The Fool
On new beginnings and some history
A very dear person to me some years ago introduced me to the Tarot deck. Although I was familiar with the images on some cards like the Hanged Man or Death, I had no idea about the deck's storytelling value or the psychotherapeutic use of the cards that some people practice with kindness and a warm heart. This concept is closely linked with the Jungian analysis of the psychological archetypes, often occurring in our lives, legends, and stories.
The first 22 cards of the Tarot deck, and the ones that have inspired the popular fantasy, are called the Major Arcana. Away from their divination abilities and besides the beautiful paintings on the cards, the Major Arcana succession tells a universal story: the story of the circles of transformation each one of us experiences through life. Each circle starts with The Fool and ends with the Arcana XXI, aka The World.
The Fool is considered the first card of the Major Arcana (the first 22 of the Tarot deck and those that have inspired the popular fantasy). The inscription of the card says “Le Mat.” This is an interesting thing because there are other translations to this word: “Le Mat” also means death and is closely connected to the checkmate in chess.
In most decks, this card has the number 0. However, in his restoration of the Tarot de Marseilles, Jodorowsky claims that this card is unnumbered after researching for years and years for the “original Tarot deck.” This debate about the numbering is not without meaning, for if each transformation is a circle, the end of one circle coincides with the beginning of the next one. In this case, The Fool is the beginning and the end, or to be more dialectical, the new beginning that is already breeding itself inside the end, which The World represents.
Many stages in life are simultaneously ends and beginnings: the end of childhood is the beginning of adolescence, the birth of a child is the end of the previous state of the child-bearer and the beginning of parenthood, the end of a relationship is the beginning of a new circle of growth, etc.
Let’s agree to the symbolism that the left side denotes a human being's receptive qualities. In contrast, the right side indicates its active qualities - receiving stimulus from our environment, which causes an emotional response, and acting on our environment, thus changing it and changing ourselves along the way. The Fool is an intensely active card: the man in the picture shows determination as he walks to the right, head slightly tilted upwards, his feet taking a decisive step.
Some words that describe that card: Freedom, Energy, Travel, Seeking, Origin, Wandering, Essence, Liberating Force, The Irrational, Chaos, Flight, Madness.
The Fool is pure energy, the forces of life at play. It is the freedom to take the first step towards something, with only the slightest clue of what this is. Without careful and thorough planning, we begin on a new journey with childish enthusiasm. Without any doubt, we will break some things on the way, and maybe our close ones try to warn us, but we do it anyway. Against all odds, we turn our backs to the old and go for the new. Sometimes it seems irrational and chaotic, the true work of a madman, and we might make a fool of ourselves.
The clothes of the Fool and the general attitude of the card paint the picture of a comic person. He wears the clothes of a closely related character, the Jester. Indeed, the Jester could almost always be visually recognized from the motley he was wearing, a rough symmetrical patchwork of various vibrant colors, and a funny hat. Whether in court, next to a nobleman, or at the local market, the Jester was employed to entertain: jokes, poems, imitation, magic tricks, and mishaps.
Jesters have existed in Ancient Egypt, entertaining the Pharaos, in Ancient Rome and were popular with the Aztecs. They are mostly known to us from the medieval and Renaissance tradition and paintings.
The Jester - or licensed fool - had a very close connection to the King. By delivering crude jokes and making fun of the King’s rulings, always in moderation, he helped the rest of the court let some steam off and ease their criticism of their leader. They spoke truth to power and many times suffered public humiliation for that. By being close to the places of power and because they often spoke in obscure rhymes, jesters were also considered politically wise: three kings employed the Polish jester Stańczyk (1480–1560), who was considered the person of reference for the political future of Poland at the time.
Although we can imagine that most jesters were men, there were some notable women jesters:
Jane Foole, the jester of queens Catherine Parr and Mary I, and possibly also of Anne Boleyn.
Mathurine de Vallois, the jester of the court of Henry III of France, Henry IV of France, and Louis XIII of France.
Astaude du Puy, hired to entertain Queen Henrietta Maria (1609–1669), wife of Charles I of France.
Nichola, or La Jardinière, the jester to Mary, Queen of Scots.
The jester was often a person with a distinguishable disability. He was either deformed, usually a dwarf, or had some mental disability (related to the village idiot). He was the point of difference, of irregularity, someone to look at and understand that the rest of us are normal. This difference did not mean exclusion in pre-modern societies: the village idiot was an acceptable social role, a person who is dependant on others to survive but contributed to society in other ways, sometimes confused for the village genius.
In the “Dictionary of Symbols,” J.E. Cirlot has a few interesting remarks about the jester. He says, “the jester is the symbolic inversion of the king, and hence, in certain rites of the period immediately preceding history, it appears in association with the sacrificial victim.” He then references that deformed persons in earlier civilizations were chosen in times of plague, famine, or other disturbance to be fed and treated in a wealthy manner and then tortured and sacrificed to cast away the evil powers. Together with the huge burden of being the relief for society, this inversion renders the jester a rather tragic figure rather than a comic one.
After being banished from the court, the jester found a new home in the theater in the form of the Italian comedia del arte. Shakespeare was a fan of the jester, as he appears as a character in at least 20 plays. Recently, the jester gained new life as an official figure since the town of Conway in North Wales appointed Russel Erwood, known as Erwyd le Fol, as the town jester, the first one after 1295!
Hi there, it's Tarot de Marseille, not Marseilles. I'm also an amateur.