The third deal is “Etteila’s great figure,” which gives the key to the past, present, and future of the person about whose fate inquiry is being made.
Take out the Atout numbered One, or the Juggler. Deal ten cards side by side on the left of the table. Shuffle and cut three times, and then deal ten more across the top. Then shuffle, cut, and deal ten more on the right side, thus forming a hollow square, with the thirty Atout and pip cards falling indiscriminately, but arranged side by side.
Deal thirty cards in a ring in the centre, leaving seventeen cards besides the Juggler, or on one side for the stock, which has the meaning ascribed to it in the other deals.
To read the cards, they must be picked up one by one, beginning with the last one dealt on the right side of the open square and the last one of the ring, explaining their meaning and significance as they are placed together in pairs, and then discarding them entirely. The twenty cards that are first taken up relate to the past.
The next twenty should be lifted in the same way, starting with the top card of the square, and mating it with the one nearest it of the centre circle, which should be the eleventh one dealt. These twenty cards represent the present.
The remaining twenty cards, that should be selected in the same way, foretell the future.
The fourth deal is simple, and through it answers may be obtained to any queries that are put that have not been covered by the three preceding revelations. Shuffle all the cards together and cut three times. Then deal seven cards from right to left and read the answer.
Papus declares that the above system of fortune-telling is based upon Etteila’s method “as given in his Book of Thoth that is very rare,” and that his method has “never before been seriously elucidated by any of his numerous disciples.” Papus, therefore, is one of the first to explain it upon “simple principles,” which, however, require further simplification to be practical, probably owing to some misprints in his volume.
The manner of telling fortunes by cards, according to the supposed rules of the priests of the temple of Thoth, requires a complete pack of Tarots that are at present difficult to obtain. Spanish, French, or picture cards issued for games are without real value or connection with one of the earliest cults of the world. Fortune-telling with cards is useless unless divined through the emblems of Mercury or his predecessor, the great Egyptian god Thoth, by reading the signs and symbols pictured in his Book of Thoth Hermes Trismegistus called
The Tarots.