Please Help...Confused by the Grand Ettiella (Egyptian Gypsies Tarot)....

MikeH

Yes, you got it. I just noticed this thread.

Rest assured that Etteilla himself had nothing to do with that LWB. From your quotes, I'd say it is the one originally written in 1826 by Pierre Mongie l’aine (the elder), who also put those weird titles on his edition of the deck. The Grimaud decks at least don't do that. But the current Grimaud changes many of the keywords from what Etteilla had. I don't know the 1977 or its exact booklet, but I find the precise wording you cite (in French) in a Grimaud LWB of around 1900. As far as Grimaud decks, I have the Grimaud 1969, with the original keywords, and another of around the year 2000, which makes many changes in keywords (someone gave it to me, saying they had no use for such a thing). Added Jan. 1: Comparing the cards posted at the bottom of p. 1 of this thread, I see that the keywords and other writing on your 1977 cards are the same as my c. 2000 cards. The two booklets are the same. too, quite different from the 1969 and preceding.

I discuss the "High Priest" card at http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?p=2784917, post 110, on the bottom of p. 11 of the thread. Other cards are posts before and after.

At that point I wasn't giving what Etteilla himself said about card 13. Etteilla never did have titles for his cards, as far as I can tell, just numbers, keywords, and "synonyms and other meanings", rather long lists, both upright and reversed, that his immediate disciples drew up (they did not include Mongie). These lists proved very influential, for example on Waite in "Pictorial Key". Papus uses them verbatim in La Tarot Divinatoire.

One place Etteilla discusses the card is in his summary of all of cards 1-21 plus 0 (later also numbered 78, but here put after 21), in his 2nd Cahier (or Notebook). It's at http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?p=2790042&highlight=13#post2790042. Etteilla in several places says that 17 is the number of death rather than 13. This is in fact what Italians thought before the invention of tarot cards. At 13 man "sees death" and becomes weak, he says. Etteilla personally did not have a good experience with marriage.

However marriage also seems to be something mandated by the creator, or at least the Egyptians, as he says in the 3rd Cahier (published earlier than the 2nd!). http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=3235084.

These are merely some links on ATF. I'm not sure what else there is in my blogs.