Antoine COURT de Gébelin, (1725–1784) was the son of the more famous Huguenot (protestant) minister Antoine Court (1696 –1760), the celebrated “Restorer of Protestantism in France.”  The son was also a Huguenot minister and styled himself Antoine Court de Gébelin, presumably to distinguish himself from his famous father.  He retired from active Protestant ministry to devote himself to literary persuits and in 1771 was initiated as a Freemason.  He became a member and secretary of the famous “Lodge of the Nine Sisters  (Loge des Neuf Sœurs) a Masonic Lodge of the Grand Orient de France in Paris influential in organizing French support for the American Revolution. As secretary of the lodge he welcomed Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, and John Paul Jones as brother-Masons and members in 1778.  Franklin was elected “Venerable Master” of the lodge from 1779-81, and Court de Gébelin co-operated with Franklin and others by contributing to Affaires de l’Angleterre et de l’Amérique (1776, sqq.), a periodical devoted to the support of American independence.

COURT de Gébelin is best known as the person who initiated the interpretation of Tarot cards as an arcane ancient Egyptian repository of timeless esoteric wisdom.  His claims are found in volume eight of his compendium,  Le Monde primitif, analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne (The Primeval World, Analyzed and Compared to the Modern World), published in multiple volumes from 1779-1784. In this work he sought to uncover the mysterious origins of languages, mythologies, and ancient symbols.

     Without any knowledge of hieroglyphics or historical evidence he intuited that ancient Egyptian priests had distilled a mysterious “Book of Thoth” into the images on the Major Arcana (22 trump cards) of the Tarot deck, and that Joseph’s interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream (Gen.40-41) employed the symbolism encoded in these cards.  The Tarot/Book of Thoth somehow mysteriously found its way to Rome where, secretly known to the popes, the Tarot was introduced into France via Avignon in the 14th century. An appended from essay from the “Book of Thoth” opffers suggestions on using the Tarot cards in divination (cartomancy); within two years the fortune-teller known as “Etteilla” published a technique for reading the tarot, and the practice of tarot reading was born.

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