Tarot Etteilla - philological reproduction of an 1789 tarot deck
Tarot decks are rarely made by people who go down in history. Jean-Baptiste Alliette is an exception. Working under the pseudonym Etteilla, he designed a tarot in 1789 that consciously connected the Major and Minor Arcana to other divinatory practices of his era. This deck from Lo Scarabeo is a philological reproduction of that original: no reinterpretation, no modernisation, just a return as faithful as possible to the source material.
The deck appears in Lo Scarabeo's Anima Antiqua series, a line that reproduces historical decks on quality card stock. The limited edition is printed on sturdy card stock and packaged in a premium box with a lift-top lid.
What sets this apart from a modern tarot deck
Most tarot decks today draw on the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition of 1909 or the Thoth tradition of the 1940s. Etteilla's design is older and goes in a different direction. He connected the Arcana to astrology, alchemy and other divinatory systems that circulated in his time. That makes this deck substantially different from what most readers are used to.
The cards have not been redrawn or updated. This is a reproduction, which means the imagery, proportions and symbolism go directly back to the eighteenth-century original. Anyone using that as a starting point for study or reading holds something most modern decks cannot offer.
Who this deck is published for
Lo Scarabeo describes this deck as a must-have for historians and tarot collectors. That is an accurate description. The philological approach and limited edition make it primarily interesting for people who want to study the development of tarot or build a historically grounded collection.
The guidebook runs to 32 pages. No further detail about its contents is available in the current product information.
If you want to understand where modern tarot comes from, Etteilla is a logical step back in time. This deck shows what tarot looked like before Waite and Crowley reshaped the system.
About Etteilla and Lo Scarabeo
Jean-Baptiste Alliette (1738-1791) was a French occultist who was among the first to systematically connect tarot to other esoteric traditions. He is regarded as one of the earliest professional tarot readers in Western history. His work predates the major occult revisions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Lo Scarabeo is an Italian publisher with decades of experience producing tarot decks, with particular attention to historical reproduction and artistic quality. The Anima Antiqua series is designed specifically to make historical decks accessible without modernising them.
Specifications
- Publisher: Lo Scarabeo
- Publication date: 8 April 2026
- Language: English
- Guidebook: 32 pages
- ISBN-10: 0738784796
- ISBN-13: 978-0738784793
- Weight: 371 g
- Dimensions: 79 x 46 x 128 mm
- Edition: Limited edition, Anima Antiqua series
- Packaging: Premium box with lift-top lid
Questions we often get
How does this deck differ from a standard Rider-Waite-Smith deck?
Etteilla's design dates from 1789, more than a century before the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of 1909. The imagery, the structure of the Arcana and the connections to other divinatory practices are fundamentally different. This is not a variant of RWS but an independent historical system.
Is this deck intended for reading, or primarily for collecting?
That depends on your familiarity with Etteilla's system. Lo Scarabeo describes it primarily as interesting for historians and collectors. The guidebook runs to 32 pages; how thoroughly it covers the card meanings is not specified in the available product information.
