Major Arcana
The Fool

The Fool Tarot card has also been referred to as the Mate or the Unwise Man. In most of the arrangements the Tarot Fool is the cipher card, number nothing. Court de Gebelin, (Antoine Court 1719 – May 10, 1784 CE named himself Antoine Court de Gébelin and initiated the interpretation of the Tarot as an arcane repository of timeless esoteric wisdom), places The Fool at the head of the whole series as the zero, or negative, which is presupposed by numeration, and as this is a simpler so also it is a better arrangement.

It has been abandoned because, in later times, the cards have been attributed to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. There was some difficulty about allocating the zero symbol of The Fool Tarot card satisfactorily in a sequence of letters all of which signify numbers. In the present reference of the card to the letter Shin, which corresponds to 200, the difficulty or the unreason remains. The truth is that the real arrangement of the cards has never transpired.

Card Description(s)

• The Fool carries a wallet; he is looking over his shoulder and does not know that he is on the brink of a precipice; but a dog or other animal--some call it a tiger--is attacking him from behind, and he is hurried to his destruction unawares.

• "Etteilla" (a pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Alliette, 1738 – 1791 CE. The first to popularize divination by Tarot to a wide audience. He was the first professional Tarotist in recorded history), has given a justifiable variation of this card--as generally understood--in the form of a court jester, with cap, bells and motley garb.

• The other descriptions say that the wallet contains the bearer's follies and vices, which seems bourgeois and arbitrary.

Inner Symbolism(s):

• With light step, as if earth and its trammels had little power to restrain him, a young man, The Tarot Fool, in gorgeous vestments pauses at the brink of a precipice among the great heights of the world; he surveys the blue distance before him and its expanse of sky rather than the prospect below.
• His act of eager walking is still indicated, though The Fool is stationary at the given moment; his dog is still bounding. The edge which opens on the depth has no terror; it is as if Angels were waiting to uphold him, if it came about that he leaped from the height.
• The countenance of The Tarot Fool is full of intelligence and expectant dream. He has a rose in one hand and in the other a costly wand, from which depends over his right shoulder a wallet curiously embroidered.
• The Tarot Fool is a prince of the other world on his travels through this one-all amidst the morning glory, in the keen air. The sun, which shines behind him, knows whence he came, whither he is going, and how he will return by another path after many days. He is the spirit in search of experience.
• Many symbols of the Instituted Mysteries are summarized in the Tarot card The Fool, which reverses, under high warrants, all the confusions that have preceded it.
• Another conventional explanation says that the Tarot 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.

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