Antoine Court de Gébelin

Antoine Court, who named himself Antoine Court de Gébelin (Nîmes, January 25, 1725 – Paris, May 10, 1784), was a former Protestant pastor, born at Nîmes, who initiated the interpretation of the Tarot as an arcane repository of timeless esoteric wisdom in 1781.

The New International Encyclopedia of 1914 reports that Court de Gébelin, who adopted the surname of his grandmother, was a literary man of recognized rank, and rendered excellent service, first as his father's amanuensis and assistant and afterward as a scholar at the capital. He is remembered in connection with the case of Jean Calas, by his work Les Toulousaines, ou lettres historiques et apologétiques en faveur de la religion réformée (Lausanne, 1763).

His father was Antoine Court, a famous religious leader of the Huguenots. Court de Gébelin had been ordained a pastor in 1754 before departing Switzerland and remained openly Protestant, a rational advocate for freedom of conscience in Enlightenment France. In Paris, he was initiated into Freemasonry at the lodge Les Amis Réunis, in 1771, and moved on to the lodge Les Neuf Sœurs where he welcomed Benjamin Franklin as a lodge-brother.

He was a supporter of American Independence who contributed to the massive Affaires de l'Angleterre et de l'Amérique, of the new theories of economics, and of the "animal magnetism" of Mesmer (he was found dead in a bath after undergoing Mesmer's magnetic treatment, apparently of an electrically induced heart attack).

See the letter to James Madison from the Reverend James Madison, 15 June 1782 in which he is referred to by the President of Yale. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1781.

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