Tarot Symbolism of the Fool Card

Description:

In the Rider/Waite deck, the Fool is represented by a young person dancing on the edge of a cliff, along with a small dog, looking up at the sky. The Fool carries a purse tied to a stick.

Placement on the Tree of Life:

In Golden Dawn based Orders, the Fool is associated with the Hebrew letter Aleph, the 11th path between the sephiroth Kether and Chokmah, and the element of Air.

Esoteric Title: The Spirit of Ether

Keyword: Potentiality

Interpretation:

When well-aspected in a reading, the Fool can represent a person progressing towards greater spiritual development.

When ill-aspected in a reading, the Fool can represent folly, eccentricity, inconsiderate actions. The Fool can also signal that the Querent is being deceived or taken advantage of.

When neutral-aspected, the Fool can indicate unexpected, unplanned and challenging influences.

Symbolism:

The Fool card in its original depiction seemed to represent the village idiot, the dunce, and the chronically drunk. There is also early cards that seem to represent the court jester, the person who could say unpleasant truths without getting their head cut off by the king.

Over the centuries, the artwork depicting the Fool has changed, and so has its meaning.

Perhaps the biggest change came from the initiated version of the Tarot that the original Golden Dawn (and its later offshoots) used. In that deck, the Fool is represented as a naked child of indeterminate sex, who is accompanied by a wolf on a leash, who is reaching up for a rose. In Golden Dawn, the Fool represents the god Harpocrates, the Egyptian god Horus as a young child. The Ancient Greeks, who mistaken the Egyptian pictures and statues of this god as making the sign of silence and discretion rather than sucking his finger, associated Harpocrates as a symbol of the mystery tradition, an association that later esoteric traditions adopted.

The Golden Dawn version of the tradition influenced the ideas of the writer A. E. Waite and the artist Pamela Colman Smith, who designed one of the most influential Tarot decks of modern times, the Rider/Waite/Smith deck. In their deck, the Fool represents more of the potential of the blank slate of humanity, and our inherent possibilities for growth than the foolishness village idiot of earlier decks.

The animal accompanying the Fool is a friendly dog, dancing with their master. The earlier versions of this card, when an animal was also present, had the animal being wild and attacking (biting) the Fool. Waite and Smith show us not a hostile force, but rather a helper to our nature.

One of the most interesting symbols of their modern version of the Fool, and later decks based on it, is the purse carried by the Fool. What is in the Fool's purse? Mediating on this symbol has proven to be a useful exercise for those who seek deeper understanding of this card.