A Matter of Succession
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’m leaping right over other European contributors to the esoteric tarot like Papus, de Guaita, Peladan, Pitois (Paul Christian) and Wirth, mainly because I haven’t explored them to any depth yet; I’m still getting my feet wet with Etteilla.
In The Book of Thoth, Aleister Crowley (apparently echoing the now-disputed sentiments of Eliphas Levi in The Dogma and Ritual of High Magic, Book II*) derides Jean-Baptise Alliette (aka “Etteilla”) as a “grotesque barber” (according to Levi, Alliette was a barber before he became a popular esoteric writer and practitioner of “fortune-telling by closed book”), but careful scrutiny of Crowley’s (and Waite’s) Minor Arcana text shows Etteilla’s fingerprints and those of his early-19th-Century spiritual offspring all over it. Representative examples appear in the titles given to some of the cards by Grimaud, such as the 2 of Cups as “Love” in both the Etteilla and Thoth decks, and sometimes in the keywords, as in Waite’s use of “spying” for his Page of Swords, the Grimaud title for the Etteilla card.
Crowley was dismissive of his antecedents and Waite — as near as I can recall — was mostly silent about them, but my reading of the The Grand Etteilla (Orsini et al) has revealed numerous instances of symbolic convergence. Also, while Crowley roundly condemned his Continental forebears, saying “none of these or their kin have done more than ‘play the sedulous ape’ to the conventional Mediaeval designs,” in the “Bibliographic Note” to The Book of Thoth he admitted that his original intent was to “execute a pack after the tradition of the Mediaeval Editors,” amended by his own intellectual labors (some might say conceits); only the “technical difficulties” faced by Harris prevented it. (But he eventually concluded that “all previous packs are of little more than archaeological interest.”)
I have always considered Crowley a “breath of fresh air” compared to the Victorian stuffiness of Waite, even when he was being waggishly perverse. His language is more lucid and pointedly erudite (not to mention more entertaining) than Waite’s turgid, scholarly bombast. As a writer and a proponent of the lost art of critical thinking, I thoroughly enjoy his way with words. That said, the recondite, syncretic concepts and observations in the “APPENDIX” to the Atu are reminiscent of the euphoric, faux-Egyptian window-dressing that obfuscates much of his Book of the Law. That part of the BoT stands out from the rest as a lifetime study (if not a source of endless “head-banging”). Perhaps this is the part that was “dashed off without help from parents?” (I’m jesting, of course, as was Crowley; he was obviously steeped in the exhaustive (and exhausting) anthropological minutiae of Sir James George Frazer’s Golden Bough, and the APPENDIX [Crowley’s caps, not mine] bristles with arcane references to diverse cultural practices that he tried — with arguable success — to enlist in his own cause.)
As I discover more-and-more snippets of wisdom in the Etteilla book that found their way into later writing, I’m realizing that I really must buy the hard-copy version (and also examine Alliette’s own work, presented in English by the same translator) in order to be able to mine it diligently and intelligently. Although much of the material is painfully dated and often ludicrous in modern terms, there is plenty to explore that rings true in light of my long study and practice of tarot divination. Rather than being mere vulgar fortune-telling drivel (except when it is totally inane, as in proposing “blondness” as the pinnacle of human perfection), in many ways it strikes me as a worthy predecessor to the esoteric thought of the British “Occult Revival” that can be cherry-picked for practical insights. While the art of divination may have been beaten up by the likes of Waite and the 20th-Century psychological practitioners, it never quite “went down for the count.” I, for one, appreciate any amplification of the subject I can find that exhibits at least a hint of metaphysical “gold” amid the dross, and having this work in a competent English translation is a welcome boon.
* “Alliette, former barber . . . pretended to reform and thus appropriate the Book of Thoth.” In Levi’s view, Alliette, self-proclaimed “professor of algebra and corrector of the modern blunders of the ancient Book of Thoth,” would have been better “not to have corrected the blunders of which he speaks; his books have degraded the ancient work discovered by Court de Gebelin into the domain of vulgar Magic and fortune-telling by closed book.” In retrospect, de Gebelin has been thoroughly discredited by historical authorities without having to mention the degradation wrought by Alliette.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on October 5, 2022.
