The Fool: Dressed to the Hilt

Today while reading a book on symbolism and history of the Tarot I had an idea that was just totally seperate from what I was reading. A flash of insight perhaps. Or just a weird idea.

I was thinking about the Fool unumbered, and the other Majors.
I had a sort of vision of the Fool as a performer if you will. And the Fool was sort of trying on costumes, and each costume was one of the Majors.

So rather randomly if desired, or following the cycle we have now the Fool would step into the costume of the Magician, and inhabit the Magician and perform the Magician and learn what it meant to be Magician. And so forth right on up to World. Or go from World to Magician then caper as Fool and on and on...

Secondly, it occurred to me that Fool as Hermit could be a foolish Hermit. Fool as Empress could be a reckless Empress....so that while not a reversal, rather we would have some kind of education happening within the Archetype for the Archetype and not merely the perfection of EMPRESS.

I've been quite taken with this thought process all day, and it really does seem to answer some questions for me.

I was also thinking of the Mystery Plays. And of men playing both male and female roles. That would sort of fit, wouldn't it? In terms of time and place of when the deck was created???

So that, this sort of brilliant idiot actor who is getting costumed and playing these atouts comes out at the end...the same as he went in!

What do you think????
Crazy? Brilliant? Neither?

elf said:

...I was thinking about the Fool unumbered, and the other Majors.
I had a sort of vision of the Fool as a performer if you will. And the Fool was sort of trying on costumes, and each costume was one of the Majors.
....What do you think????
Crazy? Brilliant? Neither?

Click to expand...

Brilliant.

Un-numbered he's like the Greek Chorus. Numbered, he's an idiot stuck in a zeroth sequence. Numbered he changes the character of all the other majors from Ordinals to Cardinals.

He cannot be a performer if he's stuck. And if he's stuck - the others won't stand for it.

Loofhtaed

The easiest way to get around all the fuss about zero,
is to consider The Fool as~ the unnumbered card that
is "marked" with a zero, just as XIII is unnamed Death.

So now, since I brought them up together... how do
we imagine The Death Fool? As a French barber?

elf said:

What do you think????
Crazy? Brilliant? Neither?

Click to expand...

I like that idea elf! Instead of the fool's journey meeting up with these characters, you have isolated us acting the various archetypes- which is what we do sometimes. I have yet to be Death in its literal self, but I have helped transform things a few times. I would love to be the Pope for a day in that same literal sense I would probably bankrupt the Church. It is an unusual way to look at reversals but in my mind it has merit. Some of my creativity (the Empress) is decidedly foolish. Come to think of it- it is the only time I would think an extra card called Truth would be helpful. I will think on your post more!~Rosanne

This idea of wondering through the deck and 'drawing down the card' (to paraphrase the title of a book in another context) is wonderful.

The first aspect that comes to mind, however, is why draw it upon the Fool? Why not on oneself, or indeed 'clothing' any of the cards with that of another? In a reading, that is often what tends to in any case occur: a clothing of 'energies' or symbolic content of one card overshadows or enlivens another.

For myself, as I do not consider a journey through the cards as the journey of one of the cards, can as easily clothe the Bateleur in the Moon's 'costume' as any other card.

This is not to take away from the wonderful insight brought by elf - on the contrary: taking that wonderful step or re-clothing a card in the embelishment of another, what would result, for example, with the Emperor's new clothes clothed as the Star? [puns to both the written obvious reference, and the Crowleyan GD interchange, intended]

As each reclothing of each and every card is made, it not only begins to show the impulse or power of each card (for that is its cloth), but also that the Fool too has its peculiar cloth... even if un-numbered.

On that last, I agree with Umbrae that adding a 'zero' alters an implied ordinal value to a cardinal one... but that is perhaps another matter with which others will disagree!

Call me Foolish...

...but I have read of the Major arcarna as the Fool's Journey. The Fool as the Everyman, the essential witness of any narrative. The Fool as what we would see if we were there, where the action is.

More apocryphal is the heresy of Pelagius. The human soul as having an original Grace instead of an original Sin.

By extension, as suggested by Pelagius, each of has the ability to return to our innate state of Grace. And the Fool is this potentially innocent person within us all.

As William Blake said; "If the doors of perception were wiped clean, we would see the universe as it really is: infinite."

Yes... some author's have talked of the sequence of cards as the Fool's journey - and others have talked of it as the Journey of the Soul, beginning with the Bateleur and finishing, in 22nd place, with the Fool.

The former talks of it as the journey of the fool in part, I would suggest, because of two important factors: the placing of the card as zero, and hence prior to card one, by the GD; and by the depiction of the card by especially Pamela Colman Smith.

If one looks at the Marseille sequence and place the Fool as either penultimate (E. Levi and Umbrae's, amongst many others', preference) or as last (Filipas and my, amongst many others', preference), then to talk of the sequence as the Fool's journey seems misnamed.

Two threads of interest on this very topic of the 'journey' are:

jmd said:

This idea of wondering through the deck and 'drawing down the card' (to paraphrase the title of a book in another context) is wonderful.
For myself, as I do not consider a journey through the cards as the journey of one of the cards, can as easily clothe the Bateleur in the Moon's 'costume' as any other card.

Click to expand...

A bit like paper cut out dolls and cut out clothes lol. I have been using Tarot de la rea a bit of late and I have been trying to make Cavalier de Deniers (me mostly) clothe himself in le Chariot. I like to use the visualisation process and I guess in some ways this is what you are talking about elf. I like the masked faceless Majors and honours- So the deck looks a bit like a theatre wardrobe in this sense. I am having trouble throwing away my stolid hobby horse for real live beasties. Thanks for the analogy jmd!~Rosanne

Elf I like this idea because it is for me exactly what we do, we go through life- especially in our earlier years trying on various costumes transposed upon us by societal expecations and marketing = some never knowing ones true self, and this is the challenge of life...becoming nude and being comfortable in our skin- without being percieved by others as the Emperor with no clothes.

Actually, this idea springs from my wondering why the Fool would be un-numbered. What purpose it serves.

So, I was thinking that if he is an actor, set up to not visit each of the Trumps, but to inhabit them perhaps he has a different role than the one we have come to know.

As I write this I'm thinking in some ways this is pretty parasitic. That makes each of the Archetypes hosts to the Fool, a sort of shared space.

If the Fool is merely an actor then does he really learn anything beyond what he assumes each Archetype would do. As an actor he creates a vision of the archetype according to his personal understanding of the archetype, just as JMD says we as readers do. We read from our own experience and perception of the Divine, the iconography, the card, the world.

I don't know which is better. Acting or the inhabiting....I myself can only imagine what it might be like to BE one of the Trumps. And I admit to a certain hesitancy to doing this. I have only limitedly done the meditations of inhabiting a card, to visit the landscapes and return armed with some kind of information about what my time there was like.

To take that a step further and tap the Devil on the shoulder and step into his mantle softens my belly a bit.