Henrí, Burdel, Joerger, Laurent, Feautrier, Gassman, Payden, Rochias, Rolichon, Vachier, Chosson - WHICH ONE TO GET?????

[Sar]

On 12/5/2025 at 7:11 PM, Raggydoll said:

This is just a personal preference, but for me it helps if there are expressive and well drawn facial features because it aids in my readings (I take into consideration what a character is looking at or turning away from). I particularly like the Pierre Madenie for that. The Burdel is similar as well. 

Cool to see another reading taking this into account. 

[_R_]

On 1/14/2026 at 4:41 AM, Scandinavianhermit said:

I wish to read more about this, but my French is bad. Do you have any suggestions? English, German, Danish or Norwegian would do. 

 

I have written about this (in English) based on the research of Thierry Depaulis and Wilfriend Houdouin (section entitled 'Background.')

There is more to it, but I have not added the history of the tangle of mergers and acquisitions to my post (yet).

 

On 1/5/2026 at 10:56 AM, AtelierCarousel said:

@Scandinavianhermit Thank you very much for these. I did learn now that color is not as much a reliable symbol as I hoped. Lots of TdM publishers apparently really didn't pay that much attention to it and picked whatever they had. So I Guess one can just pick one out of personal eastehtic preference. 

 

Of the constituent elements of a TdM deck, colour appears to be the most variable variable, as it were, which would tend to negate the idea of a consistent scheme of colour symbolism.

That said, such schemes did (and do) exist; heraldic colours have precise meanings, and so does hatching to depict same in black & white books. The works of Vulson de la Colombière are highly indicative in this respect (and he also wrote a lot on oracles, incidentally.) On colour symbolism more generally, a book like Frédéric Portal's Des Couleurs Symboliques is useful (available in French in PDF and also in English as it gives context to the theories the French occultists were working with.

 

Also highly recommended are the books by Michel Pastoureau (some of which are available in English).

[Scandinavianhermit]

22 hours ago, _R_ said:

I have written about this (in English) based on the research of Thierry Depaulis and Wilfriend Houdouin (section entitled 'Background.')

There is more to it, but I have not added the history of the tangle of mergers and acquisitions to my post (yet).

I'm grateful. I'm particularly interested in the life and career of Nicolas Conver (1784-1833), who, because of his lifespan, can't have printed a deck in 1760, and in his predecessors, who may have. I look forward to any future historical blog post of yours. The Chosson dating problem is another of those fascinating subjects.