Court de Gebelin Trumps

About the Deck

Drawn by Court de Gebelin in attempt to show that the Tarot was Egyptian in origin, these cards represent the height of circular logic. They are far more eighteenth-century than they are Egyptian, and in any case they are basically a reproduction of the far older Marseilles pattern tarot deck, with some ideological changes to help him prove his own point.

Provenance

Court de Gebelin. France, 1781.

According to Many Schools of Thought

A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings

The High Priest or Hierophant, called also Spiritual Father, and more commonly and obviously the Pope. It seems even to have been named the Abbot, and then its correspondence, the High Priestess, was the Abbess or Mother of the Convent. Both are arbitrary names. The insignia of the figures are papal, and in such case the High Priestess is and can be only the Church, to whom Pope and priests are married by the spiritual rite of ordination. I think, however, that in its primitive form this card did not represent the Roman Pontiff.

S. L. MacGregor Mathers's Divinatory Meanings

Upright

 Mercy, Beneficence Kindness, Goodness

Reversed

Over-kindness, weakness, Foolish exercise of generosity.

Papus's Divinatory Meanings

Inspiration.