FOOL'S POSITION
The Fool in this deck is so large, it almost seems as if he's grabbing and reaching for every corner of the card. He's all-present, spreading himself all over the view. If we think of the room in the card as the universe, then the Fool is reaching for every corner of the universe. He's everywhere, and nowhere.
Note his feet. They are up in the air. He has no ground, no earth to stand on. In that sense he becomes the embodiment of the untouchable element: air.
If we search through the Toth deck there are a few cards that also have a peculiar ungrounded position...
In the Major Arcana the Magician and Hanged Man stand out with their peculiar position of their feet being up in the air, and yet never like the Fool. To compare these positions, we may learn something of all three cards.
The Fool's feet are spread and up. Doesn't he look like an astronaut in space? Try to imagine him starting to move into a direction from that position. He cannot move into a direction, exactly because of the spread legs and the feet pointing at different directions at the same time. And if he was not holding on to the corners of the card, he would fall back on his ass. Except that in space, you don't fall, but float aimlessly. In other words: the Fool has no direction, or better yet, he's incapable of giving direction because of his "position". The reason for this lies in the position of his ego. The Fool has an ego, as shown by the depiction of the sun (Solar) on his body. But his ego is not in the solar plexus position. He can shine brightly, but he has no will. In the zero position, where nothing is and everything can still be, it is hard to have a will. Without a will there can be no direction.
It becomes clear on how the Fool cannot make up his mind of what he wants by what he wears on his head. He has small horns, like Pan, a sign that he wants to experience physical life in a way that has nothing to do with enlightenment. But at the same time his head is crowned by a small crystal pyramid that breaks the light into a rainbow halo. He longs to be one with the kosmos. Of course the Fool is already one with the kosmos. He is the center of the kosmos. However, not because of enlightenment, but almost accidental.
The
Magus's feet are the opposite of the Fool's feet. Instead of pointing at every direction up in the air, they are close together, pointing downward. Though the Magician's feet has wings and he can fly (the Greek god Mercurius), he has the ability to give direction to his life, whereas the Fooll cannot.
The Fool who is the number 0, he belongs to the realm of before time and space, which is nowhere and yet everywhere. The Magus has the number 1. The Fool found a bearing and has placed his legs together to take his first step. Where the Fool lives in the endless universe without definition the Magus has stepped through space-time fabric, away and left the lilac empty trangle behind him.
What has caused this first step? Note how the Magus shines golden, as if he is the sun himself. Where the sun, the ego was only starting to rise in the Fool, the Magus is the sun, is nothing but ego. The ego wills, and in that way creates.
The
Hanged Man has his feet up in the air, hanging upside down. Seeing life upside down is similar to the view of the Fool, however the Hanged Man is in a phase in life where he's very much bound to daily life and goals, and his view is forced upon him. He does not hang there out of his own choice, but life put him there, and made sure he cannot move and escape. Only when the Hanged Man accepts he has nowhere to go and turn anymore, can he look at life again through a Fool's eyes, like an unborn baby in the womb of his mother: head down, feet up.
There are a few court cards that seem to want to return back to the Fool's state of being. The Princess of Wands (a page) floats and flies in the sky. It's as if lust made her lose her mind, or at least she will turn men into fools for her.She shares too with the Fool the symbol of the tiger. The tiger stands for instincts and aggression for both the Fool and Princess of Wands.
The Knight of Cups (a king) has wings on his back and seems to reach for the highest ideal of love, which is not of this earth. And when we think ourselves in love with what seems unreal, too good to be true, we wonder whether we are not being foolish. And if you pay enough attention you come to notice that the Knight of Cups is wearing a green armor. That the Fool wears a green costume is hard not to notice of course.
The Princess of Swords has a lot of fighting spirit in her, but she wields her sword in all directions, defending herself against air (nothing). Though the princess wears a white dress, her whole body is strangely lit in a green shadow.
THE FOOL'S ELEMENTS
In his right hand the Fool holds a cup. Upside down the water flows out and forms the stream of life, for the Egyptians that was the Nile. In his left hand he holds a torch. Its flame reaches across his head to the cup, but in fact the water and fire remain separated. The two opposing elements cannot mingle, because of the Fool's pure state of non-direction.
Behind the Fool, in the background, lies a huge sack of money, each of the money coins stamped with astrological symbols (Gemini, Pisces, Libra, Taurus, Ares, Aquarius, Virgo, Sagitarius, Mars, Jupiter, Mercury, The Moon, Venus, Saturn and the Sun). So many disks, representing earth. The peculiar thing about the sack of money is that it's resting on air, and is coloured blue like air. And well nothing can be done with that huge bag of money. It can't be spend, so it remains within the bag. It is but the idea of the material world, nicely and safely put away in a bag.
The only element that seems missing in its symbolical form is the sword for air. The sword is not present in the image of the Fool, beause the Fool is "air". And if you look at the Ace of Swords you will notice that the sword is exactly the same green as the Fool's costume.
The Magus too has all the four elements represented in the card. Not in their pure form anymore, but in their symbolical tool forms. They look almost tiny in the card, in comparison to the Fool's elements. And they have the same general yellow colour as the naked Magus himself, almost as if they were created out of his flesh. With the Fool the elements can be found in their truest form and most non-existent form. With the Magus they become smaller, they start to materialize for the more limited real world. But most importantly it is the Magus who causes them to be there.
Adjustment holds the exact same sword as the ace of swords, which had the same green colour as the Fool, and both the Fool and sword portray the element "air". Adjustment has a mask on to remain objective and not be fooled by the illusions of the "real world". She is like the Fool connected to the realm beyond the material, and stands in the world untouched by the material world in a light green square. But where the Fool balances nothingness, and stands in nothingness, the lady of Justice is present nonetheless in the real world. Her feet touch the earth, and are together like the feet of the Magus. Lady Justice is trying to find a balance between the material and imaterial. Both the Fool and the lady's sword and mask represent truth. The Fool is dazed by it, in the grip of truth. The Lady though can act on the truth with her sword.
Art shows a woman formed out of two persons who mixes the water of the cup with the fire of a torch in a kettle. She is dressed in a garment of the same green as the Fool's costume. But where the fire and water were still separate, they can finally mingle and unite in Art. Art too is about finding a balance, not of the mind like Adjustment, but of passion and emotions. And when the sacral emotional mingles with the fire of passion, then we get the steamy result of kundalini, the process that starts to burn our ego away and makes us find our path back to the universe. Art leaves the big, grown up sun behind her. More, the sun has the same rainbow colours as the Fool's crystal's crown. It's as if the ego is finding its way to the kosmos, to enlightenment.
Finally, the Star shows the Faerie of the Stars pouring lifewater out of the cup across the giant disk of earth and herself. She pours the same water as the Fool. Though the whole colour scheme of the Star has a magical, dreamy atmosphere, here we see earth not as a symbol but in its true planetary form. Like the Fool this Faerie comes from the Stars. But she can fertilize earth, knows how to shape it with emotions, without ego and without an ego's will.
Across all of the 5 cards we can note an evolution in the materialisation of the sky. The Fool's sky has no fabric, has no material, is non existent really. We already saw the Magus step out of infinity (the lilac triangle behind him) into an actual space, made of a fabric, a web of golden lines. With Adjustment the fabric of the time-space continuum has formed into abstract spheres, like forming planets. In Art we can witness the start of a chrystalisation process in the background. And in the Star we see an actual planet Earth, a chrystal star, and the sky is full of stardust.
And it seems that while the proces pre-exists and starts with a masculine figure, the balance, union and fertilization process is done by female figures in Crowley's opinion.
THE FOOL'S SPIRALS
I already mentioned how the Fool has two small horns on his head, and how it refers to his longing for earthly life away from the divine and enlightenment. There is one Major Arcana card where we see the horns reappear, in Pan, the scapegoat, the
Devil.
The Devil or Pan in stories and myths is like a trickster, tricking us to stray and then he laughs at us (smirks) in having "fooled" us. The goat's grin can be seen in that of the Fool's ecstatic face. The goat in the Devil card looks a bit foolish himself, with the crown of flowers on his head. With the Devil's card we have followed the Fool's longing to earthly non-divine ecstatic experiences to its deepest point. Once we release ourselves from its imprisonment we find the freedom to return to the divind and fulfill the Fool's wish to enlightenment symbolized by the Fool's crystal crown.
Two court cards depict horned figures. This time it are two women: the princess of disks an the queen of disks (who also has a mountain goat present). We could see them like the narrow vision of mideval Christians as witches and worshippers of the Devil, but this vision was a demonisation of the wild celebrations of the Bacchantic mysteries, mysteries to which only women were initiated. Hence, we do not have any male court cards with horns at all. It are the earthly court cards that get to carry the horns, as they are embodiment of persons with an earthly life, the life the Fool has longed to experience.
Note how these two not only share the Fool's horns, but how the card also depicts a crystal on a staff. This reveals that the women not only know earthly life and are able to deal with life, but that they also keep on carryng the tool to find enlightenment. The Devil on the other hand shows no crystal to the divine at all. So, these earthly women are not loathsome creatures on a road of demoralisation. They are enlightened.
There is one exception to the horned court cards only being of the element earth in the suit of disks. The Princess of Wands we saw earlier on seems to have something like horns as well. They are not as solid as those of the two ladies of disks, because the wands are of the fire element. But her passion and allurement may be the needed flame of lust that leads to physical sexual relations.
The Fool seems caught in a string of spirals, seemingly forming the number zero. There are four of these spirals. The first one is heart shaped and linked with the grapes. The heart-shaped spiral is the closest to the fool, and in its shape reveals the Fool's foremost longing is that of union of souls.
The grapes, the horns and the green costume together call forth the vision of Dyonisus. He was the Greek god of wine, of having an epiphany and being liberated through madness, ecstacy and wine. Drunk people act foolish, are easily distracted and find it hard to walk straight, and they dare to act when drunk in a way they otherwise would never dare to. His festivals were wild, mystic and secret, and they fell a few weeks before the start of spring. Half March is the season when people start to feel itchy, are eager for spring, can actually already feel as if it's spring, but it is not spring as of yet. If Spring is the start of the season cycle, number 1, and the start of life, then the few weeks before that fall into a zero season. It's getting warm enough and eager enough to not be winter anymore, but it is not spring either. It is like a mini season that falls through the cracks: the pre-spring season.
Dyonisus was a god of rebirth, but a rather strange one. Although there are several versions of who his mother was, his father was always the god Zeus, and Hera was jealous of the pregnant mistress and making sure in indirect ways that the mother died while pregnant. But the foetus is saved and replanted into a new mother (including Zeus' thigh) who carries him to full term. So, in fact, Dyonisus was carried twice and born twice and should have died. When we are in the Fool's state, we feel like saved and about to be reborn.
If we peruse the rest of the deck we find one other card with grapes: Three of Cups, called Abundance. So, we can imagine those three cups filled to the rim with rich and heavy red wine. This card symbolizes a period of joy, celebration and welness. Here I want to bring in the image of Waite's 3 of cups, where we see three women dancing, their cups high in the air. Are these perhaps women celebrating the festival of Dyonisus, a festivity only women are allowed to participate in?
Why do we feel joy? When we are free of our daily earlthy worries, are able to relax and not care about the past, the present and the future, when we feel as if we are in the now. This is like having a glimpse again of the time we were innocent toddlers with no idea nor care for the world, the age of the Fool.
The second spiral reveals the Fool is caught up in a cycle of metamorphosis, of death and rebirth. The first symbol that reveals this is the Caduceus: a winged staff entwined by two snakes. In Greek myth this was the staff of the god Hermes (Mercury with the Romans).
Hermes was first of all known as a Messenger god, a herald who delivered the messages of the gods to the mortals. Dreams are one form of heralds, and the dreamworld is a world that is everywhere, in everyone's head, and yet nowhere. And when we are in the Fool's state in our lives, we may feel as if life is a dream, too wonderful to be true - we must be mad to believe it.
As a messenger, Hermes was a god of peace and unification (the Fool's heart desire), because he would attempt to have enemies communicate with each other through him. And he used his trickster wit to present otherwise problematic ideas as the perfect solution.
Hermes was a patron of boundaries and those who cross it - travelers, vagabonds, people who had to survive on the street (thieves, prostitutes, ... ) - in a literal as well as metaphysical sense. He was one of the few gods who could enter the underworld without any problems, and therefore a Chtonic god. He helped to free people and gods stuck in the underworld back to the world of the living, but also guided people into Hades. He was a god who could go everywhere and thus belonged nowhere in particular.
Lastly, because he was seen as the unifier of opposition, Hermes was the patron god of the Alchemists in later times. With the lore of initiates and tarot symbolism it is no so surprise that Crowley featured Hermes so heavily.
The Caduceus was Hermes's staff, as a sign of both his messenger qualities that unify and bring peace, is always on the road, as well as portray his chtonic aspects of crossing boundaries between life and death. So, the presence of the Caduceus in one of the Fool's encircling elypsis protects the Fool as he is traveling from one state in life to another and passes through a land where he doesn't belong. It tells us that the Fool is a period of transition, where you are traveling from a previous life to another one.
We see also the Caduceus appear in the Magus and Devil of the Major Arcana. In the Magus, it is not just a referral to the protection of Hermes, but it is an attribute of the Magus. Crowley identifies the Fool as Dyonisus, and the Magus as Hermes with his winged feet and glued on a Caduceus as tall as the card.
We already saw how the Devil or Pan is like the end of the "horned road" the Fool can end up following, and only afterwards is free to find his way to enlightenment. The Caduceus in the Devil is not gold, nor is the sun disk between the wings. The Caduceus in front of the Devil is dark and the sun disk is red like the setting sun, heralding the coming of the darkness of the night... the darkness of the underworld.
The snakes in the Caduceus stand for dualism: birth versus death, healing versus poison, peace versus war, good and bad. In Christian religion the Devil is bad, the necessary dualistic counterpart of God who is believed to be good. The Chtonic, underworld, dark side of the Caduceus is not only portrayed in the Devil's card by its darkness, but also because we can clearly see how the staff is planted deep into earth, whereas the Caduceus reaches out to the heavens in the Magus.
With the Fool the Caduceus is part of the spirals, encircling the Fool, not standing prominently or unified with the figure like in the Magus or the Devil. The Caduceus seems to fly about him like he's being visited by Hermes, receiving a message from Hermes. And with the spirals coiling around the Fool's neck, we could see the Caduceus as a charm necklace to protect him on his journey.
- The Winged Sun and Uraeus (Horus)
If you compare the symbol of the Caduceus with those of the cards, you will noticed something is off. It normally does not contain a sun disk, and in the Devil's version the snakes aren't even coiled around the staff anymore. Crowley's Caduceus is actually a mingling of two symbols: the Greek Caduceus and the Egyptian Winged Sun with two Uraeus (Cobra snakes).
In Ancient Egypt it was a sign of royalty and Faraos were seen to be divine, gods on earth. It was most particularly identified as a symbol for the Egyptian god Horus, often depicted as a falcon (the wings) and god of the skies (the sun).
In one of the known traditions, Horus was the son of Isis. After her brother Seth had murdered Isis's husband Osiris, she went searching for all of Osiris's body parts. She found all, except his penis. Instead she made a golden phallus to replace it and impregnated herself that way. She birthed the divine Horus while hiding in the marshes from Seth. The country was then split in dark and light, with Horus battling Seth. After many years of war, Horus finally beat Seth, but not without either two carrying a mark, a taint, of the other. Seth gouged out an eye of Horus, and Seth lost a testicle (his fertility, and therefore ruler of the infertile desert). The land was unfified under Horus, but never totally healed from Seth's infertility. Horus's eyes were the moon and the sun in the sky (his realm). But since one eye was harmed, the moon lost most of its power to shine as brightly as the sun, nor shine every night.
Horus thus had wings like Hermes to travel day (light and good) and night (dark and evil) through the sky. Horus unified a divided country, just like Hermes was the harbringer of peace. And though Horus was overall seen as a good god, he carried within him a taint of the darkness, crossing boundaries. And thus Crowley intermingles Hermes's Caduceus with tHorus's Winged Sun.
The Winged Sun with Uraeus (and thus also the Caduceus) appear in three pip cards of the Wands suit: the five, the six and the seven. In the five we see four staves in balance. The fifth one is disturbing the symmetrical image. The 5th stave causes friction, and yet it is the Caduceus with Winged Sun. We can see Hermes's wings at the bottom, and the Caduceus was made of a herder's staff, split in two at the bottom in order to catch snakes - not only wings, but a symbol for dualism. With the sun disk being golden, we know that the friction will cause no permanent harm. Nothing can ever remain stable, and will transform. Transformation may be unsettling and make us nervous, but it can also lead to a higher stage of stability. This higher stage of stability we find in the 6 of wands, where the dualistic nature of the Caduceus and Winged Sun is balanced out, until eventually in the 7 a new transformation comes about.
What we see happen in these 3 cards is the rising of the kundalini. In the 5 the flames burst from on center point, the solar plexus. The person is still self-centered. The friction eventually frees it, so the fire of life can be balanced out (all the chakras) in the 6, overcoming the ego, awakening several levels of insight and understanding, preparing the path for the kundalini. Finally the "sacred" fire of the kundalini can rise in the 7, the pathway to enlightenment, from all the blockages, electrifying us and strengthening us.
In these we see a part of the journey the Fool will have to undertake in his life. But the Fool at his Fool's stage is still far from the rising of the kundalini. The Fool's ego is on the rise, forming, rather than overcome. However, when the kundalini rises we may feel as free as the Fool. Even if the Fool's ego is rising and growing, he is still free from egocentrism... that has yet to come. With the rising of the kundalini we lose the egocentrism and correlate it with the one period in life we have ever known to feel as free from our own ego... the time when it was not as big yet, the age of the Fool.
Lastly, we see Horus himself depicted in the Major Arcana card Aeon, as well as his winged sun symbol. We see Horus the Elder in the background, on his throne, his form of the flesh as falcon and in colour. But he's also depicted as Horus the Young, as a child in spirit, with his finger to his lips (a gesture of silence as said by the Greeks but vehemently negated by the Egyptians, a gesture of shyness and wonder (innocense), a gesture of initiation). As a child Horus was always in danger and needed protection, hence the two uraeus cobra snakes on his head. Together, they represent "(life)time".
If we put Aeon next to the Fool, we could see Horus the Young as the Fool. Note the egg shape on Aeon, and how the spirals around the Fool are like an egg encapsulating the Fool. The Fool is like a child, like Horus the Child, innocent, not yet governed by his ego, unaware of life and how it shapes us. An unborn child, still in the womb, already has an identity, but it cannot be said to belong to any world. It is not dead, but it is not born either. It is in an in-between world.
In Aeon it is as if after a lifetime of experiences we as adults come to the realisation what our destiny is, what our identity required us to try and fulfill in this life in order to be happy. The identity was with us already as a child, and we realize that somehow we are returning to it once again, even though we are so much older. We cannot be the child anymore, but we carry its spirit still with us. We return to the Fool, that pure being we were in the womb, but now finally understanding what the Fool could not without the experience.
Right after the Cudaceus flies a butterly, the best known example in nature of "transformation", of growing up from an infant into an adult. In its first stage of its life, a butterfly is a catterpillar, eating and nibbling at all the leaves, ensuring in its physical needs. Then it encapsulates itself in a cocoon, until the pop evolves inside the cocoon into a butterfly that frees itself from its pop. The heavy landlocked animal has become an example of beauty flying in the air, from flower to flower, and attracting a partner to produce new life and die.
Butterflies appear in the right bottom corner of the
Star. We have already seen how the Star fits in the evolution from indirection to the ability to shape and fertilize life. Once we reach the stage of the Star, the cocoon has been shed and out comes the butterfly that will help flowers to poll the environment and who will copulate to start the whole catterpillar-butterfly process all over again.
In the
Sun, we see two dancing children with butterfly wings on their back. In a way it seems weird to see children, while butterflies are the adult version of an animal. But then faeries in mythology, who are both wise but have a childlike spirit, carry butterfly wings as well. The Major Arcana card after the sun is Aeon, so we could see these children not as literal children, but as adults who celebrate life and see life with a childlike spirit and enthusiasm.
The butterfly is chased by a vulture (you see a blue, widespan wing and vulture head in between the white dove and butterfly). In Egypt the vulture was the personal protector of the pharaoh of Upper Egypt (Southern Egypt), but later in time became the protecting mother for all children. She was called Nekhbet, and also appeared as one of the two cobras on the winged sun symbol. The Vulture does not reappear anywhere in the deck anymore. And thus the Fool is the sole true child in need of the protection of his mother.
A white dove stands for the Holy Spirit, the purest form of spirit and good. Sometimes it stands for peace, but then it has an olive branch in its beak (after the Noah story where a white dove returned to the ark with an olive branch signifying it found land, and God had made his peace with humanity - Noah and his family being the sole survivors). In mythology and religion, Spirit is said to be the cause of life, and it is the form people return to after death. The loop in which the Fool is caught, whichever transformation he goes through, the spirit is always there and will always remain.
The dove appears on the sun disk of the winged sun on the
Magus. In the Fool, the dove looks like a real living dove, but in the Magus it turns into an icon. The dove goes through the same abstrahation process as the cup, torch, sword and disk. While on the one hand life becomes more "material" in the Magus, they also become less "real".
The
Empress has her head turned to the dove sitting near her left shoulder. This Empress - holding her arm as if holding a baby with all the blue - calls forth a recollection of some pieta painting of the Holy Virgin. With the dove sitting there, and no baby in her arms yet, we see a depiction of the Anunciation. While in the Bible, Mother Mary is reduced to a human being, all of the Bible and Catholic mythology about this virgin can almost be literally derived from older Great Mother/Goddess myths: Isis, Ishtar, Astarte, the Celtic trinity Goddess (virgin, mother, crone), ... No mythology with a sky god can find a great following without a Great Mother. And in our Western society where the bible is so predominant we often forget that the dove is not just a biblical symbol of the Holy Spirit, but an attribute of many Great Mothers of earlier religions.The Virgin Mary, mother of Jezus who is the son of God but God as well, is a copy-version of the other Great Mothers who bore a son of a Father God but who are their Father at the same time. The only way though to incorporate that age old myth was by making her human. Solomon had once worshipped Astarte, a Great Mother, and the temple was destroyed because of it, the covenant lost. No religion coming from the Jewish tradition could risk such a blatant "rival" to the sky god, even if she was his partner and mother with Solomon in the back of their head. And yet it could not gain a following of non-Jewish people without Her. The disguise of a mortal, common woman (an heir of the fallen Eve) was the compromise.
Doves were a symbol of committed love. It was a dove that sat on the egg out of wich Venus was born. It was a sign that God loved his chosen people, the Israelites. Though for Christians the dove is the embodiment of the Holy Spirit and male, all the other doves are female, including the dove that returned with the olive branch to Noah's ark. All those doves in every myth of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, including the Jewish tradition, are female and linked to female Goddesses, of which Mary is a version as well, and a sign of this comitted mother love, and yet we must think of the Holy Spirit dove as male spirit? No mediteranean religion, incorporating a mediteranean Great Mother myth and symbol, would use that universal female symbol and proclaim it to be male. Only those who live centuries later, when all the other mediteranean religions have been half forgotten, would be able to change the gender of the symbol. It is a purposeful later misinterpretation to break the link with other Great Mother myths.
So, if Crowley has a female dove of motherlove and the "home" (homing in of doves) with the Empress then for Crowley the Holy Spirit dove on the Fool represents the same thing, and is a female spirit, another version of the guardian she-vulture, who in the Pharaoh's headdress are often depicted as two protective snakes, the Uraeuses.
In the
Hierophant, the dove next to his face is once again a reminder of the female spirit. We can tell because the dove touches the tail of the nailed serpent. Crowley himself said they were depicted on the Hierophant, straight from Lev ch I,57. The snake is nailed above the highpriest's head like Mozes rose the copper snake above his head, almost like a symbol of devotion. Eve and the snake were laden with guilt for the fall of man in Genesis, but Mozes revealed that the snake (Eve) was also the harbringer of life, as long as she was venerated. We recognize here the dualism of the two snakes in the Caduceus. And in the Hierophant the same theme is symbolized by using the snake and the dove: without a woman losing her innocense there would be no motherlove.
We find this story of motherlove in other symbols of the Hierophant. Isis stands at the bottom, protectively in front of the Hierophant, who is no other than Horus the Elder, having a small Horus The Young on his chest. The Hierophant's main image is Aeon's main image. Whether Horus is young or old, the Great Mother will never let go of her son, will not cease to protect her child.
The dove who returns home to show there is land, that God kept his promise to Noah and keep the people he loved safe and makes peace with them, is depicted in the Tower card, when it seems all the world as we knew has crumbled around us, we will see a sign that we can find a new life/home again. In our darkest hour we will connect to something that tells us that all will be good again and that we are loved.
One pip, the
4 of wands, depicts doves too: doves and rams. Holy Spirit and The Horned One united, the dove as symbol of the goddess of love Venus (see the astrological symbol for the planet Venus) united with the fire enthusiasm of the starter of things, the Ram. Once again we see the Fool's dualism of his little horns and crystal crown, but here they are in balance, uniting.
- Two naked humans, flowers, and the sun
It is said that the two naked small bodies at the bottom of the third spiral are two kids forming a material bridge across time and space. The strange construction of five flowers are symbolizing transformation of the creation abilities of those children into a rising of life in the sun. It is then translated as symbolizing the yearning of kundalini.
Personally I find this translation of the symbols too abstract. There are other more appropriate symbols for that in the card already. So, let's start at the base again. First we have 2 naked human beings, as if embracing each other. Above them we see the flower construction: one flower raised like a phallus, the second large flower is of a different nature is hanging towards the ground, similar to an accepting cup, a female sexual symbol. And of those two large flowers sprouts a third branch with three small flowers. It seems a symbol of copulation and the creation of offspring. The sun, sign of the ego, focuses on one of those offspring. And not coincidentally the sun is on the same height where the Fool's phallus ought to be. Simply put, when two children (as in humans being nature's children ) come together and start a family, a new individual, a Fool, will be born out of it, that starts its life in the mother's womb, a state of unborn and not dead, out of time and space (insofar that for the infant in the womb, time and space does not yet exist).
- The mind of a crocodile and the fire of a tiger
The last spiral involves the instincts, personified by the crocodile living in the birthwaters streaming down from the cup and tiger biting the Fool's leg. Crocodiles were in existence already in the age of the dinosaurs, and our brainstem that busies itself with all the bodily reflexes to make sure that we breath for example is often referred to as the mind of the crocodile. The crocodile thus shows taking care of ourmost basic needs, predominant behaviour we can witness in babies and toddlers. Meanwhile the tiger stands for the aggressive instinct to survive, which we learn to control as we grow up. Especially a toddler can throw temper tantrums when they do not get what they want. We can see a small sickle of a moon above the crocodile's head, indicating how the crocodile and tiger live in our subconscious.
In that mind of the crocodile grows a rose. Crocodiles look fearsome, ugly and far from cuddly, and yet within this crocodile grows a symbol of love and beauty. It makes the idea of the crocodile more docile than the image of the tiger. It is as if this crocodile, a creature we think has such a low mind, is dreaming or thinking of finding beauty and love in its coming life.
In the Princess of Wands we see the return of the tiger. But there he doesn't clamp himself with tooth and nail to the Princess' legs. He swirls around as if he's her playkitten. It seems to say that the Princess is able to channel her aggressive instincts via her sexual desires.
THE COSMIC EGG
When I compared the Fool and Aeon via the Horus symbols, I also mentioned how Aeon shows an egg form, and that the Fool's spirals seems to form an egg as well. This egg is known in many mythologies as the world egg, the cosmic egg and the Orphic egg. The Sanskrit scriptures, the Rig Veda, the Taoist Pangu myth, the Finns talk about how the cosmos was egg formed and then broke in half forming the sky and the ground. The god Mithras was born out of an egg.
The Rig Veda gives it the name Hiranyagarbha, which literally means the "golden womb".
The Greek myth of the Orphic Egg tells the story of Eurynome, the mother of all, who rose naked out of chaos, and when she found nothing to stand on, she separated the sky from the ground, and then she danced. She thought she was all alone, but her dancing had created the northern wind Boreas. She caught it and wrung it between her hands until it took the shape of the snake Ophion, and copulated with it. Out of this union the world egg was created. Ophion coiled itself around it until it was ready and the sun, the moon, the earth and all that is living was born out of it.
The background within the spirals forming an egg on the Fool is golden yellow - the golden womb of the Rig Veda. Outside of the spirals at the top of the card we can see blue shapes that could be seen as clouds, sky forming. The crocodile at the bottom of the card lies in water with reeds, the Nile formed out of the cup. So, we have a cosmic sky separated from a ground where life will grow, a golden womb, and an abstract egg shape. In a way, we could see the spirals as the coils of Ophion around the egg. And within the egg we see several mythological symbols regarding the secret of life creation, transformation and formation.
The Magus, The Lovers and the Hermit depict the Orphic Egg, as we see it from the outside, hiding its secret within, a secret that only is revealed on the Fool. It is as if in those stages we are trying to understand the secret of the origin of life, cosmos and the world as we know it, through trying to create ourselves, through looking to unite with other humans, through self searching within, and yet we cannot crack the egg, nor truly understand it at those stages. But as I have shown there are other cards that bring us back to remembering the Fool's stage, such as the Aeon and the Hanged Man.
Aeon too shows a world egg, but not an Orphic Egg. We can see through the egg, and see both past and present in that card. The secret is understandable in that stage. But in its Orphic depiction, the egg is closed to us, protected by Ophion, and having a hard shell.
I must mention the World card, the last Major Arcana card. And it shows exactly that myth from which the Orphic Egg is born. In the Orphic Egg myth this dance of the mother of all with Ophion would be chronologically seen as the start of the story, and the Orphic Egg the result. But the Major Arcana starts with the Fool, the Orphic Egg, ready to be born, and the series ends with the creation of the Orphic Egg. It reveals to us that the start is the end, and the end is start, that cause is the result and result the cause of life. The starting and ending card of the Major Arcana beggs us to ask ourselves the question: "Which one was first? The egg or the hen?" The truth is that there is no answer to that question.
NUMBER ZERO
The Fool's number in the Major Arcana is the number 0, one of the strangest number in our system. As a placeholder, zero functions to appoint a point in time, that we never experience. There is no year 0, even though we ascribe a 0-point to our timeline. Even the first second after 0 belongs to year 1. So, even though we have it as a placeholder to pinpoint a starting moment before everything else, it does not truly exist. It is as if time 0 falls out of time and space. We cannot measure it, nor touch it. And yet, it is there.
In math 0 has quite surprising effects. If you divide nothing by something you end up with nothing still. But if you divide something with nothing the result is infinity. And if you have several variations of possibilities divided by no variations you end up with the same several variations of possibilities. Nothing is actually something.
It is thus the ultimate symbol for a moment and place in life that has no time, no space, a moment that we cannot touch, nor measure, that is void and yet infinite.
TRIANGLE
In the other Major Arcana cards we can see a planet or astrological animal sign, but there is none for "zero". We do not have a zero planet or astrological animal. So, though Crowley turned his back on the Golden Dawn System, he used the triangle to symbolize the Fool. A white triangle in the Golden Dawn System stands for the "supernal" universe. Supernal means divine, the "good". The crystal crown on the Fool's head is that white triangle, and then we have a golden one behind the Fool with its base crossing the middle of the card.
CONCLUSION
By analysing and looking up every drawn symbol on the Fool, and treating the whole Tarot as a book to search for similar symbols, you do not only gain some understanding of those other cards, but it reflects back insights on the Fool. Apart from 6 Major Arcana cards I have glanced several times through 16 of the Major Arcana cards and several of the pips in the deck. In that way a deeper understanding of the Fool's influence grows.
What the Fool then means in Tarot readings, and how the Fool can empower you to understand cause and effect regarding opportunities and their impact will be adressed in other posts.
