0- The Fool Tarot Card

People think of The Fool as the beginning of the deck, but it’s also the ending, as the journey comes full circle. Go beyond thinking of the tarot cards as individual cards with individual meanings, but think of them in the context of this grand journey that we all take throughout our lives. The symbols on each of the cards represent certain Jungian archetypes and universal experiences which all people hold in common. That’s why the cards evoke something in our subconscious, something we connect to in the imagery that we can relate to our current life situation.

So The Fool tarot card is the beginning, which is to say the beginning of the journey. If you study the work of Joseph Campbell, think of the fool as “The Hero with 1000 Faces.” If you’re a little more contemporary, you might see the fool as Luke Skywalker going off on a great adventure, or Bilbo Baggins starting his journey in The Hobbit. But in this story — our story — we all get to be the hero.

The Fool embarks on a journey with little knowledge of what lies ahead, and if you look at the card, the Fool doesn’t seem too concerned with the perils that lie ahead on his path. In other words, he is about to bite off way more than he can chew.

Sound familiar?

The Fool is full of the hubris of youth, and suffice it to say, the road ahead will be rocky at times, but also have tremendous peaks. This card is all about new beginnings, new choices, new experiences. It’s the first step of the journey and we are traveling alone, with only the purity of our own voice to instruct us on the way. In a conventional playing deck, this would be the Joker, the wildcard, or in ancient cultures, the trickster. The Fool can mingle with anyone from the highest royalty and their court to the lowliest pauper.

The essence of The Fool is divinely sanctioned lawlessness. He rejects social conventions and acts with a sort of divine madness.

The Fool is often pictured on the edge of a cliff, oblivious to the danger in front of him. He often has a small dog yipping at his heels as if to warn him of the fall of head. Is this cliff and the fall that seems imminent our fall from innocence?

On the other hand, if you think of The Fool as someone who goes full circle in his journey, you could also argue that The Fool tarot card represents a certain wisdom that comes with age after weathering the trials of life, yet with a new sense of wonder. Have you ever met someone in their golden years that has a childlike joy in life, yet great wisdom? That is the return of The Fool who has come full circle at the end of the journey

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