Card 0:
The Fool
© 2006 Honora Finkelstein
The Fool, the first card of the Tarot deck, is a card many people
are embarrassed to draw in a reading because they’re afraid it means
they’re going to be laughed at. But the Fool card is really about
limitless potential, incomparable freedom, and ineffable joy. Add to
this the historic tradition that the fool of the medieval royal
courts was the only person who was ever allowed to tell the king the
truth without getting axed. These things have prompted me to want to
look at the Fool card from a perspective of its symbolic,
psychological, and literary significance.
The Tarot card of the Fool represents unlimited potential before it
has manifested into physical form. Its number is zero, the big “0”,
the Cosmic Egg before it cracks. In this aspect, it represents the
part of each of us that is linked to the Divine Source, unknown and
unknowable except in its creative expressions. This is really why
the Joker of the modern playing card deck is “wild,” since he can’t
be pinned down to any numerical value and, depending on the game
you’re playing, can fill in or substitute for any card you may need.
The Fool is
the also the first stage on the journey of the hero, who finds joy
in all experience. He is the innocent who thinks, no matter what
happens: “If this is happening to me, it must be wonderful!” So the
Fool makes life lighter and problems easier to solve. He’s the
clown, whose role is to make everybody laugh. In fairy tales, it’s
often the goodhearted “fool” who solves the community’s problems and
marries the princess.
It’s
not by accident that Shakespeare used the wise fool figure in so
many of his plays. Acting as counterpoint to the kings and princes
who lived by the world’s “smart” standards, the Fool speaks from a
higher vision or consciousness. He knows the comic perspective is
far better than the tragic, that merriment is healing, and that
being able to provoke laughter is power. “A merry heart doeth good
like a medicine,” says the Book of Proverbs, and this is the healing
the Fool card brings.
In
the traditional Ryder deck, a little dog is yapping at the heels of
the Fool as the innocent young man, who carries all his treasure in
a knapsack on a stick over his shoulder, looks joyfully up at the
sky. The sun is shining behind him, and his face is radiant with
joy. And . . . he’s about to step off a precipice. This is the
moment before “the fall” into three dimensional experience. He lives
blissfully unaware of the misfortune about to befall him.
Or does he? Perhaps he knows that without “the fall,” which each human must
undergo, there is no life, no experience, no meaning, no
striving—and hence no progress. As an archetype, the Fool is
polarized with the Magician, the second card of the Tarot deck, who
represents mind, the transforming mechanism that takes the
power/energy/potential of the Fool and makes choices to bring about
all of material reality. But in real life, one cannot become a
Magician without first having been the Fool.
So, what is foolishness? It’s the Divine Force in each of us. It’s
unlimited potential. It’s a higher vision. It’s a countermeasure to
the world’s stress and “smart” ideas. It’s a healing approach to all
problems. And it’s the power to make a difference while making
people laugh. |
