Grenier, master card-maker, residing in this city (Paris), who declared and explained that Jean Grenouville, her son, about sixteen to seventeen years of age, born of her and the said late Grenouville, has fallen into bad conduct, giving himself over to the debauchery of wine and women, to the great regret and displeasure of the said Fournier, his mother, fearing that he may be completely lost if she does not act quickly.

Therefore, the said Fournier petitioned the court to appoint persons to consider the most suitable means to remedy this evil and to forbid the said Jean Grenouville from further misbehavior. Which she has done, and the court has permitted that the said Grenouville be provided with a guardian to advise and counsel him in the matters that may arise. And the said Fournier has requested that as guardian of the said Jean Grenouville, her son, be named the honest man Nicolas de Saint Jean, master pastry cook, brother-in-law of the said Fournier, and his maternal uncle Jean Noblet and first cousin once removed Phillipe Noblet, master card-makers and paper-makers, also residing in this city, his relatives and friends. Who, being present, accepted the said guardianship and promised to take it upon themselves and to carry it out faithfully, without salary or compensation, as they have declared, in good faith and sworn oath, that they have done so.

The Wayward Heir

An Historical Fiction based upon a *wild idea* by Sherryl Smith

In his uncle's workshop where he was put to labor, the young Jean Grenouville, discovered the old Noblet blocks, stacked in a corner like relics. Their surfaces were already well-worn, their carvings dulled, yet when inked and pressed, the figures still danced onto paper. Among them, Jean’s eye was caught by Le Bateleur, the Juggler. With his table of tricks and his raised wand, he seemed to grin at Jean as if daring him to mischief.

One evening, left alone with the press, Jean traced the Juggler’s wand with a finger. The guardians spoke of property and protection, of obedience and duty, but the Juggler spoke of life’s tricks, of freedom hidden in plain sight.

Jean reached for a fine gouge, its edge honed for pearwood, its handle worn smooth by years of use. With a couple of mischievous cuts, he made the faintest of alterations: a curve, a rounding, a subtle shift. Nothing more than a whisper in the grain, but enough.

When the next impression was pulled, the Juggler’s wand bore a new suggestion: bold, irreverent, a sly emblem of vitality. Jean Noblet, who had carved the tarot woodblocks that bore his name, looked at his nephew and shook his head. The boy had a trickster’s spark, he thought, just like the Juggler of the Tarot.

Nearly a century passed, but in 1762 the Noblet name still clung to Paris cardmaking, though the old master was long in his grave. In that year, Marie Anne Mion, widow of Pierre Charles Linard, master cardmaker and ball-maker, appeared before the notary. Her children were minors, and once again the family web tightened: her brother Pierre Georges Mion as substitute guardian; Antoine Mion, bourgeois of Paris, kin “à la mode de Bretagne”; cousin Charles Noblet, journeyman cardmaker; and allied masters of paper and cards: Dionis, Vausselin, Gobert, Coucy. They swore to protect the Linard heirs, to govern their persons and goods. In the workshop, presses continued to turn. The Noblets were no longer masters in their own right, but they still lent their hands and their names to the trade.

On 17 January 1771, yet another widow stood in the notary’s chamber: Madeleine Antoinette Damien, wife of Charles Noblet, journeyman cardmaker. Their children, Charles Louis (eleven) and Marie-Louise (six), were now orphans of a father.

Guardians assembled as before: Jacques Noblet, paternal uncle & journeyman card-maker, sworn substitute tutor; Jean Antoine Flipart, organist and maternal uncle; friends of the trade, Collet and Dubut; and Jean-Baptiste Lemoine, cousin and master cardmaker.

The brothers Jacques and Charles Noblet were journeymen, not masters; that authority and title had passed to another, perhaps their nephew Lemoine. Perhaps in some corner of his workshop, the old Noblet tarot blocks still survived, their lines softened with age, their wood fragile with cracks, no longer daily tools but relics of the Noblets' past glory.

All that remains of the Noblet family’s artisan lineage, a dynasty of paper, press, and ink that spanned two centuries and must have filled Paris with playing cards, is a single tarot deck, once housed in the King’s Library and now preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

One wayward heir that attests, if to anything, to the fragility of the card-maker’s ephemeral art, a legacy that slips quickly into obscurity.

Its most notorious detail lies on the first trump, Le Bateleur, the Juggler, whose wand bears an unmistakable resemblance to a phallus. Whether the form was born of intention, mischief, accident, or the slow erosion of time, no one can say, yet it has inspired more speculation than all the oaths sworn before a notary.

Hello.

I wasn't familiar with the text Dammartin wrote. I find it surprising. I have the feeling that current linguists don't accept this theory, but I'd like to know if we're certain it's a mistaken theory. As I understand it, Dammartin says that Hebrew letters come from Chinese letters and that both types of letters come from observing celestial constellations. Come hebrew letters from chinese letters? Perhaps I understood wrong when I read Dammartin text. I wasn't aware of this nice theory. Is it false? We know that the Phoenicians had an alphabet whose letters came from the shape of an animal or an object. But I didn't know that these shapes were observed in the distribution of stars in the sky. This subject is interesting and important.

Furthermore, Dammartin said that the designs on the 22 tarot cards also come from observing the stars distributed in the sky. That is, the Hebrew letters come from the sky, and the tarot cards come from the sky. This seems to relate to StavApple's theory, which observes letters in the shape of the tarot designs in Noblet's deck. However, it seems that Demmartin doesn't specifically refer to Noblet's design. Furthermore, Demmartin doesn't exactly observe the shape of Hebrew letters in the body positions of the characters drawn on Tarot cards. It's interesting to know that Levi and other tarot readers were inspired by Demmartin. All of this is surprising and important. You have wrote about that in recent publications.

However, to be precise, I wonder when someone first saw letters in Noblet's design, based on the visual similarity that StavApple studies. That is, I wonder who initiated the theory that StavApple expounds. Dammartin is an interesting precursor, but he didn't exactly propose the theory that StavApple explained. This question isn't very important, but I'm curious to see a little bit how StavApple's theory has evolved since it emerged. Probably it is not very old theory.

Mikeh mentions some recent authors and pages but I don't know if they addressed the topic of Demmartin or the topic of Noblet. This text by Mikeh is wrote here viewtopic.php?p=27816#p27816
This text by Mikeh say:
"In around 2009 the online journal Tarot Studies discussed this issue. Mark Filipas re-proposed visual correspondences for all 22. Jean-Michel David offered a critique. Here at THF there is a link, but it no longer works. The idea was also discussed on Reddit - it says 9 years ago".

Probably StavApple knows the origin of his specific theory about Noblet deck. I will ask abou it below.

............

It seems like it took us many years to see these visual similarities with letters. However, anyone who knows there are hidden letters can clearly see them. This means that crypto-Jewish artworks were very ingenious. We don't know if these secret visual correspondences were devised by Jews or Christians, but the hidden content is Hebrew, and I think it was surely a secret creation by Jews. Someone asked about the Noblet Tarot audience. I suppose this deck was intended for all audiences. However, only some Jews knew about and contemplated the secret Hebrew correspondences. It is, some jews told this secret (hebrew letters in Noblet tarot) to other trusted jews. Christians used this deck to play, but they didn't know there were hidden Hebrew letters. This is my conception about that, as I understand crypto-Jewish art.

The Jews played with these cards just as Christians did. The difference is that the Jews had a profound knowledge and secretly enjoyed this Hebrew concept hidden in the designs of the playing cards manufactured by Noblet. This seems pretty obvious to me. We can add more details to the theory, but for now I'm not familiar with the subject and have no evidence. That is, I don't know if these cards were also used educationally or for divination. And I don't know if a hidden Hebrew tradition existed in the Tarot before Noblet published that deck.


............


StavApple:

- Surely you know which authors preceded you in the visual similarities you propose between letters and Noblet's cards?

- Perhaps you can share the correspondences between Hebrew letters and cards here. I imagine your table of correspondences is different from Dammartin's, which inspired the popular esoteric authors of France and England.

Thanks.

Magic Moon wrote: 22 Sep 2025, 15:27

It seems like it took us many years to see these visual similarities with letters. However, anyone who knows there are hidden letters can clearly see them.

It seems like it took us many years to see these visual similarities with letters. However, anyone who supposes or imagines there are hidden letters can clearly see them, each according to their own conditioning, ideas, suggestibility and suppositions.

It is a well attested psychological phenomenon called Pareidolia, with an admixture of wishful thinking and confirmation bias.

Steve wrote

It is a well attested psychological phenomenon called Pareidolia, with an admixture of wishful thinking and confirmation bias.

That does not invalidate the perception, or Magic Moon's point. We always bring additional context when perceiving a two-dimensional picture with no additional context. Looking at the Noblet, we see a level table, not one tipping downward, stable and not about to fall over from having only three legs, a regular rectangle with its parallel sides equal, etc. Do you know the duck-rabbit illusion, where the drawing could be of either? Likewise, someone who is familiar only with circumcised penises will see the finger as resembling those; but an erect uncircumcised penis looks similar, since the glans becomes exposed. We cannot even say that the artist did not intend such ambiguity of reference, because we don't know the context in which he was operating.

On the other hand, the duck-rabbit is definitely not an elephant. There are limits. Whether seeing an aleph in the Bateleur's pose exceeds those limits is a valid question. That there are 22 such cards immediately suggests, for someone of Jewish heritage or a syncretic esotericist, the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In that case, which letter would fit that particular card? If not aleph, what other? There is also the contextual piece of the Roman number 1, which in Hebrew would be written as an aleph. Of course these correspondences will not work above 10, strictly speaking, because 11 in Hebrew is written with two letters, neither of them the eleventh. But there is no reason to be so strict: if the first ten correspond to the successive numbers in Hebrew, we can simply continue with single letters, with the Fool at the end. Also, the context of use is relevant. One could not teach the forms of the letters by means of the cards alone - the resemblances are not close enough. But it may only be that the picture only serves as a mnemonic device in a fortune-telling game, enough like the letter that the one brings to mind the other and not some other letter. Whether such argument will work for all or most the cards remains to be seen.

Magic Moon wrote,

However, to be precise, I wonder when someone first saw letters in Noblet's design, based on the visual similarity that StavApple studies. That is, I wonder who initiated the theory that StavApple expounds. Dammartin is an interesting precursor, but he didn't exactly propose the theory that StavApple explained. This question isn't very important, but I'm curious to see a little bit how StavApple's theory has evolved since it emerged. Probably it is not very old theory.

For the letters, I don't think it's important whether someone saw them in Noblet's designs in particular, because the letters have to do with the whole of the cards, which are much the same whether it is Noblet, which is an early Tarot of Marseille, or the Tarot of Marseille of Dammartin's time. As far as what particular decks Mark Filipas would have had in mind, I feel fairly sure that the Noblet would have been one of them, as his colleague Jean-Michel David was conducting an online seminar on the Noblet at that time (I took it, in fact), which he later turned into a very interesting book.

- Reflection about the same ideas:

As Demmartin says, we find truth in the clash of ideas. I agree with what both of you have said recently. This duck or rabbit thing is called perception in psychology and is studied from a Gestalt theory, according to which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I don't think it's necessary to explain it in more detail. Not even psychologists usually explain it with all the depth that the matter deserves, in my opinion. The explanations you have given are accurate. The same image can be perceived in one way or more ways, but it's not easy to perceive it in any way. We're talking about perceptual ambiguity; that is, there are two ways of interpreting an image. There's a double meaning. There could be more ways to perceive an image, but there's a limit, as Mikeh explains. We don't know if this ambiguity was intentionally created by the artist or if it's a product of chance and imagination. Therefore, it's useful to know all the correspondences. Possibly, some are clearer than others.

***********

- StavApple theory is diferent than old correspondences:

Possibly, some scholars equated Hebrew letters and Tarot cards by studying Marseilles decks, which surely included Noblet's design. However, I would be interested to know what this is the earliest indication that these scholars were observing the visual similarity observed by Stav-Apple. It's one thing to say that the Bagatto corresponds to Aleph because the Bagatto is the first card and signifies childhood, but it's another thing to argue this correspondence by saying that the arms of the Bagatto are positioned in such a way that there is a visual similarity with that Hebrew letter. The difference is important to me. By comparing the different tables of correspondences proposed by different scholars, we will possibly have some help in knowing which authors were observing a visual similarity with the letters. That is a help, but the clearest indication is that some authors explain the visual similarity. Stav-Apple has mentioned the visual similarity. A Spanish book published a few years ago also mentioned this same type of visual similarity. Now I forget the name of the book but probably he was not the creator of the theory. Mikeh, I hope that you understand the importance of that nuance. Is the correspondence table the same for all authors, or can all tables be argued through visual similarity? Answer: I hope to study this in detail soon, but for now, I think there are different tables, and StavApple's table is possibly different from those of the famous French and English authors. Let's wait for StavApple's table so we can continue to delve deeper into the analysis of his theory.

********

- Mikeh wrote:
"But it may only be that the picture only serves as a mnemonic device in a fortune-telling game".

Mikeh, I find this interesting. Could you explain it or give an example of a mnemonic for using the 22 tarot cards in cartomancy? Perhaps you mean that the Hebrew letters helped to remember an esoteric meaning for each card.

This makes me think that the hidden letters in the design shape could be a mnemonic device to remember the order of the cards during the tarot game between players. Again, we need to know the order of the cards according to the table of visual correspondences proposed by StavApple. Then, we'll see if that order matches the hierarchy of cards for the board game called Tarot.

*******

- About more marseillaise old decks and resemblance to hebrew letters:

Mikeh, you've suggested that non-Noblet Marseillaise decks might have the same visual correspondences to Hebrew letters. I don't have enough knowledge to confirm this, but you're probably right. Noblet's deck is the only one with a wand that looks like a penis, but the position of the Bagatto's arms may be similar in various Marseillaise designs. That is, the visual resemblance of the Bagatto to the Hebrew letter aleph is not exclusive to Noblet's design. Perhaps the oldest Marseillaise deck we know of (printed by Vachier in 1639) already had a visual resemblance to the 22 Hebrew letters. StavApple, is this true? I don't know, but it would be interesting to know the answer. It would be enough to observe whether Vachier's images already resembled the letters as in Noblet, based on the similarities StavApple observes for the 22 cards.

I have a feeling this debate is blocked until we have more information about StavApple's proposal.

Thanks!

Here is a guide to the hidden Hebrew letters of the Noblet Tarot:

You can see a consistent methodology of concealment:

Every letter is in its proper numerical placement. Tav, the 22nd letter, is on the card with no number. This is a reference to the Sefer Yetzirah which taught that the Hebrew Alphabet is not a sequence but a circle. Tav is both the beginning and the end.

Mem and Tzadik, the 13th and 18th letters, are in both the 13th and 18th cards. In the 13th card they are in their proper forms מצ and in the 18th card they are in their end of word forms ץם .

You can read more about the Mem and Tzadik here: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/476411?lang=bi

Often just half the letters are shown: Magician. Devil

Sometimes the figure is assuming the posture of the letter: Temperance, Star, Popess.

Often a prop or key component is in the shape of the letter: Emperor, Pope, Chariot.

All of the letters have meaning when placed in the context of the card: Aleph for Abraham, the first patriarch who underwent circumcision.

The falling Ayin of the House of God is a reference to the broken sequence of Hebrew letters in Lamentations.

Nun of Temperance is the first letter of Netilat Yedayim - the ritual of hand washing.

In many cards there are also additional letters that have narrative significance.

Four points with interesting historical trails:

1) Given that the Magician's arms are like those of Aleph in every Tarot de Marseille. And the man falling in the House of God in every Tarot de Marseille is in the shape of Ayin, and the Hanged Man's legs is in the shape of Lamed in every Tarot de Marseille ... we can conclude that the original Tarot de Marseille pattern was meant to be a disguise for the 22 Hebrew letters of Judaism.

2) In most other versions of the Tarot de Marseille the Daled of the Emperor and the Tzadik of Death are printed backwards. I suspect this was an intentional distortion of the Hebrew pattern to make the cards less obviously Jewish. Maybe this design was created for the general game playing public after the perhaps surprising popularity of the template?

3) Google the Judgement card of the Golden Dawn Tarot. The Judgement card, among other things, contains the Jewish holiday of Shavuot which begins with a Shin like that on the GD Tarot. What on earth informed the placement of that Shin on the GD Judgement card? That's a fascinating mystery.

4) RWS Tarot: For some reason a portion of the secret Judaica of the Noblet, that went lost for centuries, is suddenly openly displayed in the RWS Tarot 1909. Waite's Kabbalah, apparently, had an unacknowledged source.

I know some may want to explain this all away as 200 or so strange coincidences, but the picture of Judaism is far too complete, precise and accurate to be wishful thinking.

Thanks Stav for your table and elaborating your theory.

The letter parallels you and others before you have pointed out (Aleph, Ayin, Lamed) are definitely striking, but I’m not convinced they add up to a deliberate system of hiding all 22 Hebrew letters in the Marseille Tarot.

The visual parallels you’ve drawn between Hebrew letterforms and the Noblet Tarot are certainly evocative. However, I fail to see in them a “consistent methodology of concealment.” While the idea of encoding Hebrew letters into the Tarot de Noblet is compelling, the execution across the 22 cards appears more adaptive than systematic. Some letters are represented in full form, others in final form, and still others in partial or reversed shapes. In some cases, the letter is formed by body posture, in others by props, and in others still by negative space or implied gesture. The interpretive strategy seems to shift from card to card, which makes it difficult to affirm a unified design logic.

This flexibility feels less like a consistent system of concealment and more like an interpretive lens through which to find letter-like shapes in a variety of forms. This flexibility is further widened by recourse to angelic scripts, and also (if my recollection of previous discussions is correct) paleo-Hebrew & even Proto-Sinaitic glyphs, and other esoteric alphabets. While these additions may enrich the symbolic landscape, they also complicate the claim of a unified concealment strategy. If multiple scripts are being referenced, the theory begins to resemble a symbolic collage rather than a coherent esoteric program. If the goal were mnemonic clarity or pedagogical transmission, one would expect a more uniform approach to letterform representation, resemblance rather than concealment. The resort to multiple layers of disguise risks resembling visual opportunism, finding letter-like shapes wherever they might fit rather than a coherent program. I do not deny the possibility of multiple layers of concealment, just highlighting how such complicates any evidential value.

There is also the question of interpretive method. Take the example of the Zayin on the Magician’s table: once it’s identified, it’s said to symbolize a circumcised penis because of its Kabbalistic structure (Yud atop Vav). But what if the shape had resembled a Yud instead? Would we then say it represents the glans? Or if it looked like a Vav, would it be the shaft? Or a Shin—first letter of שָׁפכָה (shafkhah)? Or Gimel for גִיד (gid), Peh for פִּין (pin), or any of the other Hebrew euphemisms for male anatomy in accordance with the context of the bateleur's 'wand'? * Hebrew is rich in symbolic layering, especially around the body. But that richness also means many letters could be retrofitted to match a desired interpretation.

To demonstrate a "consistent methodology" I think would require a clear criteria for what counts as a letter-form, apply those criteria uniformly across all 22 cards, & show that the symbolic interpretation is consistent and not post hoc. I would be interested to see how these correspondences hold up across other Marseille decks like the Vachier, Payen, Dubbesset/Valentin, Chosson, Heri & Dodal. If the same letterforms recur with consistency, that would strengthen your case considerably.

SteveM

*https://paleojudaica.blogspot.com/2015/ ... ebrew.html

Here is the 1730 "Heri" Bateleur: engraved by "HB" (Hans Buolman?)
Hans Buolman made a copy of a deck by Louise Laboisse, a Parisian cardmaker who moved to Strasbourg, which was engraved by a "JN". The 1730 Heri, engraved by "HB" is a mix of cards after Jean Noblet & the Laboisse "JN" and/or possibly Francis Isnard.