The best part of starting a blog series on tarot is that you have the option of beginning with the Fool. I gotta say, when you feel a bit like a fool yourself, it helps.
Not to say that tarot is foolish. To the contrary, it can be life changing in the most profound way. The trouble is me. I mean, the audacity, assuming I know enough about the cards to write about them?
But that doesn’t matter with the Fool. The Fool doesn’t think – he doesn’t even look. He just leaps. It’s the ultimate symbol of a new beginning: a whole-hearted admitting, accepting, and even loving of the unknown. There’s a fearlessness to this card that I for one could benefit from having a bit more of.
The Fool is an eternal child; “beginners mind” doesn’t quite do justice to the innocence, naivety and excitement this card carries. He’s instinctual, driven by something I’m sure he can’t put his finger on – a need for movement and freedom and expansion, a vague but pressing need for newness. You may want adventure, but the very nature of such a desire depends on a lack of detail. If you could fathom every step and misstep before you, every surprise, every exciting shock and every hard lesson, it could hardly be called an “adventure” at all.
You’ve probably noticed by now that I’m referring to this card in the masculine. This isn’t because I’m some stodgy old academic from the 1890’s (or 1990’s), unaware that “mankind” isn’t as synonymous with “humankind” as I’ve been led to believe. This isn’t even because the Fool presents as a dude on most cards. There’s more of a divine, symbolic masculine, yang energy fueling the Fool’s motives. Symbolically, masculine energy is as action-oriented, and feminine energy more receptive. Tsk that all you want, but I’m not the type to throw the baby out with the bathwater – these are useful terms for navigating the dreamscape of metaphor that is the collective consciousness. It doesn’t matter if you are a girl, a boy, or anything in between – the Fool speaks to your inner masculine. More specifically, your inner teenage boy, two days before turning 18. We all get kicks of that energy from time to time. We all know that dogged need to just GO.
Now this guy isn’t called a “fool” for no good reason – he can look nuts from the outside. In his heart of hearts, he feels guided, protected, and divinely inspired – and honestly he probably is. But the world around is just gonna see this illogical, um, ya know, fool. Doing unconventional, unexpected things, making choices without much forethought, wandering without an apparent goal: these aren’t exactly “responsible” behaviors.
But it’s generally a great card – when drawn upright, at least. It’s a card of divine trust and starting new phases. And in a world that’s constantly changing, a little bit of “fool” energy may not be so irresponsible after all.
The Fool upright
▹Feeling open and carefree
▹Feeling protected
▹Living in the moment
▹Travel
▹New beginnings
The Fool reversed
▹Seeming sill and childish
▹Either refusing to take risks, or taking them recklessly
▹Lack of adventure
▹Not wanting to be seen as a fool
▹Limits, conventionality
▹Carelessness
▹Pursuing a “fool’s errand”
Whether upright or reversed, the best advice you could heed here is to give yourself to the divine (however you conceive of that), open yourself up to higher guidance, and have some faith in the future – whatever that may be.