The birth of occult Tarot
Antoine Court de Gébelin
A Protestant pastor and Freemason who read the Tarot as a surviving book of ancient Egyptian wisdom — one of the principal beginnings of modern occult Tarot.
- Dates
- 1725 – 10 May 1784
- Dating
- documented dates
- Born
- Nîmes
- Died
- Paris
The life
He pursued the Enlightenment dream of reconstructing a primordial human civilisation across nine volumes.
Place in the tradition
Its effect was monumental. The Egyptian sacred history and allegorical method developed in volume eight gave later occult Tarot a language, a purpose and a field of interpretation.
a note on the record
History and later legend
The surviving record places Tarot's beginnings in fifteenth-century Europe rather than pharaonic Egypt. Court de Gébelin's account belongs to the creative history of esoteric Tarot and remains consequential within it.
the written record
Principal works
-
nine volumes, 1773–1782; the Tarot essay in volume VIII, 1781
Le Monde primitif
Volume VIII contains the famous Tarot essay asserting an Egyptian origin and a 'Book of Thoth'.
held in the source catalogue Read at Wikisource ↗