Arcana Encyclopaedia

Biography

Born May 15, 1811, in Remiremont, France. His family intended him for the priesthood, and he was raised in a monastic community, but eventually abandoned that path. He moved to Paris, where he became an associate of Charles Nodier, a leading literary figure of the Romantic movement deeply interested in the occult. Under Nodier's influence, Pitois developed his own esoteric interests. He worked as a journalist and bibliographer under the pen name 'Paul Christian,' co-authoring works on Parisian history with Nodier.

From 1843 to 1844, Pitois served as a bibliographer in the Ministry of Public Instruction, cataloging rare books and documents. His position in Parisian libraries gave him access to esoteric manuscripts that informed his later writings. His major work was 'Histoire de la Magie' (1870), a survey of occult history in which he described a fictional initiation ritual set in an underground temple beneath the Great Pyramid, where the initiate encounters 22 frescoes corresponding to the 22 Major Arcana. This narrative had no archaeological basis — it was Pitois's own literary invention — but it cemented the association between tarot and ancient Egypt.

His most lasting contributions were structural rather than historical: he was the first to use the word 'arcana' for the tarot cards, the first to assign systematic astrological correspondences to all 78 cards using the Sefer Yetzirah, and the first to apply the decans to the Minor Arcana. His ideas were taken up by Papus, Waite, and the Golden Dawn. He died July 12, 1877, in Lyon.