Court de Gebelin, Father of taromancy

Case : 181. 

Antoine Court, who named himself Antoine Court de Gébelin (1725 – 1784), was a former Protestant pastor, born at Nîmes, who initiated the interpretation of the Tarot as an arcane repository of timeless esoteric wisdom. De Gébelin wrote an essay included in his Le Monde primitif, analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne (The Primeval World, Analyzed and Compared to the Modern World) in 1781. Court de Gébelin developed a reconstruction of Tarot history, without producing any historical evidence, which was that Egyptian priests had distilled the ancient Book of Thoth into these images. An essay by the Comte de Mellet included in Court de Gebelin's Monde primitif is responsible for the mystical connection of the Tarot's 21 trumps and the fool with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This book makes him become the father of taromancy with two most important thoughts of tarot occult: Egyptian Magic Theory and Hebrew Kabbalah Theory.