Ø:   The Fool

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BOTA (Builders of the Adytum)

Universal Waite

1.   An open mind; spontaneity.   "An innocent soul." 2.   The rejection of physical limitations. 3.   Spirituality; the belief that the physical world is not the ultimate reality. 4.   A new beginning.

COMMENTS:

This card shows "the moment before the first step is taken."

Usually this is NOT a negative card.   The Fool represents the chaos from which everything began.   This card technically doesn't have a number (since its "number" is zero), so the Fool isn't really in sequence with the other cards; he's an "outsider."

The Fool is the original "wild card."   Some writers say that he is the ancestor of the Joker, and is therefore the only trump card that ended up in the modern poker deck (Rachel Pollack says that this isn't true - the Joker is NOT "derived from The Fool").

Arthur Edward Waite, when sequencing the Trumps, put the Fool between Judgement (#20) and The World (#21).

It looks as if the Fool is about to walk right off the cliff; he isn't watching where he's going.   One writer says that the message here is, "There's a fine line between being carefree and being careless."

Or the message may be even simpler: "Dare to be stupid."

The Fool does not belong in any specific place; he is not "fixed" like the other cards.

The Fool can represent a time of newness, when some aspect of the one's life has been "re-started"   -   his career, his romantic pursuits, his schooling.   The Fool is "back at zero" and may feel remarkably free, lighthearted, and refreshed, as if he were being given a second chance.

The little dog seems to be saying, "Go ahead and take that leap of faith."

For the Fool, there is no difference between possibility and reality.   It has been said that the Fool is what the outside world sees when it looks at someone who is truly enlightened ("The Fool on the Hill").

He is the embodiment of the Oriental concept of mu shin, the state of "no-mind" which is achieved at the higher levels of martial arts training.

This card's number is zero, which isn't really a number. "All things remain possible because no definite form has been taken yet."

Sometimes you must seem to be a fool and ask a question in order to gain wisdom.

[One Tarot reader said that when he sees this card, the first thing he thinks of is Michael Scott from The Office]

In medieval courts, the jester/fool was not expected to follow the same rules as others.   He could observe, and then "poke fun" from the sidelines.

Question: If the Fool keeps walking and goes over the cliff, what will he find at the bottom?

Here's what Arthur Edward Waite says about this card (in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot): As this final message of the Major Trumps is unchanged--and indeed unchangeable--in respect of its design, it has been partly described already regarding its deeper sense. It represents also the perfection and end of the Cosmos, the secret which is within it, the rapture of the universe when it understands itself in God. It is further the state of the soul in the consciousness of Divine Vision, reflected from the self-knowing spirit. But these meanings are without prejudice to that which I have said concerning it on the material side. It has more than one message on the macrocosmic side and is, for example, the state of the restored world when the law of manifestation shall have been carried to the highest degree of natural perfection. But it is perhaps more especially a story of the past, referring to that day when all was declared to be good, when the morning stars sang together and all the Sons of God shouted for joy [Job 38:7]. One of the worst explanations concerning it is that the figure symbolizes the Magus when he has reached the highest degree of initiation; another account says that it represents the absolute, which is ridiculous. The figure has been said to stand for Truth, which is, however, more properly allocated to the seventeenth card. Lastly, it has been called the Crown of the Magi.