Etteilla

Jean -François Alliette (* 1738, † December 12, 1791 in Paris), better known by his pseudonym Etteilla, was a French occultist and Tarot researchers.

Jean -François Alliette was the first to develop a concept for the interpretation of Tarot cards and was instrumental in the development of the esoteric Tarot cards. He also influenced Marie Anne Lenormand. In the years 1783 - 1784 published his work Alliette Manière avec un jeu de se recréer de cartes nommées Tarot, which even today is considered the standard work of card reading. In 1788 he founded the Association of interpreters of the book of Thoth, an association which dealt with the divinatory interpretation of the Tarot. In 1789 he published an own Tarot, however is significantly different in structure and in the card names from the classic Tarot. The well-known as the Grand Etteilla game is from 1 - numbered 78, to dispense with the distinction between large and small arcana cards and the names soft in places enormously from the classic Tarot from. The Grand Etteilla Tarot is the first that has correspondences to astrology.

Due to the unintelligible for subsequent changes in the Tarot Tarot researchers, as well as due to its extravagant appearance and his theories about the origin of the Tarot, he was often ridiculed and not taken for full. So dubbed him as Eliphas Levi as an illuminated fools.

According to the theory of Alliette to the Tarot in the year 2170 BC, what the year 171 after the Flood to have been according to his calculations, have been invented in a circle of magicians under the chairmanship of Hermes Trismegistus, but does not list Alliette, how he came to this theory.