Paul Marteau: On Four Arcana of the Tarot

Translator’s Introduction

The desultory notes published previously provide some measure of context for the following article by Paul Marteau, the existence of which has gone unnoticed in the Tarot literature, with one equally obscure exception, and which gives great insight into Marteau’s work, with one caveat.

In effect, the notion that the Tarot originated, or, as in some iterations of the myth, developed initially, in France, and more precisely in Provence or Marseilles, has grown beyond mere parochialism. Various historical events and figures have been invoked in support of this historically-unfounded theory; the Cathars, the Troubadours, Mary Magdalene, Abbot Suger, and, as we shall see, the Phocæan Greek colony of Massalia, modern-day Marseilles. This notion, hinted at by Eugène Caslant in his preliminary exposé to Marteau’s book, is not to be found in Caslant’s earlier article for Le Voile d’Isis in 1928, and he merely attributes it to “the occult tradition,” whatever that may be, without providing any further indications.

Why Marteau chose not to include these prefatory remarks in his 1949 work is unknown; perhaps the documents and letters held in the Bibliothèque nationale or Marteau’s unpublished diaries contain the answer.

Read the remainder of this article on our Ko-Fi page.

The Tarot in Chinese: A Basic Primer

 

The Fool from the Broken Mirror Tarot 破碎鏡像塔羅

塔羅牌基本語彙

The Chinese origins of playing cards remains one of those understudied aspects of Tarot history, and undeservedly so, if only were it to further our understanding of the complex cultural and economic exchanges between East and West, via Central Asia, Persia and the Middle East.

While a great deal of the earlier literature on the subject of the Tarot, on the history of playing cards, and above all, on the history of paper, printing and currency, is available, relatively little has been said about the contemporary reception of Tarot in the Chinese-speaking world, and this despite the fact that not only are many of the decks currently in print produced in China, there are also many decks being produced by Chinese artists.

Some of these may only include titles or details in Chinese, and may not be easily available abroad. Since many decks do not have an English name, nor do they necessarily provide English titles for the cards, this piece aims to provide some basic pointers in that direction, which may be of some help to collectors or those simply interested in the subject.

Following the Confucian injunction to ‘rectify the names’ 正名, we shall begin with the terminology. (Chinese given in traditional characters and romanisation following the pinyin system.) Given that Tarot terminology has been translated into Chinese following a variety of books and sources, there are no standard terms as yet, and one will encounter a variety of renderings. One will note the interesting manner in which some terms have been transliterated, others translated literally, and others yet translated with reference to the Chinese cultural sphere.

This brief overview is by no means exhaustive nor definitive, and we welcome any suggestions. 歡迎讀者討論與補充或指出其中謬誤！

Many thanks to Enrique Tang.

Terminology

The Tarot

The game of Tarot itself is known as 塔羅牌 – 塔羅 tǎ luó being the transliteration of the word Tarot, followed by the character for card, 牌 pái. The word “card” is also sometimes rendered as 卡片 kǎ piàn.  Incidentally, the measure word for 牌 is 副 fù.

The Trump Series

The Triumphs, or trump cards, are properly known as 凱旋卡 kǎi xuán kǎ (in the literal sense), but more often than not are called 大阿爾克那 dà ā’ěr kè nà, or Major Arcana, following the transliteration. Sometimes we find the literal translation 大秘儀 dà mì yí, and sometimes the common terms from ordinary playing cards are used instead, being 大牌 dà pái i.e. trumps, or 將牌 jiàng pái, or 王牌 wángpái, which can also mean “ace” to make matters even more complicated (in addition to meaning “royal suit” to begin with).

The titles of the 22 trumps of the so-called Major Arcana as they are most commonly translated in Chinese, with some variations indicated, are as follows:

     0. 愚者 / 愚人  Le Mat / The Fool

1. 魔術師  Le Bateleur / The Juggler
2. 女祭司／女教皇  La Papesse / The Popess
3. 皇后／女皇  L’Impératrice / The Empress
4. 皇帝  L’Empereur / The Emperor
5. 教宗／教皇 / 聖職者 Le Pape / The Pope
6. 戀人  L’Amoureux / The Lover
7. 戰車  Le Chariot / The Chariot
8. 正義  La Justice / Justice
9. 隱者／隱士  L’Ermite / The Hermit
10. 命運之輪  La Roue de Fortune / The Wheel of Fortune
11. 力量  La Force / Force
12. 倒吊人／吊人  Le Pendu / The Hanged Man
13. 死亡／死神  La Mort / Death
14. 節制  Tempérance / Temperance
15. 惡魔 / 魔鬼  Le Diable / The Devil
16. 高塔／塔  La Maison Dieu / The Tower
17. 星星  L’Étoile / The Star
18. 月亮  La Lune / The Moon
19. 太陽  Le Soleil / The Sun
20. 審判  Le Jugement / The Judgement
21. 世界  Le Monde / The World

The list is given following the classic Marseilles order (the Golden Dawn system having inverted the Justice and Force cards). Incidentally, the influence of Arthur Waite and the Golden Dawn is most apparent in the title of the first trump card, typically translated as 魔術師 – “The Magician.”

We will note the interesting subtext in the titles of some of the female arcana, namely the Popess and the Empress. The first title given for Popess, 女祭司, translates loosely as “priestess”, or “female priest,” whereas the second one, 女教皇, is literally “female pope”.

Interestingly, this mirrors the second title given for Pope, 教皇, which translates as “religious emperor,” and thus carries more connotations of temporal power. Without going into deeper research, it is possible the term was coined during the era of the Papal states. This latter term is the one used by non-Catholics in Asia whereas the other one, 教宗, is used officially by the Vatican. The third term given, 聖職者, is the translation of “Hierophant.”

The Empress, on the other hand, is an entirely different kettle of fish, with undertones of “Empress Wu” present. The usual term in Chinese is 皇后, Empress Consort, also the usual term for the Queens of the Court cards, however, the second title is 女皇, “female emperor.”

Wu Zetian, first concubine, then Empress Consort, then Empress Dowager, during the Tang dynasty, and finally Empress Regnant of her own short-lived Zhou dynasty, was a controversial character in Chinese history. Her titles and terms of address are incidentally also a matter of controversy.

The only other arcanum to present a differing title is XIII, “Death,” where the first title given, 死亡, is death as an abstract noun, and the second, 死神, is more akin to the “Grim Reaper” as its personification.

The term for Chariot, 戰車, translates literally as “war chariot,” however, it is worth noting that this character 車 or 俥 chē, in the context of Chinese chess, is pronounced differently, as jū.

The 4 Suits

In a similar fashion to the trumps, the cards of the 4 suits are generally known as 小阿爾克那 xiǎo ā’ěr kè nà, or Minor Arcana, the literal translation being 小奧秘 xiǎo ào mì. Conversely, the term pip card of the ordinary playing cards is 小牌 xiǎo pái.

The word for Staff is 權杖 – literally, ”staff of authority,” i.e. “sceptre of power,” or sometimes 魔杖, “magic wand.”
The word for Cup is 聖杯 or 聖盃 – literally, “holy grail.” The second term uses an older variant character for the word “cup,” one typically only used in the sense of “trophy” nowadays.
The word for Coin is 錢幣, a literal translation, or sometimes 五角星牌組, “the suit of pentacles,” following the RWS designation. Alternatively, 星幣, meaning “star coin”, is also used in the Chinese RWS literature, while terms such as 金幣、錢幣 or  simply 幣 are used in connection with so-called non-esoteric decks.
The word for Sword is 寶劍, literally, “jewelled sword,” or “precious sword,” a term encountered in Taoism and in Chinese sword & sorcery novels. There are various types of ritual sword found in Taoism, often made of wood or of interwoven Chinese coins, which have symbolic, ceremonial or apotropaic uses. Later, the term became conflated with the Buddhist image of the flaming “sword of wisdom.”

The Court Cards

The Court cards are known as 宮廷牌, and sometimes as 法院卡 (a mistranslation based on the judicial sense of court in English, rather than 朝廷, the imperial court), or 人頭牌 rén tóu pái, literally, “human head cards.” The individual cards are translated literally as follows:

Valet 侍從 shì cóng, or 侍者 shì zhě, “attendant,” sometimes rendered as “Jack”, giving the transliteration 積克 jī kè or 杰克 jié kè. The Valet is sometimes also translated as 武士 wǔ shì, or “warrior.”
Knight 騎士 qí shì, or “horseman.”
Queen 王后 wáng hòu or 皇后 huáng hòu.
King 國王 guó wáng.

Once again, one will note the rendition of “queen” in the same way as “empress” and its possible implications.

Other Terms

The term for “suit” is 花色 huā sè.

“Numeral card(s)” is simply rendered as 數字卡.

“Ace” is rendered as either 一点 yī diǎn or 愛司 ài sī. 首牌 may also be found.

The term for “Spread” is 牌陣.

“Significator” is translated as 指示牌.

 

Jean-Paul Bourre: An Evening with Jean Carteret

Translator’s Introduction

Jean-Paul Bourre (1946-2023) was a French journalist, writer, and poet. Author of a number of interesting literary studies on Gérard de Nerval and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, his prolific output chiefly deals with what may termed “pop occultism” – cults, vampires, witchcraft, druidism, and so forth, in addition to musical biographies and works on rock’n’roll.

The Tarot is not exempt from this lengthy list of publications, as one will find that Bourre’s earliest book in fact is entitled Le Tarot Tantrique, published in 1978, a booklet to which we shall return in due course.

Bourre was also acquainted with the philosopher Jean Carteret, and in his memoirs, has left the following portrait of the man. This text appeared in Le Réveil de Kernunos, Alexipharmaque, 2013.

 

***

An Evening with Jean Carteret

Jean-Paul Bourre

I met Jean Carteret in the 70s; he was born in Charleville, like Rimbaud. It was my friend the poet Daniel Giraud who brought me to his place, in a garret on the rue de la Tour d’Auvergne, a fated name, for me. Astrologer, alchemist, seer, none of these labels truly corresponds to the character as he transcended them all. I knew he had been the friend of Henry Miller and that Anaïs Nin mentioned him at length in her Diaries. He slept during the day and lived especially at night; on the ground, or next to a hammock, he spoke at length, like a new Socrates, of his vision of astrology and of alchemy, and beyond that, of these concepts of the absence and presence of being, weaving subtle links between the words, and the words became images, inscribing their flashes within us. A visionary language, which flowed like a stream, inexhaustible, for long hours, and we entered with him into the Land of Enlightenment.

Jean Carteret never wrote a line, apart from the post cards he would send on his trips to Lapland. No book, and yet today there are books bearing his name, discussions recorded onto cassette by some of his visitors, and which were published after his death. The undertaking was ridiculous. Words are but empty carcasses, having lost their charge. They came out of him, living speech, they were not constructed or chosen to be written. The magic does not work. They can neither be understood nor heard without that magnetic and living presence of the one who uttered them, before me, in that room on the rue de la Tour d’Auvergne. His speech was transfiguring, his presence, that of a hermit, eyes wide open to what he saw.

One anecdote translates well how he was. He came to my place one evening, with Daniel Giraud. I see him now with his trapper’s beard, his mariner’s cap, his ragged coat, and I understood why Henry Miller had been fascinated by him. As soon as he spoke, you could feel he was entirely centered within himself, on levels which were impossible for us to reach. I no longer recall what he said. Above all, I recall the presence of the old man, with his sense of originality, with that mariner’s cap permanently screwed onto his head, and of the weaving of words, suddenly revealing a secret, on the theme of “presence” and “absence”.

I was young, in the Beatnik movement, but I can say that he radiated a sort of absolute presence. At that time, I had spent a few evenings with Marc de Smedt and his group of friends, but from his position of authority he kept a certain distance from me. I had published no book with him, we did not belong to the same world. Then, he calls me, unusually enough, when he learned that Jean Carteret was coming to my place, and asks me if he can spend the evening with us. Why not?…

So, he lands in our group of Bohemians, with his Shetland sweater and his silver bracelet on his wrist, like a preppy. Of course, he listens to what Jean Carteret has to say, like a disciple, with a perfect attitude. He knows what they say about the man, from Henry Miller to Raymond Abellio, who was Carteret’s great friend. But he came to my place with a specific idea in mind, which he reveals at the end of the evening. He quite simply proposes to publish Jean Carteret in the “Spiritual Masters” collection he was then head of with Albin-Michel. Who would refuse such glory? For Jean Carteret, it was like firing heavy artillery to take down a hot-air balloon. He turned down the offer. None of us were surprised, apart from the publisher.

***

Tchalaï Unger: Preface to La Splendeur du Chamane

Translator’s Introduction

Shamanism is one of those notions that has not only a disputed definition, but also a disputed etymology. A glance at the Wikipedia entry ought to be enough to convince one of the lack of consensus on the meaning of the term, a discussion that, once again, lies beyond the scope of the present blog. In consequence, we leave it to the interested reader to pursue this line of inquiry.

Tchalaï Unger, whose seminal work has often featured in these pages, was interested in exploring this phenomenon. While she did not write a book on the subject, she did pen the preface to La Splendeur du chamane by Marc Questin in 1997, and designed an oracle deck entitled Le Tarot des Chamanes [The Tarot of the Shamans].

Far from being a passing fad, Tchalaï’s views on living a shamanic lifestyle were expressed in an all-too brief television documentary, aired in 1993, and which may be viewed here (from 9:00, and 19:20).

“… I think that everyone can understand it on their own level, that is, not everyone might be a shaman nowadays, but can live in a shamanic way, which is to say, to live in a way that is in harmony with all the elements which surround us. That also means that, here today, we are urban shamans.”

Unfortunately, Tchalaï’s deck Le Tarot des Chamanes [The Tarot of the Shamans] does not appear to have been published, or if it was, it must not have had a wide distribution and we have been unable to find any trace of it whatsoever.

Given that today marks the nineteenth anniversary of Tchalaï’s passing, we publish this piece in her memory. This preface appeared on pages 9-14 of La Splendeur du chamane by Marc Questin, éditions du Rocher, 1997.

* * *

Preface to La Splendeur du Chamane

Tchalaï Unger

You, my friend, who feel yourself confounded by the splendour of the shaman, you who find yourself alone, naked and ignorant, who think to glimpse no secret from the depth – nor, more over, to be worthy thereof – take this book: with love, with clarity, it will bring you onto the path. The fluid and poetic writing of Marc-Louis Questin, in the Greek sense of ποίησις [poiesis], “he who does,” already places you into another world, by osmosis. By incantation, perhaps.

But, you ask yourself, friend armed with constructive doubt, how could one write such a book? Who has the right and the experience?

It is, very simply, another yourself, one who has already lead a large part of the battle to find the shamanic root hidden within each of us. In times gone by, he once found himself alone, naked, ignorant, glimpsing the depth, but not knowing how to get there, approach it, … and survive. After years of thwarted enthusiasm and dead-ends, he no doubt encountered a gentle phase such as this one:

The wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees. (1)

Then, he filled himself with courage, the goal seeming less distant when one visualises it in candid images.

A confident humility came over him, which took him far away from the summaries of received ideas; let me take one from an American dictionary (2), with all due respect to Robert or Larousse (2) : “Shaman, a priest or priestess who uses magic for the purpose of curing the sick, divining the hidden, and controlling events.”

A little brief as summaries go, no? My friend, avoid applying our Western ideas on God, classical medicine and social structures to the shaman and to shamanism. Wherever he is, the shaman does not exercise the priesthood in the sense we usually understand it, and is neither aware of nor desires to use “magic” in the common sense of today: he is; and nothing else.

For far too long, the study of shamanism has been effected according to the usual systematic manner of anthropological or sociological enquiries. By exploring the shamanic cultures according to intellectual, academic norms, one only reaches a skeletal theorisation of their rich globality. Greater respect for the unknown or the unusual, and at the same time, drawing on the “insight” of which Krishnamurti and David Bohm (3) spoke, turn out to be indispensable to any progress in this domain; the taste for secrecy, here, has greater effect than the doctrinal bulldozer.

At the other extreme from the academic method (naming no names, the names being too renowned), we discover with stupefaction, by surfing on the Web (4), that shamanism is completely absent, apart from some meagre and moreover inappropriate writings, which all unanimously refer back to my good master Tim Leary, a psycho-sociologist who pioneered the therapeutic application of LSD in prisons, or to the innovator John Lilly, with his famous “flotation tanks,” of modern sensorial deprivation, or again, to Ayahuasca, favourite hallucinogen, and often lethal, of the Native Americans.

Between the microscope method and the New Age bazaar, is there any room for a shamanic understanding and practice accessible to Europeans of the year 2000? A non-inquisitorial method, as Louis Pauwels suggested in The Dawn of Magic? (5)

It must be said that, in France, with rare exceptions, we speak of shamanism like we speak of Kabbalah, of the Tarot, of sex, or of anything else at all: we first make it enter into our system of beliefs, based on our desires, our hopes, our fears and ways of protecting ourselves from them; and then we take it out, like a rabbit out of a top hat, completely flattened and disguised as whatever happens to suit us.

So, let us approach it from the inside. Who is he, the one who goes to seek his shamanic root? How to know if you too, are that one?

The shaman is one who, from childhood, has generally manifested exceptional possibilities of contact with nature and all its extensions in the human being. Sometimes these gifts, perceived by someone or by a community, are carefully cultivated thanks to a teaching, and appropriate techniques. (But more often than not, today, this is not the case – whence the interest of this book which places them within reach.) This gift, this connection with nature, emerge, according to the ecological niche and according to the character of the shaman, in a more or less combative or contemplative personality, generally, both together: he (she) is at the same time, the warrior and the intermediary between the other humans and the Presences.

Once upon a time, this held true from the Arctic Circle to Amazonia, from the Taklamakan to Micronesia, and this holds still today. Energetic key to a group that is entirely different from the “civilised” world, onto which it may be superimposed, here and now, the shaman avers to be indispensable to the collectivity since he alone can remind it of what it has forgotten, literally, to reanimate it, to give it back its soul.

The potential of the shaman is an almost osmotic power of adaptation to the environment. This power of adaptation is, precisely, the characteristic of the anthropic stock which has passed from the stage of Homo sapiens (the one who knows he knows), yesterday, to the Homo ludens, today or tomorrow. The shaman, that is the essential man.

This intimate adaptation supposes and demands a constant adjustment of action to reflection, a rectitude to be maintained to the utmost of one’s strength.

The apprentice shaman is “trained” (6), volens nolens, in different trials which must indeed be labelled initiatory. He must experience and cross the domain of the brute vital force which borrows the masks and behaviour of animals; that of the human intelligence applied to concrete tasks – modes of action on the tangible world; that of the psychic force – to sustain with continuity the same desire and the same inner intensity; that of sovereignty over the animal, vegetal and mineral realms – perhaps rather an alliance with the ecological niche, with the resulting sacred space; and finally, he reaches the domain of the spirit, or of the spirits, according to the model he accords to the intangible world (that is, the world that cannot be measured).

All along the path, without stopping, one must remain so alert that the apprentice shaman gives up a thousand times, at breaking point, to start off again the next moment or day once more into the incredible adventure. Sometimes, the general incomprehension, the public curiosity, the hardness of the times, transform the most authentically shamanic being into a fakir, into an ape-parrot, into a trickster, into a small-time fortune-teller. It is a great sadness for those who see him (her) damage himself (herself) in such a way, and an incurable loss for the collective consciousness.

First of all “trained” by the demands of destiny, the shaman then “trains” himself according to a regimen of every moment – in order to better drag us along with him. (6)

Friend, reassure yourself. The Rituals will temper your heart and safely open it up to the world: the rituals of water, tied to the ebb and flow of consciousness (what an English author called the “sparkling stream”) which cleanses and flows under its different forms; the rituals of air, which crosses, transports and caresses every thing; the rituals of fire, which heats, burns and transforms nutriments and sentiments; the rituals of our mother the earth which takes us through space, relieves us of our weight, gives us rest, and which we will nourish in return.

Thus armed, you will be confronted with solitude, with vanity, with madness, with temptations – which are choices between what must be reinforced and what must be eliminated.

You will reconnect with your ancestors, whose bones lie beneath your feet, and the old soul like a grain of gold within your young soul.

You will learn lighthearted sharing, the constant smile which recognises and accepts the Other, ancient or new.

You will let your hands identify the vigour or the smoothness of the grasses, the warmth and the touch of the rocks, the fullness or the emptiness of a pulse, and you will become a Healer.

You will resign yourself to seeing, behind the faces, the truth of each being without ever showing it, remaining confident in all the transformations.

You will make yourself a channel of crystal, through which information from elsewhere may flow, so subtle that the slightest clumsiness or slightest worry would tarnish it: such is the frailty of divination, regardless of the manner in which it is made perceptible to human eyes.

Then, by the voice, by gestures, or by prayer, you will spread peace up to the stars.

Finally, in a truly total offering, you will accept to break the fullness of the wordless perpetual encounter with the Presences, to transmit the golden speech to whosoever asks “repeatedly and with insistence” to be taught.

What a pathway is opening up to you, my friend! The world will become music and flavour; a complex and meaningful movement in which everything rejoins and rejoices… And what transparent austerity beneath this splendour! By claw and by feather, by fur and by scales, what a beautiful life!

Tchalaï Unger

Notes

1. Ursula Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea.
2. Merriam-Webster. (Robert and Larousse are two standard French dictionaries. – Tr.)
3. See Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
4. By consulting the World Wide Web connected by computer.
5. Louis Pauwels & Jacques Bergier, The Dawn of Magic/The Morning of the Magicians. – Tr.
6. In French, the word “entrainer” means both “to train” and “to drag.” – Tr.

Esmé Wynne-Tyson: On the Mithraic Origins of the Tarot

On the Mithraic Origins of the Tarot

Esmé Wynne-Tyson

Introduction

The Tarot, to use a French expression, has been put in every sauce; almost no occasion to find the alleged missing origins of this deck of cards has been missed; ancient Egypt, Kabbalah, Pythagoreanism, Islamic mysticism, Gnosticism, Renaissance hermeticism, practically every one of the mysteries of East and West has been invoked at some point or other to justify the origins of this deck of cards and its symbolism.

Speculative and as adventurous as these claims may be, one ancient mystery school is conspicuous by its absence at the roll-call of tarological lucubrations: Mithraism.

One writer, Esmé Wynne-Tyson (1898-1972), proposed this theory in her book Mithras, the Fellow in the Cap (1958), and with one exception, it has not gained any acceptance or credence. Wynne-Tyson is perhaps best remembered as a friend and collaborator of the English playwright and performer Noël Coward. She also penned a number of philosophical works, such as this examination of the mysteries of Mithras.

It is worth noting that Wynne-Tyson became a Christian Scientist in later life, albeit remained heavily influenced by Hinduism and ancient Greek Neo-platonic philosophers such as Porphyry. Equally, Mithraic studies have come a long way in the decades since the publication of her book. One will bear these points in mind while reading the following excerpt, a passage from Chapter 8, Mithras’ Other Hiding Places (pp. 187-191).

Mithras and the Bull. Courtesy of the British Museum

Wynne-Tyson, however, errs in conflating the symbolic slaying of the bull in Mithraism – the Tauroctony – with the gory sacrifice of the Taurobolium of the Mysteries of Cybele, the Magna Mater or Great Mother. One will note her incidental aversion to religions practising animal sacrifice, due no doubt to her militant vegetarianism.

Contrary to what Wynne-Tyson states, C. W. King does not appear to have mentioned the Tarot cards in connection with the Templars, at least, not in his chief work The Gnostics and their Remains (1887); the connection rather being the tenuous one between the Templars and Freemasonry instead.

As mentioned above, this theory is not well-known, and only one author has proposed it in recent years, though apparently without knowledge of Wynne-Tyson’s work since it is not listed in the bibliography, Stephen Flowers‘ Magian Tarok (2015), largely based on the work of Sigurd Agrell (1881-1937).

Further discussion lies beyond the scope of these introductory remarks, and so we leave the reader to consider the following passage as a documentary contribution towards the historiography of the Tarot.

For further information and images on the cult of Mithras, one may consult the excellent website The Roman Cult of Mithras.

***

Undoubtedly one of the means used to preserve the Mithraic Mysteries was the incorporation of a number of their symbolical figures in that curious set of playing cards known as the Tarot, the origin of which has always been a subject of debate.

In Eliphas Lévi’s book Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, we read that in the dark ages when the wise men, or wizards, were persecuted and their secrets threatened with extinction, they decided to have the sacred, magical signs depicted in a pack of playing cards since no one would think of looking in such a place for Divine Wisdom; and vice, in the form of gambling, which perpetuates itself from age to age, would ensure that the cards and their signs were never lost to humanity since they would be kept in continual use. Many of the symbols on these cards are today clearly recognizable as being of Mithraic origin. Among them we find the Crown, the Emperor and Empress, the Pope or Father of fathers, the chariot of Hermes which is Mithras in his Sun chariot, the Judgement, the Hierophant, the Baphomet, or Head of the Goat of Mendes, the Burning Star and Eternal Youth (Mithras having always been alluded to as the brightest orb in the firmament, and represented as being eternally young), the Radiant Sun which is the Sun-God or Prince of Heaven himself, the Fool who is also the Juggler, wearing the cap that identifies him with Augustine’s “Fellow”, and finally, the Pentacle, the Mithraic symbol which ensures the soul free passage in its ascent to the Supernal Light. The prayer which is said to be offered with it almost certainly refers to Mithras whose number has always been seven since we first hear of him as the Seventh Amshaspand:

O first and seventh one, born to rule with power, Chief Word of the Pure Intelligence! Perfect work in the sight of the Father and the Son (Timeless Being and Ormuzd); by presenting unto thee in this seal the sign of life, I open the gate which thy power hath closed to the world, and freely traverse thy domains.

Now the Pentacle is said to be Solomon’s Seal, and Eliphas Lévi received his knowledge of the Tarot from the Kabbalah, of which King writes that many authors erroneously date it later than Christianity whereas its teachings belong to a far more remote antiquity, as is evident from the Book of Daniel with its Kabbalic symbolism. Furthermore:

The idea of Emanation is . . . the soul, the essential element of the Kabbalah; it is likewise… the essential character of Zoroastrianism. We may therefore consider that it was through their very intimate connexion with Persia that the Jews imbibed that idea. According to the Kabbalah, as according to the Zend-Avesta, all that exists has emanated from the source of the Infinite Light … all is an emanation from this Being; the nearer . . . that any approaches to him, the more perfect is it, and the less so does it become, as it recedes from him: this idea of gradation is eminently Persian.

This connexion of the Kabbalah with Mithraism would suggest that we may have stumbled on the explanation of yet another historical mystery—the reason for Julian’s wish and attempt to restore the city and temple of Jerusalem. Both he and Ammianus refer to this in their writings, and of how it was prevented in what seemed to be a supernatural manner by the appearance of alarming globes of fire which killed some of the workmen. This phenomenon was considered to indicate the disapproval of the Gods and the project was abandoned. But many historians have been puzzled by Julian’s attitude to the Jews in that he not only took deliberate measures for alleviating the oppressions felt by them but should also wish to rebuild Solomon’s Temple, the monument to an alien Faith. Our present evidence would seem to point to the fact that on its esoteric side, its Kabbalic teachings, the Faith was not alien, but so akin to that of Maximus and his pupil that they might well have visualized the rebuilt Temple of Solomon as providing yet another repository for their secret doctrines, a fitting shrine for the wise King’s Seal. Moreover the Jews shared Julian’s repellent proclivity for animal sacrifices, their altars being as blood-washed as Mithras’ Taurobolium. (1)

C. W. King suggests the possibility of the Knights Templars having been responsible for the plan of the Tarot Cards at the time of their persecution and dispersal in 1307. This Fraternity is believed to have been the Ancestor of modern Freemasonry. Lessing writes of them:

The Lodges of the Templars were in the very highest repute during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; and out of such a Templars’ Lodge which had been continually kept up in the heart of London was the Society of Freemasons established in the seventeenth century by Sir Christopher Wren.

This would appear to endorse Michelet’s supposition that some of the Templars who escaped formed secret societies. He tells us in Histoire de France that all except two disappeared in Scotland from whence the highest mysteries of Freemasonry have come, the highest grades being called the Scotch.

It appears that the degrees in Freemasonry have one very strong similarity to those of Mithraism in that the first three do not denote illumination or true initiation, and the neophytes are only admitted into the Mysteries, thus becoming Illuminati, when they reach the Fourth Degree of Scottish Novices; the Fifth Degree being Scottish Knights.

King writes that: “the most important division of French Freemasons style themselves Parisian Templars and say they have kept up the succession of Grand Masters unbroken. François I was said to have burnt alive four men convicted of being Templars. If true this suffices to prove the existence of that fraternity down to a period but little removed from the public manifestation of the Rosicrucians.”

This savagery on the part of a Catholic King would suggest that the vigilance of the church against the survival of any form of the Mithraic cult was still unrelaxed in the sixteenth century. But it was evidently unable to prevent the renaissance of the Mysteries a century later by the Lutheran Mystic, J. V. Andrea, the Founder according to Nicolai, of modern Rosicrucianism.

This man, who was almoner to the Duke of Württemburg, used the Knights Templars badge of the Rosy Cross for his own fraternity, which aimed at fusing all Christian sects into a universal brotherhood. It is interesting to note that Martin Luther’s seal was a Rose and a Cross.

Mithraism may also be traced in modern occultism, especially in astrology and numerology which were prominent features of the Mysteries, and of Babylonian origin. Cumont points out that even before the Roman Emperors had forbidden the exercise of idolatry “their edicts against astrology and magic furnished an indirect means of attacking the clergy and disciples of Mithra”. He also says:

Astrology . . . owes some share of its success to the Mithraic propaganda, and Mithraism is therefore partly responsible for the triumph in the West of this pseudo-science with its long train of errors and terrors… .

But when we have cited all the external, unorthodox hiding places of the Fellow in the Cap from which he has continued to sway the minds and hearts of men, we must not forget that his chief and most dangerous hiding place is in those very minds and hearts. While they harbour his spirit, while the mind craves for dark mysteries and secret doctrines, and is not content with the clear, clean-cut and simple teaching of the Man of Galilee, and while the heart secretly loves and clings to the natural world and all that is in that world proving that the love of the Father is not in it; while it admires and applauds the militaristic virtues, the world-conquering spirit, instead of loving and enthroning the pacific, world-transcending spirit of Jesus the Christ, there can be no real Christianity on earth, nor in the policies of the world. For what is secretly loved must inevitably be manifested. Men may profess to be Christians but their behaviour will always betray them. The nationalism, materialism, violence of the present age clearly reveals not the worship of the Christ but of Mithras.

It is from this final hiding place — the soul of man — that the pagan god must be ejected, and once this is done the search for him may cease. There would be no need to seek through the ages in orthodox and unorthodox places for evidence of his presence and worship in order to dislodge him, for without our hearts and minds through which to function he could not live for a moment. It is our hearts that give him life, our minds that give him power. Withdraw them and enshrine in them instead the compassionate Christ and the real victory over Mithras believed, falsely, to have taken place in the fourth century, would at last, and in our time, be achieved.

1. In this connexion the following citation from The Sibylline Oracles, translated from the Hellenistic-Jewish Texts by the Rev. H. N. Bate, M.A., is of interest:

Thereafter shall there be a holy race of God-fearing men … who will pay honour to the temple of the great God, with the fat and savour of holy hecatombs, with sacrifices of fat bulls and rams without blemish, the first-born of sheep and fat flocks of lambs making holy oblations upon the great altar.” (Book iii, 573-9.)

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Etteilla ou le devin du siècle – Etteilla, or the Soothsayer of the Century

Translator’s Introduction

Prior to inaugurating a series of posts on Etteilla as seen by his peers, it would be remiss not to present one piece of curiosa, a musical score devoted to the praises of the great cartomancer himself, by two of his students. The lyrics, by one poetaster by the name of Messageot, accompanied the music of Madame Le Blanc, based on the tune of Dalayrac’s Nina. The tune in question may be heard here. The identity of these two students of Etteilla’s will be dealt with shortly, as will the background to this musical piece.

This music appeared in issue 12 of Etteilla’s journal, which is, in the words of Montague Summers, “of the last rarity.”

***

Etteilla ou le devin du siècle

Etteilla, or the Soothsayer of the Century

Madame Le Blanc, Mistress of the Harpsichord, Student of Rameau

Lyrics by Mr Meſageot, of Villenaux

ETTEILLA
ou
Le Devin du SiècleAvec accompagnement de ClavecinAir ! De Nina

J’ai perdu le plus tendre amant, l’ingrat a t-il une autre amie : ah !
Bientôt cet affreux tourment terminera ma triste vie,
Mais, pour s’instruire, mais pour s’instruire, on va, on va chez le fameux Etteilla, chez le fameux Etteilla.

2

Lise y court y vole Soudain
Cédant à l’espoir, à la crainte ….,
Tremblant, elle avoue au devin,
Les maux dont son âme est atteinte….
Bon jeune Lise, bon jeune Lise
À ça, à ça,
Écoutez bien Etteilla …. (bis)

3

Pour calmer la vive douleur
De cette amante désolée ….,
Le sage lui dit; la douceur
Vous aura bientôt consolée….,
Non jeune Lise, non jeune Lise,
Sans ça, Sans ça,
Plus d’amant, ni d’Etteilla….. (bis)

4

La Rose est la plus belle fleur;
De Zéphir elle est la maitresse….,
Jamais entr’eux la moindre aigreur,
La Rose est douce, elle intéresse….,
Oui soyez douce; Oui soyez douce,
Sans ça, Sans ça,
Plus d’amant, ni d’Etteilla….. (bis)

5

Ce conseil prudent est suivi
Et l’amant revient plus fidèle….,
Le malheur de Lise a servi
À la rendre plus digne d’elle….,
Quoi… jeune Lise, Quoi… jeune Lise,
On a, On a,
Son bonheur par Etteilla….. (bis)

***

ETTEILLA

Or

The Soothsayer of the Century

Accompanied on the Harpsichord

To the tune of Nina

 

I have lost the dearest lover, has that ingrate another girlfriend?

Soon this awful torment will end my sad life,

But, to instruct oneself, but, to instruct oneself, we go, we go, to the famous Etteilla, to the famous Etteilla.

2

Lise runs there, flies there, Suddenly

Giving in to hope, to fear,

Trembling she confesses to the soothsayer

The ills that afflict her soul

Good young Lise, good young Lise,

To that, to that

Listen well to Etteilla (x2)

3

To soothe the sharp pain

Of this saddened lover

The sage tells her, gentleness

Will soon have you consoled.

No, young Lise, no, young Lise,

Without which, without which,

No more lover, nor Etteilla (x2)

4

The Rose is the prettiest flower,

She is the mistress of Zephyr,

Never the slightest bitterness between them,

The Rose is gentle, she garners interest,

Yes, be gentle, yes be gentle,

Without which, without which,

No more lover, nor Etteilla (x2)

5

This prudent advice is followed,

And the lover returns, more faithful,

The sorrows of Lise have served

To make her more worthy of herself,

What, young Lise, what, young Lise,

We get, we get,

Our happiness through Etteilla (x2)

***

Martine Beauvais: The Tarot of Marseilles: Key to the Prophecies of Nostradamus

Translator’s Introduction

Previously, we have published the only substantive account in English of the Surrealist artist and alchemist, Maurice Baskine and his Tarot deck, as well as an enigmatic diagrammatic representation of the structure of the Tarot trumps. To add to this small but important body of work, we present the following article-interview of Baskine and his research on the works of Nostradamus, in relation to the Tarot. No more than his works on the Tarot, Baskine’s writings on Nostradamus were never published in his lifetime, and we have been unable to determine what has become of his written legacy.

This article was first published in V, 11th June , 1950.

***

The Tarot of Marseilles:

Key to the Prophecies of Nostradamus

Martine Beauvais

If he studies the past, Baskine is also a seer. He has rendered the four elements of the atomic age into a paranoiac sculpture.

A corner of the suburbs of Paris. An old abandoned park there has become the refuge of lovers in search of solitude, and an unexpected playground for the kids of the neighbourhood. A small cottage in the park. A strange character lives there: Maurice Baskine, last of the alchemists.

In his house surrounded by thorn bushes, the solitary man accomplishes a round in Infinity (Baskine spells Infinity as Unfinity*).

A round that is not that of a dreamer. Head accountant, Maurice Baskine had had to verify, and to credit, the strange accounting of Nostradamus. (*)

Nostradamus. A prophet?

– “No, replies Maurice Baskine. The Centuries of Michel de Nostre-Dame, alias Nostradamus, are an alchemical treatise.”

Chance was to place within his hands the two documents which would enable Maurice Baskine to decipher the centuries-old mystery of Nostradamus.

In 1927, Pierre Piobb (*) produced a facsimile edition of the 1668 edition published by Jean Janson of Amsterdam, considered by researchers as being the editio princeps.

– “I am an autodidact, says Maurice Baskine, everything I discovered was revealed to me…”

“The war of 1914 forced me to stop my studies. At the age of 14 I was working in the Crédit Lyonnais. All the while working hard to earn a living, I was slowly climbing the steps of initiation, until the moment in which I found myself in possession of the work of Pierre Piobb.”

“Using the sciences I have studied, it is possible for me to see future events. Yet, it would be impossible for me, just as it would be for anyone else, to condense them into a poetic quatrain as Nostradamus did. And the work of Nostradamus has 944 of them! If a few hundred of these verses have been applied to events which have occurred throughout history, no one has ever been able to decipher one that was to occur in the future. From there to think that the work contained something else, there is but one step. I took that step.

For Baskine, the work of Nostradamus is but a treatise of experimental philosophy: the Palace of Mirages.

Maurice Baskine enjoys relaxing by the columns of knowledge.

– “Nostradamus created the fiction of a little world: the “microcosm”, analogous to the wider world, or “macrocosm”, in which he has his characters evolve, and to which he assigns certain events. The little world evolves on a map: a part of Europe, Africa and Asia Minor. The events therefore occur in different European States. But the battles and massacres of the work will be, in the final analysis, but rounds of checkers and chess.”

It is in the Tarot of Marseilles that Maurice Baskine was able to find the keys which enabled him to crack open the locks to the Nostradamic cryptography.

A curious thing, it was at the very moment that the facsimile edition of the Centuries was published that Mr Paul Marteau (*) of the Grimaud firm (the major playing card publisher), found in the archives of a factory he owned in Marseilles, an edition of the cards which was more accurate than the one he was then printing. He stopped printing the defective Tarot.

It was due to these two documents: Piobb’s document and the Tarot of Marseilles, that Maurice Baskine was able to little by little enter into the work of Michel de Notre-Dame and was able to restore it.

Nostradamus cursed his work. The curse is contained in the sole Latin quatrain of the work, placed above Century VII. (*)

Since Maurice Baskine has undertaken the monumental research for which he was destined, he no longer counts the avatars and the calamities which have rained down upon him. Everything that is contained within that accursed book has turned against the denouncer of evil forces, until the day when the enigma will be completely pierced.

– “The work will soon be liberated, proclaims Baskine. Nostradamus has allowed me to pierce the mystery of his message issued forth to man of the twentieth century, a message which today has become “disintegrated.””

– Martine Beauvais

Translator’s Notes

• Unfinity: Baskine spells the French word for infinity using the homonymous prefix UN – or ‘one’.
• On Nostradamus, one will be able to consult a vast amount of material in both English and French.
• On Pierre Piobb and his thinking on the Tarot, see our series of articles starting here. Piobb’s edition of Nostradamus is available here.
• On Paul Marteau and his contribution to the world of Tarot, see our extensive series of articles, starting here.
• The sentence in question, “Qui aliter facit, is ritè, sacer esto“, is in fact a more or less direct quotation from the work De honesta disciplina by the Renaissance scholar Crinitus.

Tchalaï Unger: Le Tarot Tzigane

Le Tarot Tzigane

Tchalaï Unger

Tchalaï Unger’s seminal work on the Marseilles Tarot has been amply explored on these pages, alongside some of her other writings. Those interested in her work will be delighted to discover that her Tarot Tzigane, first published in 1984 by Grimaud, and long out of print, is once again available courtesy of éditions Trajectoire in France.

This beautifully produced deck of 38 cards comes in a presentation box along with a reprint of the book Le véritable Tarot Tzigane, in full colour, with additional material drawn from the booklet that accompanied the early edition of the deck as well. Our translation of one chapter may be read here.

This deck is now available from the publisher and the usual online outlets.

 

Many thanks to the publisher for graciously sending us a review copy of this wonderful deck.

***

Yves Lévy: The Emperor

Translator’s Introduction

From the supposed meaning, whether symbolic or cartomantic, of the Tarot cards taken in isolation to their combined values in a divinatory context, the search for meaning naturally extends to the sequential order of the cards, and from there, to structural considerations of a more or less greater profundity, and a more or less greater contrivance. Numerous elaborate theories detailing the supposed inner architecture of the Tarot have been proposed, typically with reference to the Kabbalah, to numerology, to astrology, or to a whole host of interpretations of varying worth and validity.

That is to say that the felicitous marriage of intelligence, insight, historical accuracy and plausibility is a rare bird in the vast literature on the Tarot. One case must be nonetheless be mentioned, the following piece by Yves Lévy, himself a specialist of medieval and Renaissance history and political theory, and a keen connoisseur of the Tarot.

[…]

 

The Emperor

Yves Lévy

Any work, any article at all whatsoever on the Tarot will teach you – if you were not already aware – that the Emperor is will. That is what arcanum IV will be for those who seek to divine the future. It is true that the Tarot is older than its divinatory use, which only dates back to the latter half of the eighteenth century, according to Henri-René d’Allemagne. This series of strange images was first of all a game of cards (but our deck of ordinary playing cards is also used for divination – and more frequently than the Tarot – without having been designed for that purpose). It is also in the eighteenth century, it would seem, that questions began to be asked as to whether these figures – especially those of the major arcana – did not possess some hidden meaning, and perhaps the most fascinating of all hidden meanings: a general interpretation of the universe. On this subject, minds raced, and immediately one commentator sprang all the way back to ancient Egypt, and evokes the mysterious learning of its priests, finds it within the images of the Tarot, and traces out the outlines of a hypothetical transmission of the mystical dictionary in twenty-two articles. Since then, the world of culture is divided on the subject: some believe in the Tarot, and strive to pierce its secret, the greater part do not believe in it and deliberately ignore it.

And yet, one must explain the Tarot all the same. This is a challenge thrown down to us. It is all too easy to turn one’s head away. One would have to be able to deny it. And how could we deny it without having explained it? In order to deny or to affirm, one must explain the Tarot.

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Louis Delbeke: Universal and Omniversal Harmony

Translator’s Introduction

One of the most obscure and curious exegeses of the Tarot, surpassing even the lucubrations of Court de Gébelin’s Monde Primitif, must be the work of the Belgian artist Louis Delbeke (1821-1891). Delbeke’s extensive and incomplete work must rank among the oddest interpretations undertaken concerning the significance of the Tarot cards so far, and yet it also ranks among the least known. This is due no doubt to the very limited circulation of the self-published tomes and the lack of publicity at the time.

A chapter is devoted to Delbeke’s life and work in L’Art Flamand [Flemish Art], by Jules Du Jardin, 1898.

Portrait of Louis Delbeke

“Louis Delbeke made it clear that his seeker’s spirit had been struck by the sublime intelligence of esotericism and that he meant to devote his life to the study of the occult science in which he had the firm conviction, he would discover the seeds of the supreme art!”

His works are described as ” hermeneutic books, sprinkled with schematic drawings, of an abstract ideology, exegeses unfortunately difficult to read for the writer was not possessed of the genius of the French language.” (p. 117)

Delbeke’s influences, according to his biographer, included Éliphas Lévi, Fabre d’Olivet, and Saint-Yves d’Alveydre (ibid.). Delbeke’s symbolic language is composed largely of Biblical scenes, Masonic imagery and depictions of the Greco-Roman pantheon. Certain allusions to astrology, alchemy and various other religious traditions can equally be seen.

A comprehensive review of the work, indeed, the only one, taken from the catalogue of the Librairie Nourry, reads as follows:

L’Harmonie Universelle, by the learned initiate Louis Delbeke, is a work of high occultism which was never commercially released and was reserved for a mysterious association of mages. The master explains the Universal and Omniversal Harmony by means of the keys of hermeticism (alchemy), the Kabbalah, astrology, magic, the astral light, numbers, the Apocalypse, and the Tarot. Never before has such a complete concordance between the abstract and the concrete, the invisible and the visible, been established; and so, the reader will find, within these somewhat forbidding but transcendent pages, the revelation of the hieroglyphs of the great book of nature. The language of the birds, which one must understand symbolically, enlightens the great religious and political mysteries for, says the author, the hermetic philosopher has hidden therein the genius of the Egyptian arcana and knowledge of the absolute. The part devoted to the various nations in their relations with the laws of number, the planets and the zodiac, is particularly suggestive and the events have justified Delbeke’s predictions. Finally, the different religions, notably those of Egypt and of India, are more particularly considered according to the arcana of the Tarot. The economy of this remarkable work hinges from one end to the other on the two messianisms: the Christ of light and the Christ of darkness. For the author, Christ corresponds to the second phase of the Tarot, he lets flow the waters of justice which have their origin in Agni, Vishnu, etc; but he announces a new Moses who, addressing himself to the intelligences, will bring back the reign of the spirit into the world. One must also note the mission of Saint John in the foundation of Freemasonry and the secret societies. But we must refrain from an analysis of this powerful book. A more in-depth study would lie largely beyond the scope of a brochure. This work, undertaken with the help of a sponsor, was interrupted by his death. It remains unfinished, but such as it is, it deserves a place of choice in the libraries of occultism.

By way of introduction to the multi-faceted thought of this little-known Belgian artist, we present some excerpts from his work.

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Universal and Omniversal Harmony

Louis Delbeke

 

The hermetic art as science is the interpreter of the Olympian gods as well as the earthly powers. By Olympian gods we mean the intellectual powers of the flourishing world, or the learned Oriental element, which preceded the reign of philosophical science, the preserve of the Egyptians. This Oriental science, finally summarised in Zoroaster, was elaborated in the tree of life; a tree laden with apples, and hidden within the bosom of the mysterious garden known as the Garden of the Hesperides. The golden apples are akin to the Tarot: it is an assembly of enigmatic portraits of which our deck of cards gives a fairly vague idea. This assembly of living portraits encloses the entire secret game of the universal harmony.

– Harmonie universelle: quelques notions sur l’absolu en science et en art ou la loi du vrai et du beau, 1861, p. 13.

The Tarot, a series of emblematic images, depicts by means of a certain number of tableaux, the phases which a regularly organised society must undergo before reaching its fulfilment. This Tarot, image of the Great Work, encloses moreover allegorical and emblematic images which constitute the representation of the phases which the must work must undergo, in the form of the four suits or typical formulae, the powers which, akin to satellites, come to help the accomplishment of the goal; they are the active limbs of the game, the arms which push the wheel or the Great Work, until its complete accomplishment.

These same arms, we possess them in our decks of cards; they are distinguished by colour as by form. The suit of hearts was distinguished in the occult science under the denomination of cups, or composed or parabolic lines. Our diamonds were called staffs, or straight lines or right angles. The spades were flaming swords or spirals, or tendrils. The clubs in the [occult] science were called wheels, circles, coins or dragons.

Each of these active forces, called to push the social wheel, belongs, according to its nature, to one of the four agglomerations of islands surrounding Europe. The cups belong to the Italian islands: this is the preserve of the priest and that of the poet; the staffs, or straight lines or right angles, belong to the islands of Greece: this is the preserve of the prince and that of the shepherd; the sword or flaming line belongs to the British isles; this is the preserve of the judge and of the warrior; the circle or coin, the so-called clubs, belong to the islands of the north: this is the preserve of the merchant and of the historiographer-geologist.

(vol. 2 pp. 75-76)

As above, so below, may be interpreted as follows: the Tarot is akin to the Zohar, the face of the Devil is akin to the face of God; the one is dark and palpable, the other is white and abstract, both have the same origin, emanating from the edenic science, each rendering in its own way the various phases of the Great Work of universal creation. In effect, the Tarot, regardless of the transformation of its figures, by the depth of its thought which governs the pictures which form the three receptacles, depicts the universal creation in every respect with that fidelity and that accuracy which are the preserve of all that is absolute in matter of living science, and that is why, next to God or light, a shadow will appear to affirm the radiance of the light and the complete the whole, in the same way, the Tarot will remain akin to a witness of the Zohar and of all the edenic science which is the luminous principal of all knowledge and of all truth, with respect to the succession of things in the domain of creation and the spiritualisation of the world.

(vol. 3 , pp. 4-5)

***

Thierry Depaulis: B.-P. Grimaud, or Cards in the Industrial Age

Translator’s Introduction

Previously, we have published various materials relating to Paul Marteau, his writings and deck, Grimaud and the Tarot of Marseilles, and pending publication of further documentation, this article, published in the late 1980s in the gaming magazine Jeux & stratégie as part of a series by Tarot historian Thierry Depaulis, provides a concise and highly readable overview of the history of the Grimaud card company.

This series, profusely illustrated and well-documented, forms a mini history in itself of games and gaming throughout the ages, especially in France.

This article was originally published in Jeux & stratégie n° 47, Excelsior Publications, October 1987. Read the original French here. Published with the kind permission of the author.

***

B.-P. Grimaud, or Cards in the Industrial Age

Thierry Depaulis

All players of cards know the name of Baptiste-Paul Grimaud, written on almost 80% of the decks sold in France. Less well known is the exemplary history of this enterprising captain of industry.

Baptiste-Paul Grimaud was born in Brulain (Deux-Sèvres) in 1817. “Gone up” to Paris at the age of twenty-three to make his fortune, he first of all sets himself up as a “transport commissioner”, a profession which the growth of railways and means of transport made indispensable.

But he certainly has something better to do; in 1851, the chance to become a manufacturer of playing cards presented itself to him. Alexandre-Eugène Martineau and Marcel Bourru had chosen to become associates to commercialise patent number 6103, patented in 1847 by Henri-Eumènes Roche, “chemist in Paris” – and who had left it to them – for the manufacture of so-called “opaque” playing cards. Set up in 66 rue de Bondy (presently rue René Boulanger, 10th arrondissement of Paris), then in number 70, Bourru and Martineau sold their business the following year to Grimaud.

The First Associates

Baptiste-Paul Grimaud was on the lookout for the slightest “deal.” Therefore he associated himself with a certain Marchand in 1853 to manufacture playing cards and domino cards. Then he decided to take part in the Universal Exposition in Paris and received an “honourable mention.” Always hungry for innovation, Grimaud signed a contract with Jean-Marie Blaquière, on March 1st 1856, to buy out his patent for “aerofrugal” or “wafer” cards, as well as the special machine he had designed.

But the great technological leap was the appearance of the metallic rounded corners, which seemingly no one had thought of before, and which Firmin Chappelier had just invented. On the 21st of January 1858, an exchange of letters sealed the deal and in a way cornered the market. Chappelier outlined the marvellous advantages of cards with rounded corners and moreover spoke of taking out patents abroad; he did not hesitate to say that “there is a fortune to be made in a very short time”! The contract was thus signed between Grimaud and Chappelier on the 25th of July 1858. This laid out the sale of the new invention to Grimaud, in exchange for 1,200 francs per month for four years to Chappelier.

The Growth of the Enterprise

In April 1865, Grimaud leaves the premises in rue de Bondy, which had become too small, to set up not very far from there, in 54 rue de Lancry (10th arrondissement of Paris), where the sign B.-P. Grimaud is still visible today above the courtyard doorway. In 1866, B.-P. Grimaud takes on a new associate called Chartier. A financial contribution which will powerfully help our manufacturer. Little by little, new machines are set to work. Then, Léo Marteau (Baptiste-Paul’s nephew) becomes an associate. In 1877, a patent – the first registered by Grimaud – marks the appearance of the corner index, today in universal use. Grimaud is then the largest French card manufacturer, and his appetite has no limits. From 1876, he buys the material and models for the cards of the famous Épinal imagery from Charles Pellerin. The latter had recently decided to end this ancestral activity, of which competition had reduced the profitability. In 1885, Grimaud bought out 65% of the capital of Camoin, in Marseilles, who had been his main rival; in 1888, the two companies merged all the while keeping their independence. Grimaud was then employing 200 workers in Paris. In 1891, the Parisian company Lequart and Mignot is bought out, followed by Bony in Lunéville, Dieudonné in Angers, and Fossorier and Amar in Paris (in 1910).

The Successors of Baptiste-Paul Grimaud

Baptiste-Paul Grimaud dies in 1899, at the age of 82. Immediately, his nephews Léo and Georges Marteau take the reins of the company. But Georges Marteau dies in 1916, not before having left his superb collection of antique playing cards to the Bibliothèque Nationale. The company then becomes known as “Chartier, Marteau et Boudin,” and remains as such until 1962. In 1920, Léo dies in turn, leaving Paul Marteau alone at the head of Grimaud. The man is more interested in philosophy than in industrial methods: in 1930 he will launch the “Ancient Tarot of Marseilles” which has since fascinated generations of occultists.

But the war and the loss of the colonial markets, the ageing machines and methods, the disappearance of the State monopoly in 1945, deal a blow to the health of the prestigious firm. In 1962, Jean-Marie Simon (of “La Ducale”, in Nancy), buys out the declining empire, but only the brand and the clientele are retained, with a new company called “J.M.S.-France Cartes,” within the bosom of the Parker Brothers group, which itself will later be bought out by the American General Mills group, who then become owners of what remains of Grimaud in 1968. The business then passes from these American hands to the German Jany group, the owners of ASS, the German equivalent of France-Cartes.

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Notes

A more comprehensive picture of the complexities behind the recent history of Grimaud has been kindly provided by the author:

Grimaud was first of all bought out (from the Marteau family) in 1963 by a consortium led by Jean-Marie Simon, associated with the Amalgamated Playing Card Co. (Waddington and Thomas De La Rue). This group took the name Ets Jean-Marie Simon France-Cartes. In 1969, De La Rue retires, and Waddington sells France-Cartes (and therefore Grimaud) to Parker, which had just been bought out in the US by General Mills (a group specialising in baking and biscuits).

The Miro Company had in the meantime also been bought out by Parker, and also found itself in the ‘games’ portfolio of General Mills in France… In 1980, all these branches (France-Cartes, Miro, Capiepa, Meccano…) were grouped into one sole entity, named Miro-Meccano, which became “General Mills Jeux et Jouets” in 1984. But in 1986, General Mills sold its toys and games interests to Hasbro, which immediately sold off France-Cartes to Hans Jany, leader of ASS in Leinfelden-Echterdingen in Germany.

However, Jany’s personal bankruptcy led to the sale of Grimaud-France-Cartes to Yves Weisbuch in 1989. Weisbuch had bought out the Héron firm (in Mérignac, near Bordeau) in 1986 from the Boéchat family, who had moved there from Switzerland shortly before WWII. In 1989, following Jany’s bankruptcy, he bought out Grimaud-France-Cartes, which he rebuilt and lead for many years before his death. Both companies would be merged as the Compagnie Européenne de Cartes, but Héron would be closed down in 2002.

Later, the Weisbuch family, then owners of Grimaud-France-Cartes, would sell the business to the Belgian giant CartaMundi in 2014.

Image courtesy of the Canadian Museum of History.

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