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Reading:
Key Interpretations of the Upright Card
Personal Growth | Love & Relationships | Career & Finances |
Latent energy, preparation for adventure | Search for freedom, escapism, lightness, lack of direction, new relationship, casual relationship, superficiality, fear of commitment, escape | Lack of direction, superficiality, new job, opportunity, reckless actions, excessive changeability |
Key Interpretations of the Reversed Card or in a Blocked Position
Personal Growth | Love & Relationships | Career & Finances |
Stagnation, resistance to new beginnings, lack of optimism | Heaviness in the relationship, rigidity, unwillingness to step up, drama queen, tensions, lack of communication | Fear of stepping up, careful evaluation of opportunities |
Introduction - The Fool Card Explained in the Tarot
In the Marseille tarot deck, the Fool is depicted as a cheerful and carefree young man walking along a path with a stick over his shoulder. He wears colorful and flowing clothes and often carries a bag or backpack attached to the stick. His expression is serene and open, reflecting a sense of adventure and freedom. He doesn’t seem concerned about the path ahead, and his figure is at the center of the card, dominating the space.
In the Rider-Waite tarot, the Fool is similarly portrayed as a young traveler with a backpack. However, there are significant differences in the scene. Here, the Fool walks carefree on a cliff edge, with an expression of joy and optimism on his face. A dog follows him happily, symbolizing spontaneity and intuition. The sun shines behind him, illuminating the path and representing the light of awareness and enlightenment. This version suggests a sense of trust in the journey despite uncertainties and risks.
The Fool is the only unnumbered Major Arcana card. Traditionally, it is considered both card 0 and 22.
Symbols
The Dog: The dog is an ambivalent figure. On one hand, it symbolizes instincts and dangers. On the other, it can be seen positively, as a faithful companion that accompanies the Fool on his journey, hinting at harmony with nature.
The Bag: There are various interpretations of this symbol; is it empty? Full? Is it a pilgrim’s bag? It is certainly not suitable for the journey the Fool is embarking on.
The Clothing: The Fool’s attire resembles that of a jester. Why? The jester was a figure outside of traditional norms, the only one allowed to speak the truth. He exists outside civil and intellectual order, in a different dimension that is both more detached and more real than all others.
In the Marseille Deck:
In the Marseille tarot, the Fool is facing right and projected towards the future. In addition to a bag, he also carries a stick, suggesting that he is no longer young.
Main Colors:
Pink: Symbolizes the flesh and the fleeting nature of earthly life, highlighting the transitory and mutable aspects of the journey.
Green: Represents the strength and eternity of nature, regeneration, growth, and the vitality of life.
Red: Symbolizes action, life, passion, and the drive towards new adventures.
Light Blue: Represents spirituality and innocence, connected to the realm of the soul, meditation, and inner purity.
In the Rider-Waite Deck:
In the Rider-Waite tarot, the Fool faces left, towards the past. This Fool is young, has his eyes closed, and is positioned towards a cliff. His posture is open, showing no fear of the unknown. He holds a white rose in his hand, symbolizing purity and innocence. In this depiction, both the rose and the dog are white. He also wears a red feather in his hat, a sign of vitality and dynamism.
Main Colors:
Yellow: Symbolizes clarity, awareness, and the cunning of the Fool.
Red: Represents action, life, and passion. Red symbolizes vital energy and the drive towards new experiences and challenges.
White: Suggests the Fool's purity and innocence. White represents freshness and clarity of intent in his approach to the world.
Green: Represents the strength and eternity of nature, as well as the Fool’s youthfulness and vitality. Green suggests a deep connection with the natural realm and the ability to adapt to cycles of change and rebirth.
Positive and Negative Qualities:
Positive: Freedom, journey, energy, exploration, beginning and end, essence, naivety, vitality, imagination, potential, youth, innocence, new beginnings, free spirit, open-mindedness, fearlessness, innovation, spontaneity, flexibility, enthusiasm.
Negative: Chaos, irrationality, madness, wandering, instability, indecision, duplicity, impulsiveness, lack of inhibitions, immaturity. On an evolutionary level, it may indicate the Self in an underdeveloped state.
Prompts:
Where are you going? In which area of your life are you behaving like the Fool?
What would you do if you could do anything?
Advice:The energy of this card is positive, highlighting new beginnings and new experiences. Do not fear the unknown; instead, spread your wings and use them to fly. |
So, what does it mean?
The Fool is a special card. Not only is it the only unnumbered Major Arcana (sometimes appearing before the Magician, sometimes after the World), but it is also the protagonist of the “journey of formation” depicted by the Tarot, representing the path toward self-awareness that each of us undertakes.
As both card 0 and card 22 of the Tarot, the Fool is the first and the last card of the Major Arcana.
As card 0, it symbolizes the common person at the beginning of their life journey, sometimes lost, embodying the archetypes of the Innocent, Orphan, Wanderer, Fool, and Jester.
As card 22, it represents the wise fool, the “divine madness” at the end of the initiatory transformation, the complete absence of the individual self, evolved through the other 21 Major Arcana cards.
The theme of mystical madness is present in many cultures, from medieval Europe to the Sufis, who often compare themselves to drunks who, in their inebriation, forget themselves, much like mystics who merge with the universe, emptying their being and creating an inner void without individuality, space, or time.
The Fool is the common man who, after leaving the cave, returns and, when telling others what he has seen, is considered mad by those who have only ever seen shadows.
Plato’s Cave In this allegory, Plato describes a group of prisoners who have been confined in a dark and narrow cave since birth, with their legs and necks chained so they can only see the wall in front of them. Behind them, a light casts shadows on the wall, and the prisoners believe these shadows are reality, as they have never seen the outside world. One day, one of the prisoners is freed and forced to turn towards the light, leaving the cave. At first, he is blinded by the sunlight, but gradually he adjusts and begins to see the real world outside the cave. He experiences true reality, forms, and ideas, understanding that the shadows in the cave were merely deceptive appearances. The freed prisoner then decides to return to the cave to share his knowledge with the others, but they do not believe his words and consider him mad |
In his work "The Tarot and the Initiatic Tradition," Palmieri (Palmieri, D. (2019). I tarocchi e la tradizione iniziatica. Tlon.) associates St. Francis with the Fool card. St. Francis was called the "God’s Jester" because his extravagant behavior, seen as strange by common people, was due to his deep wisdom, which was incomprehensible to many.
The Fool contains the seed of everything: good and evil, beginning and end, masculine and feminine. It holds “the all,” but it is an all that still wanders in chaos and confusion. To progress, it needs to choose, to "decide" (cut away the unnecessary), and channel its vast potential in one single direction.
Freedom, travel, youth, immaturity, chaos, primal energy, luck, enthusiasm, excesses—these are just some of the many interconnected facets that this card suggests. It is a fluid card that changes depending on the cards around it; alone, it mainly offers an “attitude” that must be developed according to the other elements present.
Astrologically, it is linked to Uranus, which, like the Fool, urges us to go beyond, to develop our uniqueness to the fullest, to break societal conditioning, and to learn when necessary to break the rules and revolutionize some aspect of our life. It asks us to learn to balance, manage, and choose how to use this energy, which, if poorly channeled, can be destructive or lead us too far astray.
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