The Fool representing suicide?

I think it is an interesting interpretation as well. The Fool only has to take one step and he is over the ledge and falling.

...over the ledge...or over the edge?... lol

I know...same thing just about!!! just playing...

I have read it as such once, but I knew what was going on at the time and since the fool appeared in the perfect spot for suicide I may have been influenced by my knowledge of the situation.

Regardless, I believe that suicide is a perfectly fair reading of the fool if the situation comes up, though I tend to see it more as literal suicide in youth than metaphorical suicide or suicide for reasons such as finances or suchlike. I would explain my reasons and feelings behind this at length, but it's currently almost 4am here and I really need my sleep.

An interesting take on The Fool. Could be but can't say i've ever seen this in readings relating to others so far.
Have picked up suicidal notions relating to six of cups though occasionally.

Interesting discussion.

My thoughts on the Fool is that the intuitive sensation that there had BEEN suicidal thoughts is key to the cards' choice of the Fool, inasmuch as the leap off the cliff didn't happen and thus the querant is now on a different path... That the suicidal phase in a sense had a life altering affect; much like a 10 of Swords might have at the same point... Although, a ten might have actually included an attempt and not just a thought about it...

Thoughts?

Here...

I've seen it before <a href="" title="http://www.billheidrick.com/works/tarotdiv.htm">here.</a>... combined with the world:

Fool and World (Elemental Air & Saturn) --- Suicide, depression, frustration; or greatness beyond the normal human limits. Usually
indicates something totally beyond control or understanding.

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http://www.billheidrick.com/works/tarotdiv.htm

GenoviaJ said:

I've seen it before <a href="" title="http://www.billheidrick.com/works/tarotdiv.htm">here.</a>... combined with the world:



http://www.billheidrick.com/works/tarotdiv.htm

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The fool combined with the world screams to me of the idea of Moses talking to the Burning Bush in the Bible story. Pure innocence meets full knowledge...

It rather reeks of ascension too! lol.

Jeanette said:

Has anybody had the Fool card represent thoughts about suicide? Recently, this card came up in a reading, and it struck me as an intention about suicide. All I could feel was, "Oh, don't jump...." It was in a Past position, so nobody jumped (thankfully) but obviously had been thinking suicidal thoughts. It was surprising and disturbing!

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While I enjoy your theory, I'll ask you to take this for what it's worth:

Numerologically suicide is a 63 experience. The 63rd tarot card is the 9 of Swords. So the card for suicide is actually the 9 of Swords.

Thirteen said:

II think it's very apt for the idea of not suicide in general, but suicide involving, as you say, that falling idea. Either jumping out a window, or off a tall building, or even taking that fatal step with a rope around the neck.

I think the suicidal feelings, too, match up with the sometime attitude of the Fool of not feeling attached to anything in this world, or seeking to be free of all attachments. There is a part of the Fool which is detached and has no connections with anyone, nothing to live for, as it were. The kind of person who is likely to say, "Why not? What does it matter?"

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After all, not so much historical Fools (which tended to show people with real intellectual disabilities), but modern Fools from the late nineteenth century up, tend to be the forebear of the Hanged Man. The Hanged Man, I see as a Holy Dancer, fossilised in time and space, but at the same time outside of time and space. The modern Fool, exemplified in the one I linked to, is pretty much a Holy Dancer in and of the world, dancing with the very edge, dicing with death and destruction in his "innocence and experience" as Blake may have said if he'd thought of it. The Fool may still twirl away form the cliff - or he may not. The Hanged Man is what happens when he doesn't.

Albert Camus is WELL worth reading on suicide (well, on everything, really, he'd at least as great a thinker as Kafka and more articulate). his book "The Myth of Sissyphus" is a dissertation, in large part on suicide (no, he didn 't suicide, unless he was very clever about it). In particular, there is one part where he discusses ex-suicides: people who have been beyond any brink we or even the Fool might know about, but somehow danced back from it - voluntarily, not as a result of hospital treatment. In one famous passage, he says (and I paraphrase because the book is not open in front of me): "The non-suicide gets up in the morning, makes a cup of coffee and goes to work, because he knows he has to. The ex-suicide gets up in the morning, makes a cup of coffee, then goes and sits down to drink it on the back step watching the grass in the yard growing. Then he, too, may go to work - precisely because he knows he doesn't have to."

The Fool is at that same point of life as the ex-suicide: he may spend the rest of the day watching the grass photosynthesising at the bottom of that cliff, or he may dance away. And if he dances away, he may put on the suit and pick up the briefcase, or he may swallow four packages of panadol. All these choices - including suicide - are available to him. The Hanged Man has made his choice, the choice of suicide, and is left with either dying gracefully in his moment of communion with the divine, or struggling and kicking and vomiting all over himself, and dying very badly indeed. Most of 'em, fortunately, choose to die gracefully, giving their last moments enough meaning to be worth immortalising on a card.

mynumerologist said:

Numerologically suicide is a 63 experience. The 63rd tarot card is the 9 of Swords. So the card for suicide is actually the 9 of Swords.

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The depends on how each deck creator orders their suits. I find it is quite different for decks from different philosophical systems and even nationalities.