The Fool’s day in April

Symbolism

The Fool is the spirit in search of experience. He represents the mystical cleverness bereft of reason within us, the childlike ability to tune into the inner workings of the world. The sun shining behind him represents the divine nature of the Fool’s wisdom and exuberance, holy madness or ‘crazy wisdom’. On his back are all the possessions he might need. In his hand there is a flower, showing his appreciation of beauty. He is frequently accompanied by a dog, sometimes seen as his animal desires, sometimes as the call of the “real world”, nipping at his heels and distracting him. He is seemingly unconcerned that he is standing on a precipice, apparently about to step off. One of the keys to the card is the paradigm of the precipice, Zero and the sometimes represented oblivious Fool’s near-step into the oblivion (the void) of the jaws of a crocodile, for example, are all mutually informing polysemy within evocations of the iconography of The Fool. The staff is the offset and complement to the void and this in many traditions represents wisdom and renunciation, eg. ‘danda’ (Sanskrit) of a Sanyassin, ‘danda’ (Sanskrit) is also a punctuation mark with the function analogous to a ‘full-stop’ which is appropriately termed, a period in English grammar. The ‘danda’ is also slang for ‘penis’ (Sanskrit: lingam) and the ‘void’, ‘womb’ and ‘vagina’ (Sanskrit: yoni) is its offset and complement: The Fool is both the beginning and the end, neither and otherwise, betwixt and between, liminal.

The number 0 is a perfect significator for the Fool, as it can become anything when he reaches his destination as in the sense of ‘joker’s wild’. Zero plus anything equals the same thing. Zero times anything equals zero.[6] Zero is nothing, a lack of hard substance, and as such it may reflect a non-issue or lack of cohesiveness for the subject at hand.

Interpretations

In many esoteric systems of interpretation, the Fool is usually interpreted as the protagonist of a story, and the Major Arcana is the path the Fool takes through the great mysteries of life and the main human archetypes. This path is known traditionally in Tarot as the Fool´s Journey, and is frequently used to introduce the meaning of Major Arcana cards to beginners.[7]

In his Manual of Cartomancy, Grand Orient has a curious suggestion of the office of Mystic Fool, as a part 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 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. However, we know very little of the circumstances under which this art arose.

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. When The Fool appears in a spread, he would be a signal to strip down to the irreducible core, and interrogate whether the Querant’s self-vision is obscured. It may also be a warning that significant change is coming.

Another interpretation of the card is that of taking action where the circumstances are unknown, confronting one’s fears, taking risks, and so on.

Some literary comparisons can be made. In universal literature, The Fool would be considered the youngest son or daughter who accomplishes great feats despite the apparently better position of older siblings. Examples include Cinderella, Psyche, Cordelia (from King Lear), all the third sons of kings in fairy tales who succeed when their older brothers do not, the Grail Knight who may be destined to locate the Holy Cup where greater and wiser men have tried and failed, the one teetering at the edge of Nietzsche’s abyss, at the cusp of dreadful knowledge that will pull him or her out of the cave, or even Hamlet before he decides to embrace his destiny.

A dog appears on most versions of the card. Some versions of the dog depict him biting at The Fool. The dog as a polysemy symbolizes the natural world, devotion and faithfulness, wildness and primordiality, the converse of wildness being tamed, one path to knowledge and a valuable ally; he can be seen as providing The Fool with a “reality check,” a link to the everyday world, indeed this is what the dog did for the Saint Kukuraja.

Although it cannot be seen in all modern cards, The Fool is often shown walking off a cliff. This raises the question of whether the fool is performing a leap of faith or is being depicted as acting without foresight.