The Fool

Blissful carelessness,
the power of ignorance.
The Tarot Fool card is a jolly one, judging from the image on it. He may be a fool, but doesn't he look happy? Maybe that's what it takes to be joyous in this world. Ignorance is bliss.

     The Fool is my favorite Tarot card. Looking at it, I get a sense of his happiness, which makes me smile. It's the introverted happiness, and that's the most difficult one to obtain. If you're happy when you're on your own, then you are truly happy, at peace with yourself. This fool must have made it, because he look euphoric.

     There are many kinds of happiness, most of them short lived, ending in the gloom that their departure induces. But the Tarot Fool has found something lasting - a joy that emerges from deep inside, seemingly for no reason at all. He has discovered that deep inside, he's content. Such happiness remains and is easy to return to.

     The dog by the Tarot Fool's side can feel the authenticity of his happiness and that it's just as unconditional as canine love. So, of course they join.

     Well, the dog does. The Tarot Fool is too inebriated by his joy to notice anything around him. He's by the edge of a cliff, his face turned to the sky. But it seems that if he takes another step, he will not fall. He'll probably just keep on walking - in mid-air.

     The Tarot Fool card definitely indicates happiness. Whatever problem there was, it's gone as if all by itself, leaving you carefree. Other threats might appear, but they'll not damage the one who doesn't worry. The cure is always to never cease taking delight in life.

A. E. Waite's Texts
About the Tarot Fool Card

00. 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. The Fool carries a wallet; he is looking over his shoulder and does not know that he is on the brink of a precipice; but a dog or other animal - some call it a tiger - is attacking him from behind, and he is hurried to his destruction unawares. Etteilla has given a justifiable variation of this card - as generally understood - in the form of a court jester, with cap, bells and motley garb. The other descriptions say that the wallet contains the bearer's follies and vices, which seems bourgeois and arbitrary.

The Inner Symbolism of the Tarot Fool Card

With light step, as if earth and its trammels had little power to restrain him, a young man in gorgeous vestments pauses at the brink of a precipice among the great heights of the world; he surveys the blue distance before him-its expanse of sky rather than the prospect below. His act of eager walking is still indicated, though he is stationary at the given moment; his dog is still bounding. The edge which opens on the depth has no terror; it is as if angels were waiting to uphold him, if it came about that he leaped from the height. His countenance is full of intelligence and expectant dream. He has a rose in one hand and in the other a costly wand, from which depends over his right shoulder a wallet curiously embroidered. He is a prince of the other world on his travels through this one-all amidst the morning glory, in the keen air. The sun, which shines behind him, knows whence he came, whither he is going, and how he will return by another path after many days. He is the spirit in search of experience. Many symbols of the Instituted Mysteries are summarized in this card, which reverses, under high warrants, all the confusions that have preceded it.

In his Manual of Cartomancy, Grand Orient has a curious suggestion of the office of Mystic Fool, as apart of his process in higher divination; but it might call for more than ordinary gifts to put it into operation. We shall see how the card fares according to the common arts of fortune-telling, and it will be an example, to those who can discern, of the fact, otherwise so evident, that the Trumps Major had no place originally in the arts of psychic gambling, when cards are used as the counters and pretexts. Of the circumstances under which this art arose we know, however, very little. The conventional explanations say that the Fool signifies the flesh, the sensitive life, and by a peculiar satire its subsidiary name was at one time the alchemist, as depicting folly at the most insensate stage.

Divinatory Meaning of the Tarot Fool Card

Folly, mania, extravagance, intoxication, delirium, frenzy, bewrayment. Reversed: Negligence, absence, distribution, carelessness, apathy, nullity, vanity.

The Tarot Major Arcana

1. The Magician

2. The High Priestess

3. The Empress

4. The Emperor

5. The Hierophant

6. The Lovers

7. The Chariot

8. Strength

9. The Hermit

10. Wheel of Fortune

11. Justice

12. The Hanged Man

13. Death

14. Temperance

15. The Devil

16. The Tower

17. The Star

18. The Moon

19. The Sun

20. Judgement

21. The World

22. The Fool