Le Grand Tarot Belline Translation

[Umbrae]

Long ago, Fulgour posted:

Grand Tarot Belline by Magus Edmond
France Cartes, titles and text in French

…there ought to be a translation for
the notations on these extremely idiosyncratic cards.
Has anyone found an English version interpretation?

As ever, thy wish is our command…

The English translation for Le Grand Tarot Belline!

 

[Alissa]

Thanks to TG for this translation, it helps my extremely poor leftover French abilities a lot.

edited to add: Just noticed the webpage's fine print, I should have known thanks should be extended to the lovely Paula for her translation skills as well. Great work guys!

 

[Fulgour]

just looking for a friend

Wow! I've sent a link to my friend in Knoxville,
Tennessee... for her, and all of us, "Thanks!"

 

[Sheri]

Thanks so much for this Umbrae and FireMaiden!!!!


valeria

 

[Astraea]

Thanks so much to both of you. This is such a generous and lovely gift to the tarot community.

 

[Miren]

This will be fun and also helpful with my French. I was pretty fluent a few years ago, but I've been learning Spanish and it's too close that sometimes I mix and match.

 

[firemaiden]

Glad it will be of some use. I really enjoyed pouring over the deck. Such an interesting thing to see the actual handwriting on the cards - (I'm finding my typos now of course and would like to hide under table, but zees vee vill feex...)

 

[magpie9]

Thank you soooo much for all your work, firemaiden. it was a big project that will help a lot of us to get deeper into this amazing deck. And thank you too, Umbrae. Esmiralda says Hi to Morty.... and asks if Earl and Henrietta are getting along with him?

 

[Umbrae]

A curiosity

In the Introduction by Dan Pelletier, he states:

Dan Pelletier
In A Wicked Pack of Cards - The Origins of the Occult Tarot by Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett, we learn that Le Grand Tarot Belline is a Tarot deck that was drawn by hand using pen and ink, around 1863 by Edmond Billaudot (1829-1881) (known as Magus Edmond).

So I look in A Wicked Pack of Cards and find that Paul Christian created a fictional document entitled An Egyptian Initiation. This work is also referred to in CC Zain’s Sacred Tarot (Zain's work and the Church of Light is based on Paul Christian's works), who then proceeds to quote what Dan and Paula refer to as the Spare Card Essay.

So here’s the curiosity. Decker Dummett et al state that Le Grand Tarot Belline, was definitely created post 1863 and before 1870. In the last paragraph of page 203, they state:

The trumps also have, in the centre of the upper panal, words or phrases quoted above from the Conclusion of L’homme Rouge, not using any of the revised versions given in the Historie de la magie, there could not be a clearer proof that Edmond was relying only on the earlier book.

Yet if Iamblichus “An Egyptian Initiation” wasn’t written until 1870…where did the ‘Spare Card Essay’ come from?

Were Dummett Decker et al incorrect? Did they make an error?

 

[Umbrae]

Further investigation shows that the paragraph on each of the Majors in Le Grand Tarot Belline comes from An Egyptian Initiation, which was apparently not written or published (by Paul Christian) until 1870.

This tells us that the dating of the deck as stated in A Wicked Pack of Cards cannot be correct. Or pehaps that the dating is correct, but that the 'fictionalized' works already existed? Perhaps they were not fictionalized?

I don’t fault Dan or Paula, it looks like their research is fine – I have to question the accuracy of the source material.

What's a poor boy to do?