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

Fortitude. This is one of the cardinal virtues, of which I shall speak later. The female figure is usually represented as closing the mouth of a lion. In the earlier form which is printed by Court de Gebelin, she is obviously opening it. The first alternative is better symbolically, but either is an instance of strength in its conventional understanding, and conveys the idea of mastery. It has been said that the figure represents organic force, moral force and the principle of all force.

S. L. MacGregor Mathers's Divinatory Meanings

Upright

Equilibrium, Balance, Justice

Reversed

Bigotry, Want of Balance, Abuse of Justice, Over-severity, Inequality, Bias.

Papus's Divinatory Meanings

Justice.