The fool
The fool is the most potent of the archetypes and also the most capable teacher of crazy wisdom. There are actually two types of fool: the foolish fool and the great fool. The foolish fool is inepet and silly, a clown of the mind. The great fool is wise beyond ordinary understanding. The foolish fool is the one we see every day when we look into the mirror or walk down the street. The great fool is the rarest of beings.
Innocence is the trademark of both fools. The innocence of the foolish fool makes him clumsy and unsophisticated because he tries to live according to convention. The great fool, however, does not try to fit in; in his innocence, he lives by his own rules. The foolish fool and his money are soon parted, but the great fool gives his money away. The foolish fool always gets lost, while the great fool is at home everywhere. The great fool has different valuse from the rest of us and there is crazy wisdom's master of ceremonies.
The great fool, like Einstein, wonders about the obvious and stands in awe of the ordinary, which makes him capable of revolutionary discoveries about space and time. The great fool lives outside teh blinding circle of routine, remaining open to the surprise of each moment. We are the foolish ones, complacent in our understanding. We take for granted the miraculous dance of creation, but the great fool continously sees it as if for the first time. The revelations of the great fool often show us where we are going, or -more often- where we are.
The Fool is a Card
The great fool shows his true face as the Fool, the first card in the tarot deck. he is the master of ceremonies, smiling and welcoming us to the show, the Grand Illusion, the parade of archetypal characters to follow. The Fool announces that what we are about to see is only a melodrama, and that we should not take these masks or matters too seriously. Our personalities are just put-ons, personae, roles we are given to play. We just read the lines and flesh out scences; there's really not much we can do about the plot. Our destiny is, after all, wriiten in the cards.
In the tarot the Fool is portrayed wandering in the sunshine with his knapsack and little dog, seemingly without a care in the world and with no particular place to go. And he is about to step off the edge of a cliff! Perhaps the Fool knows he will go over the cliff but continues to smile because he also knows he will never hit botom. The Fool understands that he, the cliff, and the bottom are illusions.
The Fool is the only unnumbered card in the tarot deck; he represents the nothingness from which the universe emerged. As teh zero, the Fool hi8mself has no value; he is outside the boundaries of number of sequence, outside all categories, beyond good and evil. With the Fool, anything can happen, and all things, even death, are equally worthy of this perpetual smile.
Since teh Fool has no number, he can also be seen as the last card. Or we might envision him as leading us from the nothingness at the beginning into the nothingness at the end - out of the void, through the valley, and finally over the cliff and back to the void. And all of us will be there, right behind the Fool, each of us in the costumes and roles of other tarot characters, all together on our way to the indept table conclusion.
Finally, as a testament to his power, the Fool is one of the few characters from the tarot deck to make it into our modern playing cards. He becomes the Joker - always wild, and almost always welcome. Like the Fool, the Joker is without number or trump, and therefore above all numbers and trumps. He has no specific value and so is of the greatest value. The Joker is mightier than the Kings and higher than the Aces.
The fool is the most potent of the archetypes and also the most capable teacher of crazy wisdom. There are actually two types of fool: the foolish fool and the great fool. The foolish fool is inepet and silly, a clown of the mind. The great fool is wise beyond ordinary understanding. The foolish fool is the one we see every day when we look into the mirror or walk down the street. The great fool is the rarest of beings.
Innocence is the trademark of both fools. The innocence of the foolish fool makes him clumsy and unsophisticated because he tries to live according to convention. The great fool, however, does not try to fit in; in his innocence, he lives by his own rules. The foolish fool and his money are soon parted, but the great fool gives his money away. The foolish fool always gets lost, while the great fool is at home everywhere. The great fool has different valuse from the rest of us and there is crazy wisdom's master of ceremonies.
The great fool, like Einstein, wonders about the obvious and stands in awe of the ordinary, which makes him capable of revolutionary discoveries about space and time. The great fool lives outside teh blinding circle of routine, remaining open to the surprise of each moment. We are the foolish ones, complacent in our understanding. We take for granted the miraculous dance of creation, but the great fool continously sees it as if for the first time. The revelations of the great fool often show us where we are going, or -more often- where we are.
The Fool is a Card
The great fool shows his true face as the Fool, the first card in the tarot deck. he is the master of ceremonies, smiling and welcoming us to the show, the Grand Illusion, the parade of archetypal characters to follow. The Fool announces that what we are about to see is only a melodrama, and that we should not take these masks or matters too seriously. Our personalities are just put-ons, personae, roles we are given to play. We just read the lines and flesh out scences; there's really not much we can do about the plot. Our destiny is, after all, wriiten in the cards.
In the tarot the Fool is portrayed wandering in the sunshine with his knapsack and little dog, seemingly without a care in the world and with no particular place to go. And he is about to step off the edge of a cliff! Perhaps the Fool knows he will go over the cliff but continues to smile because he also knows he will never hit botom. The Fool understands that he, the cliff, and the bottom are illusions.
The Fool is the only unnumbered card in the tarot deck; he represents the nothingness from which the universe emerged. As teh zero, the Fool hi8mself has no value; he is outside the boundaries of number of sequence, outside all categories, beyond good and evil. With the Fool, anything can happen, and all things, even death, are equally worthy of this perpetual smile.
Since teh Fool has no number, he can also be seen as the last card. Or we might envision him as leading us from the nothingness at the beginning into the nothingness at the end - out of the void, through the valley, and finally over the cliff and back to the void. And all of us will be there, right behind the Fool, each of us in the costumes and roles of other tarot characters, all together on our way to the indept table conclusion.
Finally, as a testament to his power, the Fool is one of the few characters from the tarot deck to make it into our modern playing cards. He becomes the Joker - always wild, and almost always welcome. Like the Fool, the Joker is without number or trump, and therefore above all numbers and trumps. He has no specific value and so is of the greatest value. The Joker is mightier than the Kings and higher than the Aces.
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