Gérard Encausse — better known to the world as Papus — was the scholar-mystic of the French occult revival, a man who approached Tarot not merely as a tool for fortune-telling, but as a book of universal law. A physician by profession and a magician by vocation, he brought the analytical mind of science to the mysteries of esoteric philosophy, creating a system that blended numerology, Kabbalah, astrology, and symbolic geometry into a coherent path of initiation.

His most famous work, The Tarot of the Bohemians (1889), remains a cornerstone of occult literature — a manual that treated the 78 cards as the “Bible of Bibles,” a sacred text encoded in pictures. Papus taught that Tarot was a living diagram of the universe, each card representing a step in the soul’s journey from ignorance to illumination. He aligned the Major Arcana with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the paths of the Tree of Life, presenting the deck as a ladder between the human and the divine.

Though he never produced a deck as instantly recognisable as Etteilla’s, Papus’s influence on European Tarot was immense. His teachings shaped how generations of occultists — including members of the Golden Dawn — would read and structure the cards. His method of interpretation was as much a lecture as a reading, instructing the querent in cosmic principles while addressing their personal question.

In the Paris of the Belle Époque, Papus was as much at home in the lecture hall as in the salon. He moved with ease between the worlds of academic medicine, mystical lodges, and fashionable society, earning respect in all three. His Tarot was not for the faint of heart: it demanded study, discipline, and an appetite for philosophical truth.

Papus’s spreads, teachings, and initiatory approach influenced generations of Tarot students and provided a foundation for the work of later esoteric schools, including the Golden Dawn. His system made Tarot both a philosophical text and a practical tool, bridging the gap between study and application.

For me, Papus was the beginning of my Tarot universe. His book was my first real teacher — I read it, absorbed it, and immediately put the spreads into practice. I even created my own spread inspired by his methods, tailored to the way I read. I love his precise, academic style, but also the way you can read between the lines — his words seem to come alive as you work with them. My first tarot was designed and built based on his books drawings. 🙂