kwaw said:
Etteilla's 'authority' for the the correlation of french to italian suits ... was probably Mellet:
Yes?
But have a look in particular to the last page of the chapter VIII of M. Le C. DE M. (Gébelin himself?) add-on to Gebelin's book.
The chapter is called: "Cartes auxquelles les Diseurs de bonne aventure attachent des pronostics" (sorry, too lazy to translate)
You will find divinations key words very similar to those in "Etteilla ou la seule manière ..."
Even in chapter V, I do find similarity to the "common" (what ever it means) cartomancy.
So it could also be that Gebelin/Mellet simply adapt the cartomancy as it was
at this time and it seems as if Etteilla was already a quite clever specialist in Cartomancy at this time.
My personal point is more to search before and not after Etteilla.
To me it is clear that all the Tarot divination (at this time, I am of course not talking about the use of Tarot today that I do very much prefer!) is coming from or build upon cartomancy, Etteilla being a good representative for it.
All Etteillas work has been used later in one way or another.
It is also funny to see that for example Papus wrote a whole Divination book ("Le Tarot Divinatoire") completely based on Etteilla's work even if he cannot prevent himself to laugh about Etteilla! But at the very least, he names Etteilla as his source.
For me it is enough to see that some "keywords" travelled from Etteilla to Waite and then much later by Papus and others ...
I would now really like to find earlier cartomancy books or sources to see and understand where do Etteilla's keywords are coming from
Best regards