0 The Fool

The Fool more than any other card contains a vast vocabulary of "meanings" that also vary from deck to deck. In most traditions, the major arcana in total is the "Fool's journey" and every other of the 21 "trumps" relate directly to the Fool. This is why he is often assigned a zero or no number at all.

Divinatory Keywords

In Smith-Waite Style Decks 

• Beginning a journey  • new adventures • carefree • leap of faith • fresh hope

In Thoth or Golden Dawn Decks

• Ideas, thoughts, spirtuality • Endeavours transcend earth • sudden impulse, intuition • creativity • insight

Archetype

Pioneer — totality — universal egg

Astrology

Aries (Pisces in transition to Aries)

Numerology

0 

Letter

Aleph = A  (ox)

Tree of Life

Path 11 from Kether to Chokmah (Thoth) 

I ChingAttribution

25 Wu Wang (Innocence) translated as "Correctness" 

Element

Air

Special Day

April Fools Day? 

Colors

Bright pale yellow, sky blue, blue emerald green, emerald, gold

Colman Smith Illustration

Pamela (Pixie) Colman Smith's illustrations re-intrepted a few centuries of Renaissance illustrations in arguably the most famous tarot deck illustrations of all time, certainly the most popular. Most decks since then followed three main directions:

• Colman-Smith derivative (including various thematic explorations of the universal archetypes)

• Thoth-Harris derivative

• Thematic unrelated (more for fun) 

Overall, though, Colman Smith, "love her or hate her" — and aside from a few cynics, most loved her, at least secretly — influenced nearly every deck since 1910.

The Fool, Enlightenment 

In Pixie's Fool, we see a traveling youth, all spring-like and colorful, so enraptured with life he is focused on the sky above, the great Universe, instead of the cliff at his feet. Yet this is not carelessness, but merely idylic questing. He's not indanger of falling at all, but utterly fearless. He wears a floral tunic and green leggings, all the trappings of spring, indicating he is the very soul and spirit of spring, youth, vitality, new birth, the egg of the very Universe. It appears that all his worldly possessions are carried at the end of a staff in a bag, but in fact, he carries the very universe in the bag, all the elements.

 The bag is decorated with the symbol of the hawk, HORUS the Egyptian sun god. His hair is also golden, as the sun, and his cap is green for spring.

He is the universe new born, the ultimate adventurer, the very spirit of the Doa and the entire universe. The sun is bright in a yellow sky, again his colors, the glow of life-giving heat and light. The sky match his tireless walking boots, also yellow. The red feather, the symbol for air, points to the sun showing that he is fully enlightened. He is the Buddha, after enlightenment.

Colors

Even in variations, such as Carol Herzer's magnificent and spiritually insightful hand painted ILLUMINATED TAROT (shown above), the enlightenment of the universal fool is clearly expressed, although without the yellows and glaring sun of Pixie. Instead, Carol, a spiritual guide and teacher herself, shows waves of energy emanating from the Universe in forceful waves, absorbed in the pure essence of The Fool. The flowers on his tunic truly shine with supernatural essence, super-spring. The sun is almost eclipsed, in a sense symbolic of the Fool's illumination. When Buddha became enlightened, he came to understand nothingness and illusion, and here the Fool seems to express this higher sense of Buddha-enlightenment. Now, the Fool is the glow which illuminates the Universe, just as the Buddha became the illuminating center of everything and nothing. The energy of Carol Herzer's interpretation is unmatached, even in Lady Harris's Thoth Tarot Fool (seen above).

The Fool is completion. He is zero, the ultimate position in the Majors, in some traditions he falls before The World, in Waite's tradition before the Magician. Yet he brings the journey full circle. As a new journeyer, much like spring in the ancient legends, he is about to embark on a dangerous quest of knowledge and life, about to "step off the cliff. Yet, as a master, the very master of the Universe, he has climbed this summit to be at the sacred center of the Universe, to recapture his innocence AFTER the long journey. Full circle.  

In his hand, a pure, white rose, a Golden Dawn symbol for silence and rebirth. He is, in fact, the sun reborn, the Universe reborn, spring. Rebirth in the Daoist and Buddhist or Hindu belief systems. The little dog at his feet is a joyful companion on his journey. Ultimately, all the trumps in the deck, from 1 through 21 represent the Fool's journey to this point. This card can be looked upon as the beginning of the journey towards enlightenment AND the attainment of enlightenment at the same time.

His face is youthful and innocent, but hardly foolish. His pose, skyward glance and timeless beauty make it clear that the Fool is ageless, both ancient and new born. 

Divinatory Meanings 

 Upright

A new journey • fresh hope • a new phase • expanding outlooks or opportunities • starting something new • spontaneity • impulsive wisdom • trusting intuition • being carefree • being true to your real self • taking chances but for the noble journey (enlightenment) • TRUSTING your intuition • having faith in yourself  • being protected  • utter joy of life and embracing enlightenment • recapturing the innocence • believing/reinforcing that you can do anything

Reversed

Many of the same ideas, but implying hasty or wrong trust or decisions, foolishness, faith in the wrong things.

 The Fool in Arthur Edward Waite's Pictoral Key to the Tarot (1910)

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.

According to Paul Foster Case in Oracle of the Tarot (1933) 

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