MCollins This is probably pretty familiar to anyone into tarot history. Jean-Baptiste Alliette created the system and published under the name Etteilla - his surname spelled backwards.
He was part of the 18th-century French occult and cartomancy scene and helped shape the first tarot divination literature. His work belonged to the wider shift that treated tarot as a symbolic or fortune-telling tool instead of just a card game.
Etteilla’s approach also fed into later French cartomancy, including the scene around Marie Anne Adelaide Lenormand. She built her own method, but her fame later led to the Lenormand cards being associated with her name.
He put out instructional material in French, among the earliest attempts to organize tarot reading as a practice.
More broadly, tarot began in 15th-century Europe as playing cards, with divinatory meanings developing later through different cultural and esoteric influences. Some occult sources claim earlier or non-European origins, but mainstream historical research doesn’t back those claims.
