RWS Fool Opposite Marseille Fool

[Umbrae]

…what do you mean by traditional Freemasonry?

As opposed to what?

Didn’t mean anything.

Although Waite's Tarot has Masonic connections, is there any evidence that Tarot plays any role in Blue Lodge, or Craft Masonry?

Tarot plays no role in operative or speculative Freemasonry.

 

[Fulgour]

Waite says; "...His act of eager walking is still indicated, though he is stationary at the given moment..."

The Fool would have to be stationary at the given moment.
The cards are printed on stationery.

 

[Parzival]

I find both images as if snapshots in the moment of motion through time. Both fools are journeyers, obviously, but the Marseille fool walks across a horizontal plain, while the the RWS fool is on the verge of downward doom. Since neither is restricted by quantitative number, neither is bound to embodiment. Here is the paradox: to be not embodied yet embodied! To be potential yet actual. The more I look at these two fools, the more foolish I feel in trying to comprehend them. What will be their next steps?

 

[Vincent]

*****

 

[Rusty Neon]

Much of A.E. Waite’s imagery is based upon traditional Freemasonry.

It makes a huge difference in how you ‘place’ the Fool, as an Apprentice, or as a Master (beginning or the end of the Major Arcana series).

He could be traveling west. Or (as in the Marseilles), arising – and traveling to the NE corner…

…just a thought…

The Fool card in the BOTA (Paul Foster Case) deck is essentially identical to the Fool card in the Rider-Waite deck - including the direction faced by the Fool.

In _The Tarot_, at p. 32, on the BOTA Fool card, Case writes:

"Always [the Fool as the forever-young, forever-in-the-morning-of-its-power, cosmic Life-Breath and the Heavenly Androgyne] faces unknown possibilities of self-expression, transcending any height it may have reached at a given time. On this account the sun behind the traveler is at an angle of forty-five degrees in the eastern heaven, as Swedenborg says the celestial sun remains forever in the spiritual world. The spiritual sun never reaches the zenith, for from the zenith it would have to descend, and the idea here intended is that infinite energy never can reach a point in manifestation whence it must begin to decrease in power. On this account, too, the Fool faces North-West, toward a direction which, for Masonic and other occult reasons, has for millenniums been symbolic of the unknown, and of the state just prior to the initiation of a creative process."