A Foolish Way to Learn the Tarot
I pulled the Fool card today, which feels great. I’ve been reading the tarot for almost twenty years, and I pull a card every day to see which energies I’m working with that day. Today I started lots of new stuff, like this blog, and a facebook profile. I feel light and joyous.
Here’s an article about the Fool card that I wrote for a now-defunct online magazine:
A Foolish Way to Start Learning the Tarot: Meeting the Fool
In the nineteen years I’ve been reading Tarot, I’ve met many people interested in learning how to read the cards. They are typically unsatisfied when I advise them just to pick up a deck and start reading. They want to know how to start. They don’t believe that a flexible sense of adventure and a lot of whimsy are the primarycriteria for developing an intuitive grasp of the Tarot. Anyone can learn the system of the tarot. But to be a reader of people means to cherish the voice inside which is both foolish and brave. How does one connect to one’s intuition? In a spirit of play, which is why I usually begin by acquainting people with the Fool card.
The Fool card is, depending on which source one is going, the first or the last of the major arcana. Arcana means secrets, and the seventy-eight card deck is divided into twenty-two major arcana and fifty-six minor arcana, including the court or people cards. Aside from numerological systems or Kabalistic systems such as Aleister Crowley uses, it makes no difference where the Fool card is placed: the end is the beginning.
The fool is a glyph of the soul. He is Everyman, and he journeys through the twenty-one stages of theremaining major arcana, giving us a map of the progressive stages of consciousness (the first seven physical, the next 7 emotional, the last seven spiritual). In psychoanalytic terms, the fool corresponds to the inner child.
There are as many different images of the fool card as there are tarot decks. Some artists emphasize hisconnection to the natural world by picturing him with certain animals that suggest creativity, such as a frog. Often he is represented with an animal that could pose him danger, such as a tiger or a crocodile. He is either attuned to these animals or simply unconscious of danger. Think of Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies casually receiving a time bomb as a special delivery. The symbolism of animal representation on this card is too vast a subject to cover extensively in this introductory article. The key is that, in totemic fashion, the animals lend the fool their abilities.
One of the constants of the fool card, no matter how he is drawn, is that his number is zero. This is significant for two reasons. First, zero stands for the infinite expansive possibility when one is grounded in the essence of oneself: essence, not ego. Put a zero on the end of any number, and it gets bigger. Try to multiply any number by zero and what is left? Zero. The moral of the story: One can never be anything other what one is, and, indeed, there is no reason to be so. Truly being oneself augments everything.
Second, the zero stands for cycle of life, death, and regeneration: a cycle of perpetuation, the snake eating its own tail. This cycle is also the cycle of individual being. The microcosm of the individual reflects the macrocosm of the universe.
We see embodied in the Fool card a foreshadowing of all the life lessons to come. The rest of the majorarcana are practical steps, if you will, to experiencing, internalizing, and manifesting what the Fool already knows: there is no separation between himself and the divine. There is no separation between himself and all that exists. He exists in joy, with no mourning for the necessary deaths, because life is endless renewal, a self-perpetuated, splendid adventure.
The other constant in the Fool card is the concept of wise folly. The concept of the wise fool isubiquitous across time and culture. In the western tradition, we see the Fool used everywhere fromShakespeare’s Falstaff in the Henry IV plays to modern films such as Forrest Gump. It is precisely his unselfconsciousness, his absolute lack of preconceived notions (or his flagrant disregard of others’ rules…), i.e., his foolishness, which allows the Fool to experience reality directly with instinctual wisdom, symbolized by the four elements that make up the material world: earth, air, fire, and water (or body, mind, motion, and emotion). These elements are pictured in some way on the card, and are echoed by the four suits of minor arcana: earth/pentacles or disks, air/swords, water/cups, fire/wands or rods. The fifth element, aether, or spirit, is the Fool himself and, collectively, the entire suit of major arcana.
In many instances, foolishness often helps a person come to glory. The Brothers Grimm fairy tales are full of figures with names like Simpleton, or who are described as stupid, such as in “The Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was.” They go into the world seeking fortune and return home with the girl, the gold, and everything.
When the Fool card comes up in a reading, it most often points to the inner child wanting to cut loose. Agood time for the querent to buy some fingerpaints. He may feel restless and confined by the daily grind; the Fool throws all systems on go and damns the consequences.
This may not be the auspice under which one wants to make a major decision. Then again, is there abetter way? Under the influence of this card the querent may be sure his instincts will be true and wise, if notnecessarily rational. The presence of the Fool presages magic, which leads naturally to the next of the major arcane, the magician.
