Yygdrasilian
Every story begins with a fool, inasmuch as we choose to accept the story’s premise.
Consenting to be fooled by the storyteller’s craft, we allow ourselves to journey through imagined realms, relive epic deeds, and penetrate the mysteries of creation.
Or, escape...
Humans, it has been observed, possess remarkable powers of self-deception.
And sometimes the fool is a devil in disguise.
In any case, a kind of trick is played - a method of fooling oneself into a degree of belief necessary for evoking the power of dream within our waking lives, weaving together a reality unto itself, no matter how absurd.
Neither truth nor lie, the fool is a cipher - arranging from a mere jumble of letters or utterance of sounds, an architecture of meaning we may choose to inhabit, or ignore. The story stands or falls on its own, an artifact of human interpretation that survives the ages only so long as we find it compelling enough to be retold. The lifespan of any myth as determined by our willingness to believe. And belief, though sometimes stubborn, has a way of adapting to novel conditions - changing the premise, hatching new stories, rewriting ancient themes.
Yet the fool remains.
A constellation known to the ancient Hebrew as Kesil, the “Fool” was in Jewish lore: Nimrod - the founding King of Shinar, where from the city Babel rose a Tower to reach the heights of Heaven. Midrash legend elaborates upon the Biblical tale, punishing Nimrod for the construction by pinning him forever to endless night, affixing him to the sky with the belt of stars we ascribe the Hunter, Orion - a FooL for all the World to see.
Opinions may differ as to what his Tower was meant to represent.
From a literal standpoint, there could of been a crumbled ziggurat from which the story evolved - a heap of rubble older than memory explained away with the words of foreigners and an admonition from above.
As etiology, Babel’s edifice collapses with a birth of languages, serving as rationale for the peopling of Earth and their mutual distrust of one another. Taken to extreme, this Biblical tale posits a wrathful deity, akin to a war god, who smites humanity for daring to work in concert.
Yet, during the time of their Babylonian captivity, the Hebrew changed their alephbet from a collection of pictographic glyphs (resembling the symbols still attributed their letters) to the sequence of box script characters from which the contemporary Hebrew alephbet is presently derived. Perhaps the tale of Babel’s fall is an adapted memory, alluding to this confusion of letters - an influence which proved to outlast the Babylon empire.
From an allegorical perspective, the Tower is poised precariously between our potential as a species and the limits of our ambition. For reasons unexplained, YHVH, having observed that humans working in unison were capable of achieving anything that they could agree upon, messed with our ability to reach collective consensus.
Like a circle, divided.
Does the 11th chapter of “Beginnings” portray an edifice whose construction must beget a fall? Surely, anything built to reach heaven’s door is doomed to crumble before the humbling power of the presence behind “the Name”, insofar as an ego confronted with the ultimate totality of all being would, in theory, dissolve before this realization of the infinite.
In this sense, the Tower may serve as a symbolic edifice comprising personal conviction - the architecture of one’s worldview as constructed through a lifetime. Whether demolished by mystic union with the divine, or cast away like corporeal form at the moment of death, this temporary housing is inevitably torn down every time it is built. In its wake lies the confused Babel of mixed up letters, spread across creation, concealing an ancient unity.
Survivors interpret the event from its ruins, unable to articulate an experience which, by its very nature, is beyond words - transcending mortal logic & reason in ways that language or text can only allude to. Without the pretense of assumption, there is no edifice of belief - there is only the eternal wisdom of knowing nothing. And, despite the ancient rabbis’ scorn, Nimrod, the FooL accused of building Babel’s Tower, reached heaven nonetheless. Being the King responsible for its construction, is he not also be the mystic for whom the Tower has outlived its’ purpose?
As icons of the Tarot deck, the Fool and the Tower are cues to consider the poetry of this myth - an esoteric riddle at the root of interpretation itself. Naturally, scholars will disagree as to whether this was intended, but that may be ‘the point’ - the only means of honestly appreciating the irony of Babel’s Tower among Tarot’s 22 trumps. It may also be why the fortune tellers have long intuited it a card of ill-omen.
Like the Chariot, and Judgment, the Tower is drawn from an apocalyptic episode within Biblical tradition - catastrophic upheaval of accustomed surroundings triggered by a divine intervention to correct unjust conditions. Nimrod erects a Tower in Babel that cannot breach the threshold of heaven, while Ezekiel’s account of the “Merkabah” heralds a prophecy of the First Temple’s destruction at Babylonian hands. His vision of YHVH’s “Chariot” portrays a power no edifice could ever capture, just as the Holy of Holies never truly housed anything more than a Name.
To behold the Divine, all such mediums are abandoned.
No matter how many times the Law is written, or the Temple rebuilt, they are always fated to be destroyed, as if to fulfill some allegorical purpose for the edification of future generations: a lesson written in time for any who would approach the throne of heaven.
“Judgement” refers to a different order of cataclysm, foretelling a resurrection at the fall of Babylon - an apocalypse characterized not by a building razed, but by the end of a morally-bankrupt civilization, the very context wherein our actions are appraised. Certainly precedent was already set with the story of the flood, but there is a thread linking each instance of apocalypsos depicted within the Tarot. The Tower & FooL, the Chariot, and Judgement each share in common an etymology rooted in Babel/Babylon/Βαβυλὼν.
As a set, they tear apart the boundary conditions of form from 3 distinct vantage points.
TOWER: a bridge between heaven & earth collapses, splitting the many from the one.
CHARIOT: the vessel of YHVH transcendent of his Name’s physical dwelling.
JUDGEMENT: the ethos of the World made anew, outmoded ways abandoned.
What cannot be contained by the Tower of human industry, or housed within a golden Cube of shared rituals & belief, is encrypted within the whole of the World - one whose divinity lies concealed behind the veil of perception, beyond the medium of perception itself. Where stories of Tower & Chariot view their events from afar, the opening of one’s eyes to Revelation bears witness to an apocalypse from within its’ edifice. The veil as lifted from oneself: Truth looking ‘out’ unto Truth.
Thus, a FOOL-
who knows nothing, is nothing.
Zero.
A no account pun on Nimrod’s punishment.
And a cipher to boot.
He is a King who takes his place among the stars, ascending a Tower by Chariot to open our Eyes, revealing an ancient secret hidden in plain sight. Yet, to behold this mystery is to let one’s Tower fall.
Like a circle, complete.
Consenting to be fooled by the storyteller’s craft, we allow ourselves to journey through imagined realms, relive epic deeds, and penetrate the mysteries of creation.
Or, escape...
Humans, it has been observed, possess remarkable powers of self-deception.
And sometimes the fool is a devil in disguise.
In any case, a kind of trick is played - a method of fooling oneself into a degree of belief necessary for evoking the power of dream within our waking lives, weaving together a reality unto itself, no matter how absurd.
Neither truth nor lie, the fool is a cipher - arranging from a mere jumble of letters or utterance of sounds, an architecture of meaning we may choose to inhabit, or ignore. The story stands or falls on its own, an artifact of human interpretation that survives the ages only so long as we find it compelling enough to be retold. The lifespan of any myth as determined by our willingness to believe. And belief, though sometimes stubborn, has a way of adapting to novel conditions - changing the premise, hatching new stories, rewriting ancient themes.
Yet the fool remains.
A constellation known to the ancient Hebrew as Kesil, the “Fool” was in Jewish lore: Nimrod - the founding King of Shinar, where from the city Babel rose a Tower to reach the heights of Heaven. Midrash legend elaborates upon the Biblical tale, punishing Nimrod for the construction by pinning him forever to endless night, affixing him to the sky with the belt of stars we ascribe the Hunter, Orion - a FooL for all the World to see.
Opinions may differ as to what his Tower was meant to represent.
From a literal standpoint, there could of been a crumbled ziggurat from which the story evolved - a heap of rubble older than memory explained away with the words of foreigners and an admonition from above.
As etiology, Babel’s edifice collapses with a birth of languages, serving as rationale for the peopling of Earth and their mutual distrust of one another. Taken to extreme, this Biblical tale posits a wrathful deity, akin to a war god, who smites humanity for daring to work in concert.
Yet, during the time of their Babylonian captivity, the Hebrew changed their alephbet from a collection of pictographic glyphs (resembling the symbols still attributed their letters) to the sequence of box script characters from which the contemporary Hebrew alephbet is presently derived. Perhaps the tale of Babel’s fall is an adapted memory, alluding to this confusion of letters - an influence which proved to outlast the Babylon empire.
From an allegorical perspective, the Tower is poised precariously between our potential as a species and the limits of our ambition. For reasons unexplained, YHVH, having observed that humans working in unison were capable of achieving anything that they could agree upon, messed with our ability to reach collective consensus.
YHVH said:“Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
-Genesis 11:7 ≈ π/2
Like a circle, divided.
Does the 11th chapter of “Beginnings” portray an edifice whose construction must beget a fall? Surely, anything built to reach heaven’s door is doomed to crumble before the humbling power of the presence behind “the Name”, insofar as an ego confronted with the ultimate totality of all being would, in theory, dissolve before this realization of the infinite.
In this sense, the Tower may serve as a symbolic edifice comprising personal conviction - the architecture of one’s worldview as constructed through a lifetime. Whether demolished by mystic union with the divine, or cast away like corporeal form at the moment of death, this temporary housing is inevitably torn down every time it is built. In its wake lies the confused Babel of mixed up letters, spread across creation, concealing an ancient unity.
Survivors interpret the event from its ruins, unable to articulate an experience which, by its very nature, is beyond words - transcending mortal logic & reason in ways that language or text can only allude to. Without the pretense of assumption, there is no edifice of belief - there is only the eternal wisdom of knowing nothing. And, despite the ancient rabbis’ scorn, Nimrod, the FooL accused of building Babel’s Tower, reached heaven nonetheless. Being the King responsible for its construction, is he not also be the mystic for whom the Tower has outlived its’ purpose?
As icons of the Tarot deck, the Fool and the Tower are cues to consider the poetry of this myth - an esoteric riddle at the root of interpretation itself. Naturally, scholars will disagree as to whether this was intended, but that may be ‘the point’ - the only means of honestly appreciating the irony of Babel’s Tower among Tarot’s 22 trumps. It may also be why the fortune tellers have long intuited it a card of ill-omen.
Like the Chariot, and Judgment, the Tower is drawn from an apocalyptic episode within Biblical tradition - catastrophic upheaval of accustomed surroundings triggered by a divine intervention to correct unjust conditions. Nimrod erects a Tower in Babel that cannot breach the threshold of heaven, while Ezekiel’s account of the “Merkabah” heralds a prophecy of the First Temple’s destruction at Babylonian hands. His vision of YHVH’s “Chariot” portrays a power no edifice could ever capture, just as the Holy of Holies never truly housed anything more than a Name.
To behold the Divine, all such mediums are abandoned.
No matter how many times the Law is written, or the Temple rebuilt, they are always fated to be destroyed, as if to fulfill some allegorical purpose for the edification of future generations: a lesson written in time for any who would approach the throne of heaven.
“Judgement” refers to a different order of cataclysm, foretelling a resurrection at the fall of Babylon - an apocalypse characterized not by a building razed, but by the end of a morally-bankrupt civilization, the very context wherein our actions are appraised. Certainly precedent was already set with the story of the flood, but there is a thread linking each instance of apocalypsos depicted within the Tarot. The Tower & FooL, the Chariot, and Judgement each share in common an etymology rooted in Babel/Babylon/Βαβυλὼν.
As a set, they tear apart the boundary conditions of form from 3 distinct vantage points.
TOWER: a bridge between heaven & earth collapses, splitting the many from the one.
CHARIOT: the vessel of YHVH transcendent of his Name’s physical dwelling.
JUDGEMENT: the ethos of the World made anew, outmoded ways abandoned.
What cannot be contained by the Tower of human industry, or housed within a golden Cube of shared rituals & belief, is encrypted within the whole of the World - one whose divinity lies concealed behind the veil of perception, beyond the medium of perception itself. Where stories of Tower & Chariot view their events from afar, the opening of one’s eyes to Revelation bears witness to an apocalypse from within its’ edifice. The veil as lifted from oneself: Truth looking ‘out’ unto Truth.
Thus, a FOOL-
who knows nothing, is nothing.
Zero.
A no account pun on Nimrod’s punishment.
And a cipher to boot.
He is a King who takes his place among the stars, ascending a Tower by Chariot to open our Eyes, revealing an ancient secret hidden in plain sight. Yet, to behold this mystery is to let one’s Tower fall.
Like a circle, complete.