April's Fool

SURPRISE! April Fool's Day!




April 1st seemed an appropriate day to celebrate this Tarot archetype....a reminder to bring new beginnings, like an eternal Spring, into your lives. Be totally present and open to experience, become as a child, crawl again, tumble, twirl, and explore the wonders around you, as though for the first time.




The Fool
by Nina Lee Braden

This Fool card is from the BOTA (Builders of the Adytum) deck designed by Paul Foster Case and drawn by Jesse Parks Burns. It has been hand-colored by Nina Lee Braden using artist's markers.


The Fool is usually studied first when students look at Tarot, but the Fool does not come first. In fact, the Fool has no number but is often assigned the number zero. In fact, it is best to think of the Fool as a floating card whose position can be anywhere. The Fool is most often placed before card one, between cards 20 and 21 or after card 21, but in actuality, the Fool is supposed to exist between all cards, as an invisible bridge or gateway which allows the initiate to move from lesson to lesson, from concept to concept, from key to key.

The Tarot Fool is not quite what comes to mind when many people think of the word "fool" or the term "foolish." There are clear connections to the medieval Fool or Court Jester. In modern Tarot, the Fool represents being carefree, impulsive, spontaneous, enthusiastic, and frivolous. The Fool steps out into the unknown without fear or caution. He isn't brave, but he has no fear. He is the universal innocent but he is also wise. He is the rule-breaker, the person who lives without rules. He is very close to his own body and experiences his physical sensations fully.

Many commentators see the Fool as a traveler, journeying through the rest of the deck, an everyperson, as it were. Some have said that The Fool is the most powerful of all the Tarot Trumps. But the power of the Fool is not the power of the establishment; it is the power of the iconoclast, the rebel, the civil disobedient, the revolutionary, the protester, the comic, the mocker, the prankster. The Fool thumbs his nose at the rules.

Sallie Nichols in Jung and Tarot says that "Since he has no fixed number he is free to travel at will, often upsetting the established order with his pranks....he...enjoys confounding the Establishment" (23). Sally Gearhart and Susan Rennie, in their A Feminist Tarot, say that The Fool is "an outsider who is mocked and laughed at, but who is the harbinger of real change" (4). Eden Gray describes The Fool as one who is both virile yet "free from animal forms of desire" (Complete Guide, 18). Alfred Douglas says that The Fool's mind "is not closed to unusual experiences that are denied to ordinary men." He is "the one who is despised by society yet who is the catalyst which will transform that society." He is "the harbinger of a new cycle of existence, the herald of a new life and fresh beginnings" (43).

The Fool on the Rider Waite Smith card shows a young person (normally thought to be a man, but really rather androgynous), dancing at the edge of a rocky precipice. He is carrying in one hand a stick with a pouch hanging from it. In the other hand, he delicately holds a white rose. His little dog dances at his feet. The Fool does not worry about the future; whatever happens to him is fine. He is caught up in the experience of the moment.

The Fool himself is simultaneously nothing and yet everything. He contains all potential, yet he is and has nothing. In literature and popular culture, The Fool resembles the character of Perry in the film The Fisher King, Don Quixote, and John Chapman, also known as Johnny Appleseed. These are people with their own rules, their own agenda. They do not fit our mold, our concept of normality, but they have tremendous power to affect the lives of others and to inspire. They are living oxymorons: wise fools.

According the esoteric Tarot, which draws on the Qabala, the Fool's l etter is Aleph, meaning Ox. The Qabalistic Intelligence given the Fool is Fiery Intelligence. The color is yellow and the musical note is E Natural. The planetary correspondence is Uranus. On the Qabalistic Tree of Life, the path of the Fool is the 11th Path, between Kether (Crown) and Chokmah (Wisdom of the Father).

Karen LaPuma in her article about Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Tarot, says of Uranus (the planet associated with The Fool),

This planet represents the need for freedom and independence, and the need to express oneself without restraint--individualization, yet with an eager awareness of universality. It is the vehicle through which new ideas are born, revolutionizing one's way of being....As the great awakener and illuminator, it symbolizes the universal mind, the creative mind--a mind beyond reason and the establishment (80-81).

Although LaPuma credits The Fool with representing the creative mind, the card more often associated with creativity is The Magician.

More on the Esoteric traditions (Aleph):

http://www.psyche.com/psyche/tarot/trumps/fool.html



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MEDITATION: Contemplate the innocence within you... take yourself back in time to the earliest, and/or sweetest, most carefree moments in your life. Feel the great connection with spirit, and the complete lack of fear.

PERSONAL DISCUSSIONS: When have you felt the energy of the Fool? Have you seen it in other people? Have you had happy/sad experiences with this energy?

TAROT EXPERIENCE: Recalling a time when you may have you drawn this card, what were the circumstances surrounding it, and what did it mean to you? How do you feel this archetype affects the cards that come before or after?


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The History of the Fool Card


Of the often-seen features on the card, the cliff, Sun, and mountaintops first appeared in the Waite-Smith deck. The bag tied on the stick, the walking staff, the dog, and the clown-like costume are ancient elements of the design, going back to at least 1500.

The Fool has never been called anything else. In Italian, it is il matto, in French le mat or sometimes le fou (both having essentially the same meaning).

In the antique decks (before Waite-Smith), the Fool is almost always unnumbered, even though the rest of the major arcana bear roman numerals I through XXI. There are a few exceptions: two old decks (including the 15th-century Sola Busca) label the card with a "0", and the Belgian Tarot designs (made by various manufacturers in the 18th century) label the Fool as "XXII". So although the Fool is almost always completely apart from the sequence of trumps in the historic decks, there is historic precedent for regarding it as the lowest trump and as the highest trump!

The suggestion that the Joker in the standard deck of playing cards evolved from the tarot Fool is appealing and often repeated. Present scholarly opinion, though, weighs in against it. The Joker first appeared in the US around 1850, probably for playing either Poker or Euchre. Although it is possible that whoever invented the Joker had seen a tarot deck and liked the Fool card, it would have been a deliberate "borrowing" at a very late date, not any kind of retention from early times.

In the game of tarot, the Fool has a unique role, similar to that of a "wild card" (Joker) but different in interesting ways. Whereas a wild card assumes the identity of a card the player would like to have, helping the holder win the hand, the Fool is an "excuse"--it can be played at any time, but it never beats any of the other cards. So why play it, if it can't win? The reason is that it is worth a lot of points, and you get to keep it after you play it, even though the winner gets to take away all the other cards that were played in that trick. So the Fool is a very lucky card to have. If you are dealt it, you know that you'll be getting those points, no matter what. And it can save you from having to sacrifice a valuable card or reveal that you've run out of a particular suit, for example. Playing the Fool is like momentarily exempting yourself from the rules of the game.

In some of the Swiss and Austrian versions of the tarot game, the Fool had lost this special role and become just the highest rank trump, beating the World card. (This may be why those Belgian tarot decks number the Fool XXII). Interestingly, this is precisely the role the Joker plays in the game of Euchre. So maybe there is a connection there after all!



The oldest surviving Fool card is the one from the Visconti-Sforza deck, dated to about 1450. Here the Fool has no dogs, and is standing still rather than walking. Instead of a clown costume, he is dressed in white rags and has feathers in his hair. Gertrude Moakley (1966) suggests that he is a personification of the season of Lent, which is a time of austerity and fasting. She also suggests that this Lent figure evolved into the white clown of the commedia dell'arte. Another connection along these lines is the "Misero" figure in the Tarocchi del Mantegna. This is a man in rags, leaning on a stick, and accompanied by dogs. The title tells us that he is a symbol of poverty, humanity in its lowest condition, a beggar.



The figure with the walking stick and dog seems to have been the original Fool in the tarot traditions of northern Italy: Milan and Venice. This was the version that made its way to France and Switzerland around 1500, and has become familiar to centuries of tarot enthusiasts. But elsewhere in Italy, as the tarot migrated south, a slightly different image emerged. Not obviously a traveler, the southern Fool is an entertainer of children, perhaps a simple-minded person with a childlike love of fun and games. See, for example, the Mitelli (Bologna) and Minchiate (Florence) fools. The modern Tarocco Bolognese, which is still used to play the tarot game in Bologna to this day, again shows us the carefree entertainer, with feathers in his hair, playing a drum.

The most aptly succinct description of the Fool Card I've ever heard is that of "a God intoxicant." In other words, it signifies someone who is so divinely inspired that they are able to often transcend the apparent laws of physical reality.

I often wonder if Jon Stewart and the entire cast of the Daily Show are not the fools for our time. Without them, I'd be deeply concerned.

Happy April foolishness !!!

fully present is.....living outside time. It is our "awakened divinity". The present time is all you ever have. There is never a time when your life is not 'this moment'.

Eckhart Tolle describes it this way:

Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. However, Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence. This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. But you don't seek to grasp it with your mind. Don't try to understand it. You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally. To regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state of 'feeling realization' is enlightenment.

-- from, The Power of Now


Many misunderstandings and false beliefs about Christ will clear if you realize that there is no past or future in Christ. To say that Christ 'was' or 'will be' is a contradiction in terms. Jesus was. He was a man who lived two thousand years ago and realized divine presence, his true nature. And so he said: "Before Abraham was, I am." He did not say: "I already existed before Abraham was born."
That would have meant that he was still within the dimension of time and form identity. The words 'I am' used in a sentence that starts in the past tense indicate a radical shift, a discontinuity in the temporal dimension. It is a Zen-like statement of great profundity.
Jesus attempted to convey directly, not through discursive thought, the meaning of presence, of self realization. He had gone beyond the consciousness dimension governed by time, into the realm of the timeless. The dimension of eternity had come into this world. Eternity, of course, does not mean endless time, but NO time. Thus, the man Jesus became Christ, a vehicle for pure consciousness. And what is God's self-definition in the Bible? Did God say "I have always been, and I always will be"? Of course not. That would have given reality to past and future. God said "I AM THAT I AM". No time here, just presence.

The 'second coming' of Christ is a transformation of human consciousness, a shift from time to presence, from thinking to pure consciousness, not the arrival of some man or woman. If "Christ" were to return tomorrow in some externalized form, what could he or she possibly say to you other than this:

"I am the Truth. I am divine presence. I am eternal life. I am within you. I am here. I am Now."

-- from The Power of Now, p. 86-87.

I've met only a handful of people in my life that were so-o-o enlightened and "in the moment" that it was as though they had in a way, actually transcended their birth charts. I speculated that perhaps they were drawing from energies far beyond our solar system.

Those encounters were truly inspiring.

Thank you for those citations !!


:hi: