Belline: definition

Marcel Forget, known as Belline, was born in 1924. A professional clairvoyant in Paris from the 1950s to the 1980s, he received a large clientele in his consulting room for some thirty years.

His fame soon spread beyond those walls: the press printed his predictions, radio invited him on air (Jacques Chancel, notably, had him on Radioscopie, the France Inter program, in 1972), and he earned the nickname “the prince of clairvoyants.” He became one of the clairvoyants best known to the general public in France.

He also wrote several books for a general readership, among them Comment je suis devenu voyant (1964), Histoires extraordinaires d'un voyant (1967), La Troisième Oreille (1972) and a Petite encyclopédie des arts divinatoires (1977).

His name remains linked above all to the legacy of Mage Edmond, a nineteenth-century Parisian cartomancer. By his own account, Belline came across Edmond's cards and notebooks at a client's home. He had two decks published from them: an oracle in 1960, then a complete tarot in 1966.

Belline was therefore neither the artist nor the inventor of the decks that bear his name: he was the one who found them, published them and passed them on. It is to him that they owe their circulation far beyond specialist circles.