The meaning of the dog upon the Fool

that is a good idea. that it represents our subcouncius.

jmd said:

Could it have the same significance as saying 'keep your legs crossed'?

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That would suggest that the dog is representing the subconscious. But isn't God our subconscious?... at least for some of us? Isn't the Fool (whether it was he who was at the start or not), on a spiritual journey? Our subconscious is a little voice which interrupts our thoughts and puts us back on tract... isn't that God....also known as our inner selves?

i think that i acctually understood that. scary when i can understand thing. j/k. but it does make sense when you place god as ur sunconscius.

jmd....not sure of the meaning you apply to

"keep your legs crossed."

The most common one I know of is the expression used with girls or women...in other words, ...don't have sex, don't get pregnant...this wouldn't have happened if she'd "kept her legs crossed."

terri

yes... basically.

If he'd kept it within his pants, the dog would not be 'playing' (or tormenting) as it does.

I really found terri's colloquial expression wonderful - and so apt!

"The dog always bites the man with the torn pants"

Only this evening, we were discussing some journeys of a young man across a three hour desert as he was followed by two snarling dogs - which at no instance caused him actual harm (apart from fear), and yet were fierce and attacking to others once this young man reached his port destination.

Fascinating thread. I think the dog is there to reinforce the outsider status of the fool. It gives the fool dog-status similar to a postman - the one who appears and leaves but does not belong. It makes him shunned by society, on the margins, even the dogs chase him away.. If the dog bites the man with the torn pants (cool expression tmgrl!) isn't it because the dog, like many predators, knows you attack the one who is already down? The tear in the pants is the tear in the protective covering, a symbolic psychic wound. It is both wound and opening - someone who has suffered a great blow, like the loss of a loved one, will feel "ripped open" in spirit and psyche for a while. Maybe the tear represents that state of spiritual ripped-open-ness, that both attracts predators to complete the killing off of the old self, and allows tremendous new growth. Unprotected by defense mechanisms, (that would keep dogs and other entitities away) beginner status, beginner mind, allows for rapid transformation.

firemaiden said:

Fascinating thread. I think the dog is there to reinforce the outsider status of the fool. It gives the fool dog-status similar to a postman - the one who appears and leaves but does not belong. It makes him shunned by society, on the margins, even the dogs chase him away.. If the dog bites the man with the torn pants (cool expression tmgrl!) isn't it because the dog, like many predators, knows you attack the one who is already down? The tear in the pants is the tear in the protective covering, a symbolic psychic wound. It is both wound and opening - someone who has suffered a great blow, like the loss of a loved one, will feel "ripped open" in spirit and psyche for a while. Maybe the tear represents that state of spiritual ripped-open-ness, that both attracts both predators to complete the killing off of the old self, and allows tremendous new growth. Unprotected by defense mechanisms, (that would keep dogs and other entitities away) beginner status, beginner mind, allows for rapid transformation.

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Oh man, you have just answered a great big question mark in my mind about a reading I did for someone recently.

The dog can be both companion and predator, though - think about the homeless people with their dogs. The only one who will stay with you when you are down and out...Or it can represent settled life, opposed to the vagrant life of the Fool, if we take the leaping dog as an attacker.

Yes, the dog can be both companion and a predator - and the tear in the pants - like a tear in the fabric of the earthly integument allows the passage of both trolls and fairies.

wow firemaiden

the way you present this makes it seem so obvious and natural, like a simple truth that stares you in the face but you're unable to recognize it because you insist on taking the more difficult path that ultimately leads you astray.

trismegistus said:

the way you present this makes it seem so obvious and natural, like a simple truth that stares you in the face but you're unable to recognize it because you insist on taking the more difficult path that ultimately leads you astray.

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The path of the Fool, maybe? Isn't he the one who always Goes Astray? Yet without this crazed wandering, how could he - we! - ever find what we are looking for? Dogs seldom take the straight path either. Mostly, what we are really looking for lies between the cracks, and GPS systems won't get us there. They simply aren't that natural. And yet, when we do stumble on the simple truth - as you say, it seems utterly natural. Could we have recognised it, though, without first having gone astray?

It's occurred to me that the Tarot shows dogs in two cards: The Fool and The Moon. Both those cards show us the way of madness. In our society, we are afraid of madness, and we hide it away in institutions, just as we cart stray dogs off to the pound. But come the full moon, come a crisis in life, and we can all slip through the fingers of sanity, into a certain kind of madness. And in losing our minds, perhaps we can find our souls...if we ever find our way back, that is. It's a hard life for those who are forever mad and vagrant.