Symbolism in 0 - The Fool

[eeviee]

Cliff: rashness, naivety, foolishness

 

Dog: animal helper, guardian of the threshold, obedience, vigilance, fidelity, primitive instincts, unconscious animus, individuation, psychic evolution, trust, faith, guiding the souls of the dead, direction, protection

 

Sun: optimism, primordial divinity, the God, cycles, fertility, the masculine, life versus death

 

White Rose: purity, star, sun, regeneration, initiation, monastic wisdom, reunification of the world, aspiring love, the self, spirit over matter, life & death, secrecy, union of opposites, female energy, innocence

 

 

Feel free to add other interpretations and symbol discussions as you see fit!

[Little Fang]

Nice thread!  I pulled out my card and I'll do some additions, if I'm doing this right.

 

Cliff: The unknown.  Leap of faith. 

 

Dog: Friend. Protector.  Warning and guidance, much like a seeing eye dog (don't go that way, it's a cliff!)

 

Sun: New beginning and a new day.  Clarity.

 

 

[Trogon]

Stick and Purse: The stick is a Wand and the purse holds the items of the other suits, a Cup, Sword, and a Pentacle. Indicating that The Fool has with him all he needs for his journey. On the other hand, he only carries what he needs, he has left behind any "excess baggage". (This is in my notebook and I believe it came from Eden Gray's book "The Complete Guide to the Tarot".

 

A note about the dog as well. It represents the taming of Nature, our "lower selves", by our conscious efforts, but still has the instincts and abilities of his wild cousins.

[Trogon]

And a question just occurred to me, do we want to add interpretations in these discussions, or should we be sticking to symbolism?

[fyreflye]

Why is The Fool numbered "0"?

[Trogon]

Why is The Fool numbered "0"?

 

First off ... FRANK ZAPPA!!!

 

And, I've always understood it to be because The Fool is both the beginning and the end, hence no number and all numbers. There is also the shape of the Zero - an egg shape, which corresponds also to the wreath around the dancer in The World card.

 

In "The New Tarot Handbook", (which I happen to be currently using in my studies) Rachel Pollack says;

 

The essence of this card lies not in the picture but in its number, 0. The shape of an egg, out of which a new life will emerge, zero signifies freedom unattachment, the chance to do something new - maybe to let go of the past and start over. Even more, the idea of nothing, no-thing, reminds us that we are not all the labels and judgments other people put on us, or even the ones we put on ourselves. We cannot be pinned down, limited, dismissed. Remember in school when you learned that if you divide any number by zero, the anser is always infinity? Take any situation that limits or blocks you, including your own beliefs about yourself, then bring in the Fool, and suddenly there are limitless - infinite - possibilities.

[fyreflye]

The fact that The Fool is placed at the end of the Arcana in earlier decks and at the beginning on later esoteric ones seems to validate your first insight.  It also makes the common assumption that Tarot is about "The Fool's Journey" questionable.  With a cliff directly ahead and his eyes in the sky The Fool's journey would appear to be a short one.

[Trogon]

I'd read somewhere, and always pictured it as such, that the cliff is a metaphor for the fool stepping off blindly into the unknown. As such, he is giving his subconscious control over his conscious mind and so will fly rather than fall. That is why the dog in the RWS is rather small as it has no control over where they are going. This of course still fits in with the symbolism which eeviee pointed out of the cliff representing rashness or naiveté since his conscious mind has no idea of where they're going.

[EmpyreanKnight]

AFAIK some decks also put the Fool in the penultimate position, between Judgement and The World. I've always wondered why.

[Seeker]

AFAIK some decks also put the Fool in the penultimate position, between Judgement and The World. I've always wondered why.

 

I dare say it's a reflection of the 'last will be first' in the The Once and Future King who stands between the fruit of an idea and it's consumption.

[Ratty]

 

AFAIK some decks also put the Fool in the penultimate position, between Judgement and The World. I've always wondered why.

 

I think this was the original position of the Fool in Gnostic/Kabbalistic thought. The Hebrew letter associated with the last position but one is Shin. This means tooth. The shape of the letter is three flames, a fire symbol. The significance of both the grinding down by a tooth and the fire refer to mundane and alchemical transformation, the start of the transformation of food into nourishment and of lead into gold. The bite of dog takes on a different flavour in this position.

 

The Golden Dawn shifted the Fool to the start of the pack and gave it the first Hebrew letter Aleph. Aleph (the ox) also refers to the number 1, which is why on many decks with Hebrew letters, the Roman and Hebrew number schemes don't match. All the other letters were shifted down. The camel on the Thoth High Priestess is the letter Gimel (camel) and represents three, not two.

 

I think the idea of the Fool in position 22 may be a compromise, a lesser shift, but I've no evidence.

 

It's this shifting to 0 that gives the Fool it's idea of first and last, and the journey, rather than the original idea of material to be transformed, which it sort of still has, just in a more active way.

 

I'm sure I've seen a European deck that gave Aleph to the magician, and Bait (House/2) to the HP.

[reall]

On 9/25/2017 at 9:10 AM, EmpyreanKnight said:

AFAIK some decks also put the Fool in the penultimate position, between Judgement and The World. I've always wondered why.

Feather: as "Feather of Maat"?:) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maat