Post by GateKeeper on Sept 21, 2012 23:31:18 GMT
The Hermitage tells us that in the decks before Waite-Smith, the Fool is almost always unnumbered.[dead link] There are a few exceptions: some old decks (including the 15th-century Sola Busca and the Rider Waite) label the card with a "0", and the Belgian Tarot designs label the Fool as "XXII". The Fool is almost always completely apart from the sequence of trumps in the historic decks. Still, there is historic precedent for regarding it as the lowest trump and as the highest trump.
Traditionally, the Major Arcana in Tarot cards are numbered with Roman numerals. The Fool is numbered with the zero, one of the Arabic numerals.
In tarot games
L'Excuse from the French Tarot card game
In the various tarot card games such as French Tarot, Tarocchini and Tarock, the Fool has a unique role. In these games, the Fool is sometimes called "the Excuse". The tarot games are typically trick taking games; playing the Fool card excuses the player from either following suit or playing a trump card on that trick. Winning a trick containing the Fool card often yields a scoring bonus.
In occult tarot, the Fool is usually considered part of the "major arcana". This is not true in the tarot game itself; the Fool's role in the game is independent of both the suit cards and the trump cards, and the card does not belong to either category. As such, most tarot decks originally made for game playing do not assign a number to the Fool indicating its rank in the suit of trumps; it has none. It usually has a star in French Tarot. Waite gives the Fool the number 0, but in his book discusses the Fool between Judgment, no. 20, and The World, no. 21.
However, in some more modern tarot card games, specifically Austrian Tarock games, the Fool is instead played as the 22 of Trump, making it the highest trump in such games.
Symbolism
This section may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. (October 2010)
The Fool is the spirit in search of experience. He represents the mystical cleverness bereft of reason within us, the childlike ability to tune into the inner workings of the world. The sun shining behind him represents the divine nature of the Fool's wisdom and exuberance, holy madness or 'crazy wisdom'. On his back are all the possessions he might need. In his hand there is a flower, showing his appreciation of beauty. He is frequently accompanied by a dog, sometimes seen as his animal desires, sometimes as the call of the "real world", nipping at his heels and distracting him. He is seemingly unconcerned that he is standing on a precipice, apparently about to step off. One of the keys to the card is the paradigm of the precipice, Zero and the sometimes represented oblivious Fool's near-step into the oblivion (The Void) of the jaws of a crocodile, for example, are all mutually informing polysemy within evocations of the iconography of The Fool. The staff is the offset and complement to the void and this in many traditions represents wisdom and renunciation, e.g. 'danda' (Sanskrit) of a Sanyassin, 'danda' (Sanskrit) is also a punctuation mark with the function analogous to a 'full-stop' which is appropriately termed a period in American English. The Fool is both the beginning and the end, neither and otherwise, betwixt and between, liminal.
The number 0 is a perfect significator for the Fool, as it can become anything when he reaches his destination as in the sense of 'joker's wild'. Zero plus anything equals the same thing. Zero times anything equals zero. Zero is nothing, a lack of hard substance, and as such it may reflect a non-issue or lack of cohesiveness for the subject at hand.
Interpretations
In many esoteric systems of interpretation, the Fool is usually interpreted as the protagonist of a story, and the Major Arcana is the path the Fool takes through the great mysteries of life and the main human archetypes. This path is known traditionally in Tarot as the Fool's Journey, and is frequently used to introduce the meaning of Major Arcana cards to beginners.
In his Manual of Cartomancy, Grand Orient has a curious suggestion of the office of Mystic Fool, as a part of his process in higher divination. The conventional explanations say that The Fool signifies the flesh, the sensitive life, depicting folly at the most insensate stage. When The Fool appears in a spread, he is a signal to strip down to the irreducible core, and interrogate whether the Querant's self-vision is obscured. It may also be a warning that significant change is coming. Another interpretation of the card is that of taking action where the circumstances are unknown, confronting one's fears, taking risks, and so on.
A standard medieval allegory of Foolishness, painted by Giotto. This depiction resembles the Fool in the earliest surviving painted decks.
Alternative decks
In German decks he is called Pagat ("The Entertainer"). He is also called the Sküs, from the French Tarot Excuse (or wild card). He and The Magician became the forerunners of today's lesser and greater Jokers.
In the Flemish Deck by Vandenborre, Le Fou ("The Lunatic or Jester") is numbered XXII. It depicts a bearded man walking through weeds with a bindle on a stick over his right shoulder and a walking stick in his left hand. A dog is biting him on the back of his right thigh.
The Vikings Tarot portrays Loki as the Fool, with a mistletoe in one hand and a fishing-net in the other.
Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot Fool is walking on air, a symbol of "the creative Light", according to Crowley. Linked to the Universe card, coins of the planets and zodiac in his satchel, he embodies all of the twenty-two trump cards and none.
In the Trinity Blood tarot deck Abel Nightroad is depicted as the Fool card.
H. R. Giger's set depicts the Fool sitting in a chair, wearing headphones, with a woman straddling him (visible from the lower torso down), facing away with her bare buttocks directly in front of his face. He is holding a pistol-gripped shotgun with the barrel in his mouth.
In the Shakespeare Tarot, the Fool is depicted by Falstaff.
In the Mythic Tarot deck, the Fool is depicted by Dionysus.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fool_(Tarot_card)
is it navigation?