Cult of Tarot Forum

Recently I had a very pleasant conversation with one of my virtual friends regarding the correct ordering of The Fool among the cards of the Major Arcana.
My interlocutor seemed surprised when I said that The Fool does not belong to the beginning of the Tarot deck and actually, he was not placed there until very recent times.
As many other Tarot readers, he thought that according to the Golden Dawn system The Fool, numbered zero, is the very first card placed before The Magician, the card which is traditionally numbered one.

What is known today about ordering the Trumps in the early Tarot decks is mainly based on different written sources in which the names of the Trumps are mentioned.
The currently known oldest source is a collection of preaches written by an anonymous monk sometime during the second half of the 1400s, entitled “Sermones de Ludo cum aliis.” Here, The Fool, “El matto,” is the card positioned at the end of the Major Arcana and presumably numbered twenty-two.
Pietro Aretino , famous poet and satirist, mentioned the name and order of the Trumps in his 1521’s “Pasquinata sull’elezione di Adriano VI.” Once again, “Il Matto” is the last card of the Arcana.
“Triomphi de Pomeran,” published in 1534, puts The Fool for the first time to the top of the list. “Triomphi de Pomeran” is a series of sonnets using the Tarot trumps to describe the noblewomen of Venice. The volume of verses is organised into four parts. The second part has a pictorial sub-title and consists of twenty-two stanzas of ottava rima, with headings associating specific women with the Trumps.
Il Matto, The Fool was the first card listed and attributed to Nicolosa Cornera.
The so-called esoteric tradition of the Tarot started to flourish and developed in France, and got the generic name “Tarot of Marseilles.” The earliest surviving cards of the Marseilles pattern were produced by Jean Noblet of Paris around 1650.
Yoav Ben-Dov noted that “the Tarot de Marseille evolved for many centuries in the hands of many people who left no written records about its meaning. Therefore, we do not have direct access to its original symbolic language. We have to figure it out for ourselves.”
In the Marseilles tradition, La Mort (Death), card numbered XIII was usually unnamed, while Le Fou (The Fool) has attributed the penultimate letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Shin, but no number.
Placing The Fool at the end of the deck, usually between The Last Judgement and The World was adopted and preserved by the vast majority of occultists. In the works of Éliphas Lévi, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, Oswald Wirth, Arthur Edward Waite and Gérard Encausse (better known as Papus), The Fool is positioned between The Last Judgement and The World at the end of the Major Arcana.
There is one notable exception. Jean-Baptiste Alliette, better known as Etteilla, put his Fool card at the very end of the deck and number it 78.

The Fool was put at the beginning of the Major Arcana by Aleister Crowley only 74 years ago.
Aleister Crowley was initiated into the Outer Order of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in November 1898 by the group’s leader, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. Crowley progressed quickly through the lower grades of the Order and in 1899 requested to be initiated into the inner Second Order.
However, duet o his libertine lifestyle and ambitious nature, Crowley was unpopular in the group and developed feuds with several members, including respected figures such as William Butler Yeats and A.E. Waite. When the London’s lodge refused to initiate Crowley into the Adeptus Minor Grade, Mathers personally admitted him in a ceremony carried out in Paris. Eventually, the whole conflict escalated into what was called the “Battle of Blythe Road” and resulted in both Crowley and Mathers exclusion from the Order.
Crowley’s involvement in the Order was brief, stormy and he never made it into the higher ranks of the Order.
Practically, the original Order has ceased to exist in 1903. Different fractions and offshoots claimed to be the legit successors, including Alpha et Omega, Stella Matutina, Isis-Urania Temple and A∴A∴.
What Israel Regardie and Chic Cicero called “the Golden Dawn system” is practically the altered interpretation of the system according to Aleister Crowley and by no means the genuine Golden Dawn system.
Crowley noted that “the really important feature of this card – The Fool – is that its number should be 0. It represents therefore the Negative above the Tree of Life, the source of all things. It is the Qabalistic Zero.” He argued that “it appears natural to a mathematician to begin the series of natural numbers with Zero.”
We are not discussing here the correctness of one or the other; I only want to set the historical facts right. However, in the conservative esoteric and hermetic tradition, The Fool was placed at the end of the Major Arcana between the Last Judgement and The World, numbered zero and sometimes, exceptionally twenty-two, but attributed to the twenty-first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, respectively Shin.

Very interesting history. Thanks for introducing this topic. I believe I read about some of this in Robert Place's excellent The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination. I need to reread that book! Such a wealth of great information.

Based on what you've said here, it was Crowley who broke from tradition by placing The Fool at 0. But if this was only Crowley's idea and it was at odds with the higher levels of the GD, then what I don't understand is why Waite chose to put The Fool at 0 in his own deck? It seems to me based on that that it was more than just Crowley who felt The Fool should be placed there.

Aside from the history...I don't have a personal understanding of Kabbalah or astrology, but to me it makes intuitive sense to place The Fool at 0 when using tarot in an occult or personal exploration context, as an archetype that takes the journey held in the cards. Then again, that is what I've learned and am used to, so it's hard to separate that from my intuitive sense at this point.

While Crowley was the first to openly publish the Golden Dawn attributions, in Liber 777 and The Equinox, he did not invent them. As the first to make them public, one may argue he had a large role in their propagation.

The GD system continued to be, and continues to be, perpetuated in various off-shoots following the break-up of the original GD. The Golden Dawn attributions, which placed the Fool at the beginning of the sequence and attributed the letter Aleph to it, is based on the Cipher Manuscript upon which the Golden Dawn was formed in 1887. Mather's book 'The Tarot' published in 1888 is a compilation of French sources (Levi and Christian), and is not based on nor reflects the Golden Dawn Teachings. For the Golden Dawn teachings see Mathers 'Book T', papers written for the order in the mid-1890's, and not originally meant for publication. The Cipher Manuscript and Mather's Book T are both available online.

It is erroneous to claim that modern Golden Dawn teachings are based on Aleister Crowley's publishings; they are based upon original order manuscripts, of its founders, authors and teachers, and copies of such by members thereof. Israel Regardies 'Golden Dawn' was largely based on the papers of the GD offshoot the Stella Matutina (of which one of the original GD founders, William Westcotte, had been a member - he joined the SM in June 1915), rather than those of Aleister Crowley. There was some erroneous material in the first edition, however later editions included additions, corrections and amendments based on other original manuscripts archived in various museums, libraries and private collections.

The Golden Dawn off-shoots did introduce their own variations and additions to the original orders papers and rituals, but few if any were based on the works of Aleister Crowley,excepting those which specifically describe themselves as 'thelemic'. Among most of the GD off-shoots Crowley was largely despised and his works disparaged and rejected. Waite for example, in those off-shoots of which he was head, took out the 'magical' elements, and references to Egyptian (and other Pagan) gods, and shaped the rituals and papers more along the lines of Christian Mysticism. Other off-shoots too introduced their own amendments and additions according to the ideas and proclivities of its founders and members.

However, whatever the changes these various GD offshoots may have made, the placement of the Fool at the beginning of the trumps and its attribution to Aleph was not one of them - such attributions appear among the earliest manuscripts of the original Order of the Golden Dawn.

There are 21 trumps mentioned in the c1500 sermon, 21 rungs on a ladder to hell. The trumps, numbered 1 to 21, are named at the end of the Sermon, the Fool is named after the Trumps and is numbered '0' (not 22), so there are 21 trumps and the Fool (outside of the sequence of trumps).

In the 15th century Sola-Busca the Matto is numbered '0'. In French TdM style decks the Fool is unnumbered, but in the Swiss TdM style Schar (18th century) it is numbered '0', and it is also numbered '0' in the TdM influenced Italian regional decks (late 18th & 19th centuries). In the plates engraved for Gebelin's Le Monde Primitif the fool is numbered '0'. The numeration '0' was not necessarily an indication of place in French esoteric systems: In Etteilla for example it was numbered 78/0 (Etteilla makes no reference to any correspondence between the cards and Hebrew letters in any of his writings); in Papus '0' (or 21). The Fool as 'mathematical zero' can be found in early French sources such as Gebelin/Mellet, Etteilla and others.

In most of the 16th century tarocchi approprati the cards are usually mentioned in order from highest (the Angel or the World) to lowest (the fool, coming after the Juggler).

The first mention of any correspondence between the Hebrew alphabet and the Trumps+Fool occurs in Gebelin/Mellet, who sequence them from highest to lowest, with the World attributed to Aleph and ending with the Fool as Tau (Juggler as Shin etc). In the 19th century Levi develops the idea but attributed Aleph to trump 1, and placing the Fool in 21st place with Shin. The Golden Dawn, following the 'cipher manuscript', attributed the Fool to Aleph, etc.

I'm not sure from a historical point of view that we can speak with certainty of 'the correct placement of the Fool in the order of the trumps', but rather of historical variations, which we may distinguish in to two main distinct traditions - gaming and esoteric.

In gaming traditions for example I'll note two variations - that in which as the 'excuse' the fool is distinguished from the 21 Trumps, so there is no specific 'place' in the order of the trumps, but rather 21 trumps and the fool. In the 18th century a variation in the game of tarot in some regions (such as parts of Germany) treated the Fool as the highest trump rather than as the excuse. It is perhaps within this market that the Belgian tarot was aimed with its numbering of the Fool as the highest Trump XXII.

Of the various esoteric traditions the two main ones are the 19th century French and English - firstly with the circa mid-century French schools exemplified by Levi, Christian et al who place in the penultimate, 21st position and attribute it to the Hebrew letter Shin, and then the c1887 or prior attributions of the English Golden Dawn, who placed it first and attributed it to the letter Aleph.

For myself I like the old Italian proverb, 'Like the fool of the tarot, here, there and everywhere'.

KoyDeli wrote: ↑28 Sep 2018, 00:34 For myself I like the old Italian proverb, 'Like the fool of the tarot, here, there and everywhere'.

Love this!

Thanks for sharing this detailed background, KoyDeli!

Very informative read.

Just to add though: even if Waite assigned the number 0 to The Fool, in two sections of his Pictorial Key to the Tarot book he still positioned it between Judgement and The World. He wrote:

21--which, however, in most of the arrangements is the cipher card, number nothing--The Fool, Mate, or Unwise Man. Court de Gebelin places it at the head of the whole series as the zero or negative which is presupposed by numeration, and as this is a simpler so also it is a better arrangement. It has been abandoned because in later times the cards have been attributed to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and there has been apparently some difficulty about allocating the zero symbol satisfactorily in a sequence of letters all of which signify numbers. In the present reference of the card to the letter Shin, which corresponds to 200, the difficulty or the unreason remains. The truth is that the real arrangement of the cards has never transpired.

Am dragging up this old and most interesting thread, as I'd like to contribute something to it. It seems the right place.

In 1971, there was an important Tarot exhibition in Amiens (France) and I had managed to acquire many years ago on e-bay a catalogue of this exhibition, which also contained some essays, one of which speaks of the Fool (in the Tarot of Marseilles tradition, as this was a French exhibition).

Now as you may recall, the TdM Fool (Mat/Fou/Fol) is unnumbered. So the question of where this Fool is placed in the Tarot is subject to much discussion.

But to get back to the catalogue : An essay in it by Jean-Marie Lhôte, an highly eminent person in the field, not only Tarot, but also the history of the game in general, amongst others, raises an interesting hypothesis :

Here’s a translation from the French of the first paragraph.

"For a long time, it has been observed that 78, the number of the cards of the Tarot, is the sum of the first 12 numbers and that 21, the number of the major arcana, is the sum of the first 6. Under these conditions, and to keep in line with symmetry and the need for coherence, this leads us to consider 57 minor arcana, 57 being the sum of the numbers from 7 to 12. A coherent symmetry of the Tarot suggests therefore that Le Mat, a card that has no number, belongs to the series of the minor arcana, with the Kings, Queens, Knights and Valets, which are also un-numbered cards. This detail is contrary to what is usually accepted, but it has its importance."

There is some logic behind this. Any thoughts ??

Of course there is a logic here, a numerological logic that may or may not be mere coincidence. But as we know the rules of the game of tarot, the Fool is played as a Trump, although his quality is not 'trumplike'. In other words, he is a sort of transitional entity between the two sets of cards.

_R_ wrote: ↑20 Jul 2019, 10:17 Of course there is a logic here, a numerological logic that may or may not be mere coincidence. But as we know the rules of the game of tarot, the Fool is played as a Trump, although his quality is not 'trumplike'. In other words, he is a sort of transitional entity between the two sets of cards.

Indeed. But thanks anyway to Jean-Marie Lhôte!

The Fool in the card game (also called The Excuse) is also sometimes referred to as the "lame errante", i,e. the "wandering card". (Once again, this "lame" in the language of the birds means the soul. Lots of talk of the soul when it comes to the tarot and the language of the birds.)

I no longer remember where I saw this, but 0 is outside of a numerical sequence. It's a non-number, it could belong anywhere and nowhere. The same could be said of an unnumbered card. So I don't really split hairs over it.