0 - The Fool (RWS)

[Lucifall]

Oh one more thing : if not Anubis, then maybe St Christopher (patron saint of travellers) who was often depicted as having the head of a dog. Or maybe both of these... and maybe even more. I think the layers go deep in the Tarot.
St Christopher Dog head.jpg

I certainly agree with connections with Anubis
This is a picture of the fool of an Egyptian black and White set; the Fool (Narr) is pictured with the fool (and a crocodile)

http://www.fotoaanpassen.nl/?yygpKSi20t ... N1csqSAcA
Thanks for sharing St Christopher related to the dog on the Fool's card! A patron for a traveller suits very well.

[Tor]

I'm seeing The Fool as naive faith that needs his companion - the animal dog - to get down to earth and reality. One can really fly high and get ones feet off the ground with a lot of faith if one is being the egg (number zero) and not the chicken (the un-numbered).

That's why I believe the chicken came first and not the egg. There is someone wiser than The Fool. I can also relate this to the moon's phase "the crone" - the total darkness before the new moon. It's the wise old woman who has seen and lived it all. She might even be dead. It could be your grandmother or some other figure, or it could be an old aunt that no-one in the family really wants to deal with. Never under-estimate them, is what I think.

I'm currently reading The Bible. I find it to be a be a very good read - but I don't see it as a cookbook - it means - it has no recipes for how I should live my life. But I thought of The Fool and his dog when I read 1. Peter 5. It says that The Devil is a roaring Lion (a cat). Kinda reminds me of the pentecostal preachers. The dog on the other hand is no Lion or cat, and plays a protective part in nature. There's no protection in a cat. Also my sister-in-law had by coincidence a cat she named The Devil.

Gotta love that dog!

Tor

[Diana]

I'm seeing The Fool as naive faith that needs his companion - the animal dog - to get down to earth and reality.

That must be one of the most intelligent things I've hard about the fool and the dog for a long time.

One can really fly high and get ones feet off the ground with a lot of faith if one is being the egg (number zero) and not the chicken (the un-numbered).

I wish I knew what you were talking about, as I suspect it may be as intelligent as the first remark. But I'm lost. Can you rephrase somehow ? Particularly the zero and un-numbered part ?

That's why I believe the chicken came first and not the egg. There is someone wiser than The Fool. I can also relate this to the moon's phase "the crone" - the total darkness before the new moon. It's the wise old woman who has seen and lived it all. She might even be dead. It could be your grandmother or some other figure, or it could be an old aunt that no-one in the family really wants to deal with. Never under-estimate them, is what I think.

I'm currently reading The Bible. I find it to be a be a very good read - but I don't see it as a cookbook - it means - it has no recipes for how I should live my life. But I thought of The Fool and his dog when I read 1. Peter 5. It says that The Devil is a roaring Lion (a cat). Kinda reminds me of the pentecostal preachers. The dog on the other hand is no Lion or cat, and plays a protective part in nature. There's no protection in a cat. Also my sister-in-law had by coincidence a cat she named The Devil.

Gotta love that dog!

Tor

The rest of your post if also priceless. You've put a huge smile on my face and it won't got away. (Trying to wipe it away .... nope, doesn't work.)

The Bible isn't a cookbook. Hilarious.

I didn't know that passage about The Devil being a roaring Lion. The Tarot of Marseilles Devil always and unfailingly makes me think of the Wizard of Oz behind his curtain. I can't look at it without thinking of him.

Any more of those kind of considerations and you could write a book "Tor's Tarot Snippets"... but with your imagination, you'd come up with a much better title.

[Merrick]

In Zen Buddhism there is this idea of “Beginner’s Mind”. The concept is that a beginner sees everything with fresh eyes, by virtue of knowing nothing about what they’re seeing. Once you begin to know about a thing, you limit your abilities to see it for anything else. A pertinent quote about beginner’s mind is “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”

More than any other depiction of The Fool, I associate the W-S Fool with Beginner’s Mind. The carefree aspect that Pixie imparts to this gender-fluid figure is the card’s defining characteristic in my mind. I would say that along with Death, The Fool is the most accomplished of Pixie’s majors, the most impactful and unique. You really get a sense of the lack of worry that this person possesses, along with the implicit sense of danger by being so close to the cliff’s edge.

I think the sense of all possibilities grows as one studies the card. While The Magician works with the four suits, the Fool exists seamlessly with the elements the suits can represent. The air blowing the feather in the cap, the inner sleeves of the tunic suggesting fire, the blue, white-capped mountains looking like ocean waves peaking, and the flowery circles covering the outer tunic encompass all the elements that surround The Fool.

Of all the majors this one is the most changed from the Tarot de Marseille. The TdM Fool is a jester, not so much carefree as lacking awareness, utterly unaware of the animal ripping his backside to shreds. This Fool has more dignity, a lighter aspect, the animal now trotting alongside playfully instead of viciously attacking. The “0” numbering of the card also utterly changes it to me from the unnumbered TdM. The lack of numbering makes the TdM Fool a liberated figure, free from the overall numbered structure of the deck. By giving The Fool a number and placing it at the beginning of the majors, Waite fundamentally changed the meaning of the card in my eyes. While The Fool is still set apart from the rest of the majors by virtue of having an Arabic numeral for its number instead of the Roman numerals the others use, it’s now part of the number system just as any other card in the deck is. As carefree as this Fool may be, it is inextricably tied in to the rest of the cards in a way that the TdM Fool is not.

All that being said I find the W-S Fool to be one of the greatest cards in Tarot. The artwork is superb, the symbolism rich, the Golden Dawn associations present but not overwhelming. It’s a real masterwork and I cannot think of another depiction of The Fool that so expertly captures the depth of the concept nearly as well.

[Parzival]

Thank you Merrick for your insightful reflections on the Fool TdM and RWS. There certainly is a paradigm shift from the former image to the later image and beyond! I like your way of seeing the TdM Fool as the zen "Beginner's Mind." There is a naive openness to an unexplored universe with that Fool, a nothingness as to logical knowledge. On the other hand, the RWS Fool has appeared out of the spiritual light, the cosmic sun upper right, without logical knowledge, but with an inner storehouse of past experience, symbolized by the bundle on the staff close to the sun, as I see it. The first Fool has a bundle as well, but it seems to me a traveler's knapsack. One is on lower ground, a kind of arid plain, the other in the mountain heights, so, one is walking straight forwards to the right (to where?), the other about to take a dive through the upper air. (to where?) Despite all this contrast, there is only one mindless Fool seeking experience in the moment leading to another moment and another moment... I don't see this as enlightenment from compassion and wisdom or the wise Fool (maybe so)-- it's more the Way forward for the newborn soul with great promise ahead.

[Pilgrim]

The fool is not so foolish because it's an infinite possibility that has yet come to existence. The fool exists in the void between the here and now. This arcetype is like a blank page in a book waiting for a story to be written and told. When seen in a reading its a pause, a moment where we take a breath to realign thoughts and feelings. Its a new adventure a new beginning that has yet taken form. The possibilities are endless with the Fool, and its reminds us there are no limits to its meaning.

[Pilgrim]

The rest of your post if also priceless. You've put a huge smile on my face and it won't got away. (Trying to wipe it away .... nope, doesn't work.)

The Bible isn't a cookbook. Hilarious.

I didn't know that passage about The Devil being a roaring Lion. The Tarot of Marseilles Devil always and unfailingly makes me think of the Wizard of Oz behind his curtain. I can't look at it without thinking of him.


DIABLE grimaud.jpg


Any more of those kind of considerations and you could write a book "Tor's Tarot Snippets"... but with your imagination, you'd come up with a much better title.

The devil can also best be understood through Platos allegory of the cave.

[Dobbins]

Sounds like a pretty spot on summary.

Funny I never though about the significance of the dog before. Got me thinking.

[TheLoracular]

One of my personal truths is that the first three cards of the Major Arcana represent the concept that in Kabbalah is Alef, Shin, Mem and in Astrology is Mutable, Cardinal, Fixed modality and in Eastern philosophy is Tao, Yang, Yin and in Western philosophy is Synthesis-Thesis-Antithesis. This trinity plays out all over the tarot but its first expression is 0 - I - II

I look at the RWS Fool and see the innocence of mythical Eve before the apple was ever plucked. I see a beautiful boy and a handsome girl who is free and devoid of fear because they are just following their heart and intuition, believing that there is nothing out there that is going to hurt them. But there's no proof of that. What they are about to do, walking over that cliff? Well, it scares me!

And it scares me because I have most definitely bitten the proverbial fruit of knowledge of good and evil. I see the world in dichotomies, I feel fear, I feel shame, I feel a need to have control and question myself constantly. So whenever The Fool comes up in a personal reading for myself, I hear this card telling me to take a deep breath, let go of fear and self-doubt. I get the message that whatever problem or dilema was on my mind, I need to just laugh, smile, and trust in both myself and the universe..... and move forward.

Reversed, The Fool means there IS something to whatever I'm nervous or anxious about and that I should draw back from taking any kind of impulsive action. I should get more information (Magician) and then process it (High Priestess) before I attempt any change or start a new project. I should definitely not act on impulse that day in anything I do or say.

[JudyK]

In The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, A.E. Waite says that the "subsidiary name" of The Fool was The Alchemist.
... Has anyone else considered the connection between The Fool and it's other identity as The Alchemist? And how does that influence your interpretation of the card?

Waite gathered his more peculiar meanings from Etteilla, and Etteilla's "Fool" was labeled La Folie ou l'Alchimiste



What Etteilla's thinking was behind this subsidiary name I haven't yet discovered.

So far, I only have this list of meanings:

FOLLY-- Demented, Eccentricity, Extravagance, Unreasonableness, Distraction, Insanity, Aberrations, Intoxication, Delirium, Hot Fever, Frenzy, Defective, Rage, Fury, Carried Away, Enthusiasm, Blindness, Ignorance, Crazy, Insane, Irrational, Innocent, Without Affectation, Simpleton, Naive.
Reversed: FOLLY-- Imbecility, Ineptitude, Carelessness, Stupidity, Imprudence, Negligence, Absence, Distraction, Apathy, Fainting Fit, Exhaustion, Sleep, Nothingness, Nullity, Empty, Nothing, Vain.

[Parzival]

TheLoracular wrote about the first three major arcana as the trio of aleph, mem, and shin (or aleph, shin, and mem, for more apt parallel), from Western metaphysics, and tao, yang, and yin from Eastern metaphysics. This makes a lot of sense to me, especially the Eastern vision, and shows the opening of the Tarot as the "Mind of the World" if we want to see it so. This way of seeing the first three faces of the Tarot gives much range and depth of meditation. For example, each person has these three aspects, sometimes thought of as essential Self, mind, and embodiment. And on goes the meaningfulness of 1, 2, and 3 (or 0,1,2 ).

[rusticblonde]

So this is one of my decks, so I read this as im looking at something in the future objectively. Im looking at me, reflecting on whats coming, so i can make choices before I fail at them. But also theres the eclipse, where for me, this is the beginning and end, and a transition. So Im seeing it from the outside as a positive move per say. Whats your guys thoughts