Antoine Court de Gébelin, pastor, freemason and mythologist

An emblematic figure of the second half of the 18th century, Antoine Court de Gébelin is best known for rediscovering the Tarot and being the first to see it as an emanation of ancient Egyptian wisdom. But we sometimes forget that he was a Freemason and that, as a Protestant pastor, he took up the cause of persecuted Protestants in France and supported the fight for American independence. Antoine Court de Gébelin was both a man committed to the struggle for freedom and a mythologist in search of the sources of the primordial spiritual tradition. Faith, practical commitment and mysticism were the leitmotifs of the astonishing Freemason that was Antoine Court de Gébelin.

A Huguenot in exile 

Antoine Court de Gébelin, a Huguenot in exile, was born near Nîmes on 5 September 1728, at a particularly hard time for French Protestants. Henri IV had ended the religious wars in France with the Edict of Nantes in 1598, granting Protestants rights in certain parts of the kingdom. These rights had already been restricted under Louis XIII, but it was Louis XIV who finally revoked them in 1685, banning the practice of Protestant worship and condemning to the galleys or even to death pastors and preachers who dared to defy the ban.

Court de Gébelin's father, Antoine Court (1694-1760), was a pastor in Nîmes and in 1729, the year after his son's birth, he decided to go into exile in Lausanne, a Swiss city that had converted to the Reformation in 1536. Many Huguenots (as French Protestants were known), especially pastors, had found refuge in Lausanne, Geneva, the Netherlands, England and certain German states. As soon as he arrived in Lausanne, Antoine Court set about helping his fellow Protestants and supporting future French pastors. He was the principal founder of the French Seminary of Lausanne, where until 1812 generations of French ministers were trained, many of whom died for their faith. This institution was located in a house not far from the Lausanne Academy, the official university of Lausanne, founded in 1537.

Court de Gébelin grew up in Lausanne and studied theology at the Lausanne Academy. Ordained a pastor, he began teaching at the French seminary founded by his father. Although he had never lived in France, he never ceased to be concerned about the fate of his coreligionists who were suffering there. And the tragic fate of one of his former students at the seminary forced him to take up his pen.

A fighter against injustice 

François Rochette (1736-1762) studied for three years at the French seminary in Lausanne before becoming a pastor in the south of France. Arrested in 1761 in the town of Caussade (now in Tarn-et-Garonne), he was sentenced to death for heresy by the Toulouse Parliament and executed on 19 February 1762, along with three Protestant gentlemen who had tried to free him, the brothers Henri, Jean and Joachim de Grenier.

Court de Gébelin was shocked by this news, which was compounded by two other cases. The first was the Calas case, also in 1761-1762, named after Jean Calas, a Protestant merchant from Toulouse, who was accused of murdering his son, whom he allegedly killed to prevent him from converting to Catholicism. The trial was also held in the Toulouse Parliament, with a botched and irregular procedure, and Calas was executed on 10 March 1762. Having fled to Geneva, Pierre Calas, one of Jean Calas's sons, met Voltaire (1694-1778), who took up the case and used it as an example of despotism and intolerance, first publishing documents from the case in 1762 and then his famous 'Treatise on tolerance, on the occasion of the death of Jean Calas' in 1763. This moved the court and the case was re-examined by the King's Council, which overturned the Toulouse judgement on 4 June 1764 on a technicality and referred the case back to the Tribunal des requêtes, which posthumously rehabilitated Jean Calas on 9 March 1765.

Pierre Calas and his family imploring Voltaire's help

Then there was the Sirven case, quite similar to the Calas case. In January 1762, Pierre-Paul Sirven and his wife were falsely accused of murdering their daughter Élisabeth, on the grounds that they had tried to prevent her from converting to Catholicism. They managed to escape to Lausanne, but on 24 March 1762 they were sentenced to death in absentia, again by the Toulouse parliament. From Lausanne, Sirven contacted Voltaire and asked for his help. Voltaire agreed, and with the help of the Paris lawyer Élie de Beaumont (1732-1786), who had also handled the Calas case, he obtained the Sirvens' pardon on 25 November 1771.

The Calas case, and to a lesser extent the Sirven case, had an enormous impact because of Voltaire's involvement. But before Voltaire, Court de Gébelin had already written 'The Toulousans' in 1762, which he published in 1763 : it was a collection of thirty fictional letters in which he defended François Rochette, but also Jean Calas and the Sirvens. The work was relatively poorly received, the Bernese and Geneva authorities undoubtedly fearing a diplomatic incident with France. It should also be remembered that Voltaire tried to prevent the publication of 'The Toulousans', as he wanted to retain the editorial monopoly on the subject. Great men can also be petty !

Court de Gébelin left Lausanne in 1763 and moved to Paris, where he set up an office to record cases of injustice and abuse of process against French Protestants. He also worked to unite the various Reformed churches in France and drafted an Edict of Toleration, which was not promulgated until 1787. But Court de Gébelin was not content to fight for the rights of French Protestants: he was part of a wider movement for civil rights in general and, alongside Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), defended the independence of the American colonies.

A Mythologist and a Freemason 

In addition to his commitment to justice and equality, Court de Gébelin took an early interest in various mythologies, the sources of language and writing, etymology and the history of calendars. A precursor of cultural and social anthropology, he planned to write a monumental work, which he began in 1773 under the title 'The primitive world analyzed and compared with the modern world considered in its allegorical genius and in the allegories to which this genius led', of which he only had time to publish the first nine volumes before his death.

It was in the eighth volume, published in 1781, that Court de Gébelin turned his attention to the Tarot. Cartomancy in general had experienced a revival in France since the 1770s thanks to Jean-Baptiste Alliette, nicknamed Etteila (1738-1794), but it was Court de Gébelin who made the Tarot itself stand out. He was the first to describe the Tarot as a kind of bible in pictures, a secret book that transmitted to us the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians. In fact, he did not hesitate to call it the Book of Toth, after the Egyptian god of wisdom and words, compared to the Greek Hermes. Even if these claims were historically inaccurate, Court de Gébelin left a definitive mark on the study of the Tarot and had many followers, including a number of Freemasons.

Court de Gébelin contemplating the Tarot cards

His research into mythology and the sacred sciences, his contacts with philosophers and writers, and his association with Benjamin Franklin led Court de Gébelin almost inevitably to join Freemasonry. It is not known exactly when he was initiated, but he may have been initiated into the Scottish Philosophical Rite as early as 1777. In 1778 he joined a lodge of the Grand Orient de France, Les Amis Réunis, which was home to a system of mystical and spiritualistic higher degrees, the Philalèthes, founded under the leadership of its Worshipful Master Charles-Pierre-Paul Savalette de Langes (1745-1797). This system was inspired by Louis-Claude de Saint Martin, Cagliostro and Mesmer, and can be seen as the main rival to Willermoz's Rectified Scottish Rite in the 1780s. However, Savalette was an important figure in the Grand Orient de France and from 1782 was involved in the work of codifying the French Rite, which would result in the ritual generally known today as the Régulateur du Maçon 1801, as well as the higher degrees known as the Orders of Wisdom of the French Rite. Court de Gébelin was a member of the Philalèthes, but he was not very active after 1783, being ill and treated without much success by Mesmer's methods of animal magnetism.

From 1778 or 1779, Court de Gébelin was also very active in the famous lodge Les Neuf Sœurs. He even presided over the Société Apollonienne, a learned society founded in 1780 alongside the Neuf Sœurs. This society was replaced in 1781 by the Musée de Paris, a new academic institution founded by Court de Gébelin himself. More a scholar than a manager, deceived by dishonest people, he ruined himself in this enterprise and died penniless on 12 May 1784.

A man of many syntheses 

Somewhat unknown today, Court de Gébelin was an exemplary Freemason in more ways than one, able to unite in himself different demands that might seem difficult to reconcile. A man of faith and a theologian, he was a minister of the Reformed Church and never denied his attachment to the Protestant faith. However, this did not prevent him from opening up to a wider esoteric search, and he contributed to the development of mystical and spiritualist Freemasonry.

Antoine Court de Gébelin

Likewise, he was not was he a theorist far removed from practice, nor a contemplative cut off from the sometimes painful realities of this world. Throughout his life, he worked tirelessly for a more just, fraternal and tolerant world. Again, he did not limit his commitment to his own small world, the French Protestant community, which was then suffering so much injustice and persecution. He understood that the suffering of the Protestants was only a particular case of the evils that afflicted the whole of humanity and that all human beings, whatever their beliefs, deserved to fight for their right to justice, equality and dignity. The life of Court de Gébelin, so rich in practical commitment and profound spiritual research, can still inspire Freemasons today.