Z. Lismon (Simon-François Blocquel)
Founded: 1838
Closed: 1863
Location: Lille and Paris
Decks
Introduction
Z. Lismon is the distinctive nom de plume of Simon-François Blocquel (1780–1863), a prolific French publisher and printer active during the first half of the 19th century. While Blocquel produced a wide array of literature, he is best known in the history of playing cards for publishing the Grand Livre de Thot in 1838. This publication established the “Etteilla II” tarot pattern, a stylistic evolution of the earlier occult decks that introduced unique iconographic changes—most notably to the major arcana—that persisted into the late 19th century.
History
Early Life and The Publishing House
Simon-François Blocquel was born in 1780. Orphaned at a young age, he was taken in by his uncle, a printer in the northern French city of Lille, where he served his apprenticeship in the trade. By 1802, Blocquel had established his own publishing business [1] .
In 1809, he entered into a strategic partnership with Jean-Baptiste Castiaux, another Lille-based printer. This professional alliance eventually solidified into a familial dynasty when Blocquel married Castiaux’s daughter, Constance. The firm’s reach extended to Paris through further family connections; one of Blocquel’s children later married M. F. Delarue (often stylized De La Rue), a connection that would prove vital for the continuity of his card patterns [2] .
Intellectual Scope and Pseudonyms
The workshop was highly successful, employing approximately two dozen staff by 1848. Blocquel and Castiaux published a vast catalog, ranging from standard textbooks and almanacs to works on Oceania, a subject fueled by the era’s fascination with French and British colonial expansion.
By 1840, the press ventured into the esoteric, publishing works on demonology and the occult [3] . While Blocquel often authored these texts himself, he employed a variety of anagrammatic pseudonyms—including Blismon, Milbons, and Z. Lismon—to distinguish this genre from his more conventional publications [4] . This compartmentalization likely served to protect his social standing; Blocquel was a pillar of Lille society, serving as a town councilor from 1820 onward and eventually receiving the Légion d’honneur (Legion of Honor), France’s highest order of merit [1] .
The Etteilla II Pattern (1838)
In 1838, using the pseudonym Z. Lismon, Blocquel published the Grand Livre de Thot (Great Book of Thoth). Historians classify this deck as the Etteilla II pattern. It serves as a bridge between the original 18th-century designs of Jean-Baptiste Alliette (Etteilla) and later 19th-century interpretations.
The deck is visually distinct from its predecessors. Blocquel introduced heavy blue borders around each card and added vertical keywords along the sides to aid in divination. The iconography also underwent significant revision.
Insert Image: A high-resolution scan of the Temperance card from the Z. Lismon Etteilla II deck. Caption: The Z. Lismon Temperance card (1838). Note the distinct departure from traditional iconography: the figure is depicted leading an elephant, a unique characteristic of the Etteilla II pattern [5] .
The Julia Orsini Attribution
The Z. Lismon deck was accompanied by a cartomancy manual titled Le Grand Etteilla, ou l’Art de Tirer les Cartes (The Great Etteilla, or the Art of Drawing the Cards). The text was attributed to “Julia Orsini.”
Historians disagree on Orsini’s identity. While some speculate she was another of Blocquel’s inventions, “Orsini” is not an anagram of his name, breaking his established pattern. Furthermore, the text identifies her as the Sibylle du faubourg Saint-Germain (The Sibyl of the Saint-Germain Quarter). It is plausible that Orsini was a real associate or a distinct marketing persona created to appeal to the Parisian fortune-telling market (Orsini et al. 2021; Kaplan 1986, 405; Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett 1996, 147–148).
Legacy and Succession
Blocquel’s Etteilla II pattern enjoyed significant popularity during the mid-19th century French occult revival. Following Blocquel’s death in 1863, his son-in-law, M. F. Delarue, continued the business [1] . Delarue went on to publish the “Etteilla III” pattern in 1868, a thicker-lined, highly stylized evolution of Blocquel’s work, ensuring the family’s influence on tarot history lasted well into the fin de siècle [2] .