The Fool Tarot Card Definitions & Meanings

The Fool card is the first card of the Tarot deck, and as such it represents the beginning of something. It is almost impossible to predict exactly what will happen, since it is invariably something new, and not based upon what has gone before. The Fool defies rationality or logic. This creates an excitable sensation, a frisson or shock to the system.

The Fool can represent the desire for rebirth, or making a new start to life, but with the proviso that the future path is not mapped out. The Fool is Nothing and Everything. It is the Empty set that contains all within it. The Fool is associated with fertility and the primal energy of Spring with the connotations of birth, rebirth, and transformation (Jesus died on the cross and rose again).

As a strategy, the Fool is all about avoiding the common path that everyone treads. It is finding new viewpoints, new ideas, shocking concepts, beliefs, or views. For hints as to where the Fool might be going, look to the cards around it, but remember that we may also be seeing nascent energies emanating from these cards. If you desire something different, a fresh start, the Fool is the card for you.

The Fool represents crazy wisdom that shocks the listener into new states of consciousness. You can never retread a tyre when the Fool is around.

The Fool is an indescribable state of consciousness that works on impulse. It can never allow an external influence - everything is from within.

When the Fool struggles, there are problems getting out of a rut - nothing new seems possible. In the past, there are regrets over a new start that never materialised.

• Rider-Waite - The Fool

  With light step, as if earth and its trammels had little power to restrain him, a young man in gorgeous vestments pauses at the brink of a precipice among the great heights of the world; he surveys the blue distance before him-its expanse of sky rather than the prospect below. His act of eager walking is still indicated, though he 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. His countenance 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. He 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 this card, which reverses, under high warrants, all the confusions that have preceded it.

  In his Manual of Cartomancy, Grand Orient has a curious suggestion of the office of Mystic Fool, as apart of his process in higher divination; but it might call for more than ordinary gifts to put it into operation. We shall see how the card fares according to the common arts of fortune-telling, and it will be an example, to those who can discern, of the fact, otherwise so evident, that the Trumps Major had no place originally in the arts of psychic gambling, when cards are used as the counters and pretexts. Of the circumstances under which this art arose we know, however, very little. The conventional explanations say that the 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.

  Folly, mania, extravagance, intoxication, delirium, frenzy, bewrayment.

  Reversed Card meanings

  Negligence, absence, distribution, carelessness, apathy, nullity, vanity.

• Book of Thoth - The Fool 0

  KNOW NAUGHT!
  ALL WAYS ARE LAWFUL TO INNOCENCE.
  PURE FOLLY IS THE KEY TO INITIATION.
  SILENCE BREAKS INTO RAPTURE.
  BE NEITHER MAN NOR WOMAN, BUT BOTH IN ONE.
  BE SILENT, BABE IN THE EGG OF BLUE, THAT THOU
  MAYEST GROW TO BEAR THE LANCE AND GRAAL!
  WANDER ALONE, AND SING! IN THE KING'S PALACE
  HIS DAUGHTER AWAITS THEE.

  In spiritual matters, the Fool means idea, thought, spirituality, that which endeavours to transcend earth. In material matters, it may, if badly dignified, mean folly, eccentricity, or even mania. But the essential of this card is that it represents an original, subtle, sudden impulse or impact, coming from a completely strange quarter. All such impulses are right, if rightly received; and the good or ill interpretation of the card depends entirely on the right attitude of the Querent.

• Golden Dawn - The Spirit of Ether

  Idea, thought, spirituality, that which endeavours to rise above the material.

• Mathers - The Fool

  Folly, Expiation, Wavering.

  Reversed Card meanings

  Hesitation, Instability, Trouble arising therefrom.

• Etteilla: Folly (78 or 0)

  .Demented, Eccentricity, Insanity, Aberrations, Intoxication, Delirium, Frenzy, Defective, Rage, Carried Away. Enthusiasm. Blindness, Ignorance. Crazy, Insane, Irrational, Innocent, Without Affectation, Simpleton.

  Reversed Card meanings

  Imbecility, Ineptitude, Carelessness, Stupidity, Impudence, Negligence, Absence, Distraction. Apathy, Fainting Fit, Exhaustion, Sleep, Nothingness, Nullity, Empty, Nothing. Vain.

• Thierens: 0. (Zero) The Fool. Our Earth.

  The average stage of man in the present stage of Earth-evolution is 'human,' but not yet at the stage of wisdom, consequently that of the 'unwise man.' To us, creatures living upon the Earth, this globe cannot be observed by us in toto, and the Fool is represented as a man walking without paying attention to himself. There is something of absolute Fate about this figure, which reminds us of the old saying of astrologers: "The wise man rules his stars, the fool obeys them." On the point of this fatality all authorities agree. For the rest the explanation does not seem very satisfying. To us there appears to be no doubt regarding the nature of this Fool, presented as a final 'principle,' if we may call it that, after those of the planets. A principle, however, without a number, a principle of nothing, nothingness.

  The planets give us the symbols or ideas of organs of consciousness, the zodiacal signs denote modes of substance, from which consciousness is derived. So the zero-principle is the symbol of unconsciousness. In fact he who is unconscious, of himself or of Self, will obey every intimation from without and obeys 'his stars' — his senses, stupidly, blindly.

  Of course this card has much to do with foolishness, spiritual dumbness, but it bears also the meaning of that which cannot be helped and which we do best to leave altogether aside; or that which will come right of itself and need not be heeded by us: that to which we are subject, as to the Earth course in its orbit. It does not need our personal assistance. Realising the latter fact this 'fool' might after all appear to be wiser than a good many other people, who in their human vanity imagine they are greatly needed for carrying out the intentions of their God, of Whom they claim a sort of personal knowledge.

  A proverb says, that children and fools tell the truth. Taken as a whole, the card signifies that which will prove to contain more truth than appears; that which cannot be helped; those who are unconscious (of certain things, e.g.,) or unreasonable or foolish, disregarding logical propositions and actions. Also that part of our surroundings over which we have no control or which we do not master; that which we have to obey or which we ignore.

  The Hebrew letter Shin is brought in relation with this card, and P. says it means "the Motion of relative duration," but his explanation does not throw any particular light on the card nor on the relationship. The picture seems to hint also that the fool "is hurried to his destruction unawares." (W.) And there may be a good deal in it. In divination it may hint at persons suffering under this tendency.

  The question may be asked, why the planetary cards have been named in this order. When we agree that Mercury, Temperance, has been put in the place of Jupiter, which after all has been used in a higher octave, we see first named the three planets outside the place of the Earth, governing the building of the physical mould and having to do with the birth and death of it. Then follows the planet of cosmic electricity and of the birth of human spirit in the physical building, which it eventually destroys. Next come the three planetary principles functioning on the spiritual side, which have their meaning only after the birth of human spirit. The Moon takes the place of Mercury-Vulcan, and the order is that of reckoning from the Earth, consequently in a continuous line from the outside:

  Venus — Moon (for Mercury-Vulcan) — Sun. They have to do with the growth of body and soul. Finally the principle of deliverance from the prison of the body: Jupiter, and that of the cosmic ocean to which the particles return, Universal solvent; ocean which constitutes the real ground for our practical unity in the world. The Fool as the denial of all sense, nonsense.

  There may be other explanations of course. The one offered here seems to have the advantage that it is in the line of the suggestion, made before, viz. that the whole system of the Tarot is a sort of symbolism, expressly adapting cosmic principles to human life and to man's personal interests, not always even in the highest sense.

  There exists a remarkable difference between the degree of clearness with which concrete particulars of the Lesser Arcana are given, and the diffuse teaching of the Greater Arcana, which appears to have been rather covered and veiled, than divulged. It was in the first place the Lesser Arcana, with which the diseurs de bonne aventure wanted to please their clients, so it naturally had their chief attention.

  It is still more remarkable that all explanation about the 'why' of the Lesser Arcana fails. We ought perhaps to take into account a meagre effort made by Papus in his Tarot of the Bohemians, (p. 235-237), where he tries to assign each of the cards to one of the decanates of the zodiac; but he makes no further use of the hypothesis. For the rest I venture to say that it does not hold good at all and does not in the least correspond with the traditional significances given, as the authors tell us, in respect of the Bohemians. Another equally unsuccessful effort at explanation has been made recently by a pupil of Eteilla, d’Odoucet and Papus, a Frenchman calling himself Ely Alta, in a book entitled Le Tarot Egyptien (1922), which bears a close resemblance to that of Papus or speaks of the very same source as the latter. In fact Alta reproduces a treatise of Eteilla's disciple and co-worker d’Odoucet and gives more than Papus in so far as he preludes every significance of a card in the Lesser Arcana with a sort of explanation in a would-be cosmogonical sense. The fact is, that these explanations all fall short of explaining the traditional significance. So they cannot be more than a sort of drapery of eloquence, hung over the tableaux by later commentators, perhaps by Eteilla himself. And the only thing they divulge without any doubt at all is that the key to these 'lesser' mysteries has been lost or has never been given out to those to whom this practice of divination has been presented "as a bible which would make their living at the same time," as Papus has said somewhere.

  But the striking fact is, that these traditional significations cover almost exactly and in almost every card the theory expounded by us. So we may be fairly certain that this theory contains or is the very key. We shall verify it systematically and card for card.

• Ouspensky: CARD 0 = The Fool

  “Man.” An ordinary man. A separate man. The uninitiate Lower consciousness. The end of a ray not knowing its relation to the centre.

  ---

  And I saw another man.

  Tired and lame he dragged himself along the dusty road, across the deserted plain under the scorching rays of the sun. He glanced sidelong with foolish, staring eyes, a half smile, half leer on his face; he knew not where he went, but was absorbed in his chimerical dreams which ran constantly in the same circle. His fool's cap was put on wrong side front, his garments were torn in the back; a wild lynx with glowing eyes sprang upon him from behind a rock and buried her teeth in his flesh. He stumbled, nearly fell, but continued to drag himself along, all the time holding on his shoulder a bag containing useless things, which he, in his stupidity, carried wherever he went.

  Before him a crevice crossed the road and a deep precipice awaited the foolish wanderer. Then a huge crocodile with open mouth crawled out of the precipice. And I heard the voice say: -

  "Look! This is the same man."

  I felt my head whirl.

  "What has he in the bag?" I inquired, not knowing why I asked. And after a long silence the voice replied: "The four magic symbols, the sceptre, the cup, the sword and the pentacle. The fool always carries them, although he has long since forgotten what they mean. Nevertheless they belong to him, even though he does not know their use. The symbols have not lost their power, they retain it in themselves.