The Influence of Etteilla . . .

The Influence of Etteilla &
His School on Mathers & Waite
By James W. Revak

Divination or Fortune-Telling

In addition to his revised Tarot, still other reasons may have contributed to the hostility and vitriol of critics. Divination and fortune-telling have long been associated with Western Esotericism. Astrology, for example, has and still pervades it (Faivre, 1986/1994). Agrippa, in his encyclopedic Three Books of Occult Wisdom (1531/1998), discussed astrology and numerous other methods of divination. More recently, the Order of the Golden Dawn (which will be explored shortly) advocated use of divination (e.g. Tarot, astrology, and geomancy) (Regardie, 1989), and Mathers, one of its leaders, even read palms (Greer, 1995). Nevertheless, some occultists have had profoundly ambivalent feelings about such practices, which may have helped to fuel their bitter criticism of Etteilla, who, of course, excelled in divination and fortune-telling.

In fact, not all occultists were even confident that divination by Tarot was effective. For example, Wirth (1927/1985), even after an in-depth study of Tarot and designing a revised set of Trumps, doubted the effectiveness of using the cards for divination, until he began, apparently reluctantly, to read for friends:

“We were prejudiced against it [divination by Tarot], when being solely interested in deciphering symbols, our first Tarot was published in 1889. . . . We could not refuse giving satisfaction to friends who asked us to tell their fortune by showing them how it is possible to consult the Tarot.

“We felt some pity for our first consultants when they assured us that the Tarot was speaking truthfully; their belief in cartomancy influenced their judgement. But what could we think of skeptics who expressed their amazement!” (p. 192).

Only after a series of readings, judged as accurate by him and his consultants, did Wirth conclude: “In what concerns us personally, the objective observation of facts has converted us to divination” (p. 192).

Indeed, according to Lévi (1854-55/1910), the Tarot was a wonderful potential tool of divination:

“The Tarot, that miraculous work which inspired all the sacred books of antiquity, is, by reason of the analogical precision of its figures and numbers, the most perfect instrument of divination, and can be employed with complete confidence. Its oracles are always rigorously true, at least in a certain sense, and even when it predicts nothing it reveals secret things and gives the most wise counsel to its consulters.” (p. 169).

However, one suspects that Lévy may have felt divination by Tarot ought to be reserved for spiritual development and other purportedly lofty matters and that its application to personal day-to-day matters, i.e., fortune-telling, was vulgar and degraded Tarot. Therefore, when discussing Etteilla he claimed that his “books have degraded the ancient work discovered by Court de Gébelin into the domain of vulgar magic and fortune-telling by cards” (1854-55/1910, p. 372).

Similarly, Papus apparently viewed divination by Tarot as significantly less important than using it for esoteric disquisition. Furthermore, he felt that a principal goal of divination by Tarot was merely to provide women with a pleasant pastime. In The Tarot of the Bohemians (1989/1910), he wrote:

“To our Lady Readers. . . .

“The first part of our study of the Tarot, full of numbers, of Hebrew letters and abstract deductions, is not calculated to attract the attention of ladies. . . . It is, however, traditional that the future can be read through the Tarot, and our feminine readers will never forgive me if I ignore their natural curiosity on this point.

“I have therefore decided to approach the delicate question, and I hope that the pleasure gained by fair inquirers will balance the skepticism of sterner intellects.” (pp. 301-302).

Such a condescending attitude, however, did not prevent him from later writing an entire book on divination by Tarot, Le Tarot divinatoire (1909). Furthermore, in the introduction he felt compelled to defend his honor: “For a writer who pretends to be serious to study card reading! What a horror. But no study is a horror, and by studying divination by Tarot we prepared well some interesting things.” (pp. 2-3). Apparently he expected significant criticism from the aforementioned sterner intellects.

Waite had extremely ambivalent feelings with regard to divination. In 1909, under the pseudonym Grand Orient, he published the third edition of A Manual of Cartomancy, which presents a wide variety of methods of divination from cartomancy and astrology to finding lucky numbers with dice. Additionally, he took the position that a serious side to divination existed, “though the object of the present compilation is in the main one of diversion, it will not be out of place to indicate quite briefly and simply that on one side it leans towards seriousness” (p. 1). Specifically, he viewed sundry methods of divination as “aids to elicit clairvoyance, and to cast the Seer for the time being into a subjective or interior condition” (p. x).

Such statements did not prevent him, however, from writing only two years later, under his real name, in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (Being Fragments of a Secret Tradition Under the Veil of Divination) (1911): “I hate the profanum vulgus [ignorant multitude] of divinatory devices” (p. 42). Curiously, his expressed hatred did not prevent him from devoting much of the same book to divination. Furthermore, it did not prevent him from greeting the fifth edition of A Manual of Cartomancy only one year later (cited in Kaplan, biblio., 1986.).

Turning specifically to divination by Tarot, in A Manual of Cartomancy (1909), Waite presented a method which employed the Trumps (and only the Trumps). He also presented divinatory meanings for the Trumps in A Pictorial Key to the Tarot (PKT) (1911). Neither of these actions, however, prevented him, in PKT, from complaining about just such use of the Trumps: “The allocation of a fortune-telling aspect to these cards is the story of a prolonged impertinence” (p. 287). One can only conclude that he was one impertinent fellow.

Waite (1909) further expressed his ambivalent feelings and perhaps those of other occultists when he wrote:

“. . . the seeress who can use with success a pack of divining cards—either to forecast or discern—is putting in operation in the lowest degree that power from within which, if exercised with high intent for a spiritual object, might make her a saint, because the work of the soul is the soul’s work in all its phases and regions.” (p. 5).

In other words, applying one’s power and energy to divine future day-to-day events on the material plane is, for some unspecified reason, lowly and vulgar; applying one’s power and energy to spiritual development, is, for some unspecified reason, superior and salutary. Waite’s position also implies that one can and ought to distinguish between day-to-day events on the material plane and spiritual development, a position which is certainly open to argument.

In light of many occultists’ ambivalent feelings and because Etteilla was a professional fortune-teller he served as a lightning rod, attracting their thunder and ire. They held him in contempt, accusing him of debasing Tarot by using it for divination or fortune-telling rather than what they viewed as lofty spiritual goals.

Other Issues

Less substantive issues may have also influenced Etteilla’s peers. Professional jealousy may have contributed to his critics’ spiteful tone. One senses this possibility, for example, when Lévi (1854-55/1910) admits Etteilla’s success—but only in a backhanded way: “Etteilla had fashionable success which a more accomplished magician would have perhaps been wrong to waive, but would certainly not have claimed”(p. 170). Far be it that a magus hanker after popular success and making a living.

Feelings of superiority with regard to social class (including educational achievement) may have also contributed; Etteilla was neither a university graduate nor a member of the upper classes (Decker, Depaulis, & Dummett, 1996). One senses this possibility, for example, when Lévi (1854-55/1910) writes that he “never learned French, or even orthography” (p. 372) and when he and others apparently delighted in describing Etteilla (albeit mistakenly) as a hairdresser or wigmaker (e.g. Lévi, 1854-55/1910, 1860/1913; Waite, 1910).

Perhaps too Etteilla reminded some occultists of aspects of themselves which they preferred to ignore or deny. One senses this possibility when Waite (1910) writes, “Alliette [Etteilla] that perruquier [wigmaker] took himself with high seriousness and posed rather as a priest of the occult sciences than as an ordinary adept in l’art de tirer les cartes [the art of card reading]” (p. 49). A man of humble beginnings assumes the role of high priest of occult sciences. Sound familiar? If no, read Waite’s A Manual of Cartomancy (1909) and Shadows of Life and Thought: A Retrospective in the Form of Memoirs (1938) and inspect his portrait (Figure 8).

Figure 8 (above): A. E. Waite as Imperator of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross (c. 1915) (frontispiece from his A New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry (1921/1996).

An additional factor, which may have contributed to lack of appreciation of the SE, was the frequent unavailability of its literary output. This does not apply to Lévi, Papus, and Wirth, who were French and had access to major works of the SE, or Mathers and Waite, who, as will be shown, had a command of the French language and, likewise, access to major works of the SE. However, the unavailability of the SE’s works has almost certainly impacted other occultists’ views, including those of the large contemporary English-speaking segment of the world Tarot community. In fact, apparently no one has published an English translation of any of the SE’s works, until the author of this study published on the World Wide Web, simultaneously to this paper, Tarot Divination: Three Parallel Traditions (Papus, Mathers, & Waite, 1909/2000), which includes includes DMs which depend from the SE. One might think that French-speaking occultists and scholars are in a better position to access the work of the SE. However, even they must overcome obstacles: the literary output of Etteilla and his school concerning Tarot is apparently out of print with the exceptions of the fourth book of Manière de se récréer . . . Tarots (Etteilla, 1785/1993) and selections from Papus’ Le Tarot divinatoire (1909) (Culture Surf, 2000; Alapage.com, 2000).

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