Excerpt from Meditation on the
Twenty-First Major Arcanum of the Tarot
THE FOOL
______________
LE MAT
Let no one deceive himself
If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age,
let him become a fool that he may become wise.
For the wisdom of this world is folly before God.
(I Corinthians iii, 18-19)
Folly is a condition which prevents that which is true from being grasped.
(Plato, Definitions)
... consciousness succumbs all too easily to unconscious influences, and these are often truer and wiser than our conscious thinking ... Personality need not Imply consciousness. It can just as easily be dormant or sleeping.
(C. G. Jung, Conscious, Unconscious and Individuation)
Dear Unknown Friend,
......
First of all, let us examine the Card. It represents a man in baggy dress who is walking, leaning on a staff and carrying a hanging bag on another staff that he holds on his right shoulder. In walking, he is attacked from behind by a dog who is in the process of ripping his trousers. The man is wearing a yellow bonnet topped by a red ball; he has a blue collar with points terminating in small bells; he is wearing blue trousers and red slippers. His over-vest is red with blue arms coming out of yellow sleeves; he has a yellow belt or girdle to which little bells are attached. In a word, he has the clothing of a traditional mediaeval clown or fool.
The Fool is walking from left to right. He holds his staff with his right hand, and with his left hand he balances on his right shoulder the staff from which the bag is hanging. His head is turned three-quarters to the right. So it is the Fool who has the tendency to the right ... the Fool of good, not of evil, which is also 'dent from the fact that he does not defend himself against the dog — which he could easily chase away by means of the staff.
The Fool of good ... it suffices to say these words in order to evoke the pale and thin figure of Don Quixote de la Manche — the knight-errant who made everyone laugh and who, from his life, merits the epithet El Loco ("The Fool") and who, after his death, merits that of El Bueno ("The Good"). O Don Quixote, you emerge from the pages of Miguel Cervantes' novel as a literary figure, but you have taken on a singular life, much more intense and real than that of a literary figure! You haunt the imagination from one generation to another, to the point of visionary experience. At evening time in an and rocky land, when the shadows are lengthening does one not see you silhouetted in distorted profile, of tall and stiff stature mounted on an emaciated nag?
Imagination, vision ... what am I to say? One can meet you often in historically difficult situations — which resemble the and distorted landscape — where hearts have become hardened and heads have become obstinate. It is you ... it is your voice which resounded more loudly than the beating of drums around the guillotine, one day in the month of Thermidor or Fructidor in the year II or III (of the French Republican calendar), with a cry from the top of the scaffolding, "Long live the King! "-before your chopped-off head rolled to the ground. It is you also who, in the presence of the jubilant revolutionary populace, tore down from the wall and ripped up a red placard announcing to the people of St. Petersburg the dawn of a New Era in Russia ... and who was promptly run through by the bayonets of the red guards present. It is you again who declared openly to the German military authorities of the invaded and occupied Netherlands in 1941 that Germany, by occupying the land, was infringing the Hague Conventions that Germany herself had signed thirty years previously...
Don Quixote de la Manche acts. For Cervantes did not at all invent him, but only described him such as he appeared to him in Castille in the time of the twilight of the knighthood. Don Quixote existed and acted long before Cervantes, just as he continues to exist and act long after him. For he lives-from century to century — the life of an archetype, by revealing himself during the course of the ages through lots of people in lots of ways. Cervantes depicted him as a knight errant, and the anonymous image-makers of the Middle Ages present him to us as the Fool of the Tarot. As an image, the Fool is mediaeval. This is obvious. But idea, as an archetype, and, lastly, as an Arcanum, what might his origin be? Greek? I should think so. Egyptian? I readily admit it. More ancient still? Why not?
Ideas, archetypes, arcana are ageless. It is only their representation, their imaged symbol, which can be attributed to a determined epoch. And this applies not only to "The Fool", but also to "The Magician", "The High Priestess", "The Empress", "The Emperor", "The Pope", "The Lover", "The Chariot", "Justice", "The Hermit", "The Wheel of Fortune", "Force", "The Hanged Man". . . For the Arcana of the Tarot are more than symbols and even more than spiritual exercises: they are magical entities, active initiating archetypes.