Whenever I start a new project–so really, almost every day–I think about a particular archetypal figure, a kind of a mascot if you will. It’s The Fool, a tarot card from the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck from 1909. How I love this mfer!
I got into tarot a couple of years ago, when I started feeling that I wanted to experience more of myself. I grew up in a household where thinking was really valued, and education was pretty close to the highest priority. I think all parents want their kids to be smart, but when I was a growing up, it felt like smart was the most important thing I could be.
Coming into my forties, I wanted to be more conversant with my emotions. I wanted to feel more connected to my body. And I wanted to have more access to my intuition. I wasn’t even sure I had intuition! I particularly had this sense that underneath the top level of my awareness, right behind the rational stuff, there was all this other cool shit going on–deep inner knowing, profound questions, insight into people and events and myself.
Now, there’s a million ways to access that “other cool shit”. I myself was a yoga teacher for 20 years, so I know a TON of different ways to access the self. You can access it through therapy. Through dream interpretation. Through meditation. Through reading a novel. Through prayer. Through movement, through drugs, through sex, through lack of sleep, through transcendent sensory experiences like sound (music!) or food (Proust’s madeleine!) or fragrance (so tied to memory!).
But the thing I really wanted to connect with was my intuition. I was tired of asking everybody else for their ideas about who I was and what I should do. I wanted to be able to connect to a place of knowing inside myself. Looking at a tarot deck, I loved the way that it spoke to me in metaphors and archetypes, working on many levels including and beyond my rational self. Carl Jung loved tarot for these same reasons.
The Fool card spoke to me right away when I started learning more about tarot. One thing I love about the card (and this is true of a lot of the figures in this deck) is that The Fool is androgynous. Is The Fool a he? A she? A they? A different pronoun? You choose! I’m going to use she/her, bc that’s how I identify.
I love that The Fool is clothed in totally beautiful and eccentric garments. Where can I get a floral belted tunic top like that? It’s got a statement sleeve and it looks so great over her leggings! Her shoes are sensible, even minimalist, with soles that will allow her to feel the terrain beneath her.
She’s clothed in this outfit, and her eyes are up. Remember the end of Hamilton when Lin Manuel chants “wise up, eyes up!”? Her eyes are on the horizon. Arthur Waite, the pompous Englishman who wrote the text accompanying this deck, describes The Fool as the soul in search of experience. She is looking at the world around her with wonder.
However, her wondrous journey is not without danger. (Anything wondrous has an element of the sinister, a whiff of terror. That’s what makes it wondrous! Rather than just, like, kinda cool or whatever.) Look closely at the card–the Fool stands at the edge of a cliff.
The thing is, the Fool’s not standing on the edge of the cliff because she’s stupid. Also, she’s not called The Fool because she’s stupid! She’s called The Fool because mostly, nobody knows shit.
Right? We think we know things! We humans are so devastatingly intelligent. But really, there’s so, so much that we do not know at all. We don’t know shit about our universe. We don’t know shit about the world we live in. We don’t know shit about even the other humans we live with! And we don’t know shit about ourselves.
(Note: I believe science is real and wonderful, vaccines save lives, please wear a mask. The above is not to say that we don’t know ANYTHING. I’m saying that even as we know some things, we also mostly don’t know shit. I’m no scientist but I bet many of them would agree with me.)
Not knowing shit isn’t anything to be ashamed of. It takes great wisdom and humility to fully perceive and embrace our not-knowing.
So back to The Fool. She doesn’t know shit, but her eyes are up–she is alert and engaging with her world. She’s there on her wondrous, terrifying, heroic journey, in her beautiful outfit, her sensible shoes, the soul in search of experience. The path is dangerous! She’s teetering at the edge of a cliff!
But she is not without resources.
First of all, she has a little friend with her. A little white dog. (One of the great loves of my life was a little white dog named Frances. Franny loves me from another realm now, but I see her in the little white dog on this card.) When you look at the card, don’t you get the sense that the dog is warning her? But the dog’s vibe is less “go back!” and more “heads up!”
Second, she has a feather in her cap. She is not without accomplishments! You could even say that she is crowned by them.
Third, look how delicately she’s holding that flower! The flower is a rose, and it signifies many things–passion, appreciation of beauty, the ability of natural things to take root and blossom. The Fool is totally willing to stop and smell the roses. You might even say that’s the whole point of the Fool’s journey!
Fourth–this is my favorite part–she has slung over her shoulder a little kind of hobo rucksack. Arthur Waite says that what’s in the little bag are her experiences. I like to think that it’s not just HER experiences, but the accumulated experiences of her ancestors. A symbolic representation of epigenetics!
If you’re unfamiliar with Tarot it looks like the bag just sort of tied to the end of a stick. But in the tarot universe, that item is known as a wand. This can be confusing if you’re used to thinking of wands as Harry Potter-style, handheld items. In tarot, wands look more like staffs, but they definitely carry the same magical implications–they are instruments that harness and focus your ability to work wonders.
So, Dear Reader, here we are together, souls in search of experience. Our eyes are up, and we’re looking around this world with wonder. There is danger in this world–the Fool isn’t here to tell us that everything’s gonna be okay!
And yet, we’re not powerless. We have resources: the wisdom of our own experiences, the accumulated wisdom of our ancestors. And we have tools, we have implements, powers and potencies known and unknown to us.
Also–we are not alone on this hero’s journey. We have companions, fellow travelers, dear friends, loved ones, other people of good conscience. We have guides, mentors, coaches.
That’s what I see in this card. The Fool is in all of us. She is the heroine of the journey of her life, just like you are the heroine in yours.
Now:
I’m a life coach. Coaching’s not therapy–it’s not about healing past trauma. Coaching’s not consulting–it’s not about receiving the answers from an expert. In a coaching partnership, coach and client work together to access the client’s deepest inner knowing.
If you’re at a precipice in your life…
or going through a big, dark tunnel…
or down at the bottom of the ocean…
or fumbling your way through a dark room…
or on a tempest-tossed ship…
or stuck in quicksand…
or in any other damn fool situation…
…I would be honored to coach you.
Because we’re all Fools. But the wise Fool knows that guides are all around her.