ABSTRACT
In a letter to Joseph-Marie Amiot written in 1779, Court de Gébelin ventured a more thorough reading of the tarot of Yu the Great. Though it was never published, it circulated among those involved with the Monde primitif and the Mémoires concernant les Chinois. Jean-Sylvain Bailly for the most part agreed with his contemporaries in his evaluation of Chinese civilization. The network connecting thinkers between China and France was remarkably thin. The historical narrative about the successes of the scientific revolution and the promise of more to come was a defining contribution of the French Enlightenment. Mysterious and esoteric traditions, from the tarot cards to the legend of Atlantis, bore testament to its nearly forgotten grandeur. The Chinese evidence for the occult tarot and the lost wisdom of Atlantis was encouraging to Court de Gebelin and Jean-Sylvain Bailly, even though their intellectual projects were broadly possible without it.
