TAROT CARDS - GEBELIN DESIGN - TEMPERANCE - STRENGTH - HANGING MAN - JUSTICE [Top left] Temperance, offered as a misprint as card 13 of the set pictured by the French Mason, Court de Gebelin, in 1773, based on the Marseille decks he had seen. The card should properly be number 14 in the series, for the 13th card is that given over to Death. See Court de Gebelin, Le Monde primitive, Vols. III [1773] and VIII [1781]. [Top right] Strength, card 11 of the Gebelin design. [Bottom left] The Hanging Man, card 12 of the Gebelin design, which (we observe that the Man is portrayed with his foot resting firmly on the ground, and that he is not hanging). [Bottom right] Justice, card 8 of the Gebelin design. Court de Gebelin's theory of the origins of the Tarot cards was entirely fanciful, yet it caught the imagination of an entire generation of occultists. He recognised the cards as a book 'of 78 pages', which had escaped the destruction of the Egyptian libraries: it was of Egyptian design - even though the cards the reproduced in his own book reveal not a vestige of Egyptian learning or symbolism. He invented for the word Tarot an Egyptian etymology, insisting that it meant 'Royal Road' (this etymology was just as fanciful as his view that the cards were Egyptian in origin).