When we think of Fools, very often we imagine incompetence, naivete, or a lack of intelligence. None of us is likely to enjoy being called a Fool.
However, the card-slingers among us have a very different view of the Fool. Tarot decks call us “fool” with the very first card in the deck. For many of us, the Fool represents the starting point of our journeys.
The Fool, as it turns out, may be wiser than we ever imagined.
To remind all of us that Fool is an important thing to be sometimes, both tarot and non-tarot references to the Fool will be capitalized.
What is a Fool?
Typically, a Fool is a person of naïve or ignorant character who seems to know very little about the world. They may be overly trusting or seen as lacking in common sense. (Fool is also, incidentally, the insult of choice used by Disney villains to taunt the hero, but we’ll come back to that later.)
While we may perceive the naïve fool as an annoyance, there is a lot of wisdom to be gleaned from this simplified view of the world. The Fool doesn’t spend a lot of time examining the nuances of their interactions with others or weighing the pros and cons of a situation, meaning they spend a great deal of their time making quick, instinctual decisions about how they want to spend their time. Since the Fool doesn’t consider what others may think of them, they move forward in their decision with joy and can be fully present in the experience.
Though this kind of thinking can get the Fool into trouble, they also learn quickly. Touching hot coal results in pain—the Fool acknowledges this, retains the information, and doesn’t repeat that action in the future. They don’t, however, spend a lot of time berating themselves for touching the hot coal, or wishing they hadn’t. The Fool accepts their mistake and moves forward secure in their new knowledge.
Fools of Our Past
Historically, two specific kinds of Fools occupied special places in society: the court Fool or comedian, and the Holy Fool.
Many of us have heard of the court Fool, whose sole job was to entertain the upper crust at the royal court. People who occupied these positions in court served the important purpose of keeping the sitting monarch in good humor, as a happy monarch was a benevolent monarch. This often involved wearing a brightly colored costume decorated with donkey’s ears or the stereotypical belled cap and sometimes even being humiliated by those at court.
However, the court Fool also wielded a significant amount of power. Their position excused them from the performative niceties of courtly manners and enabled them to regularly roast the hell out of the most important people in the country. Their jokes were often crude, vulgar, or bordering on hubris—but since it was all in good fun, the Fool not only got away with it, they were paid for it.
Far from being a mere medieval invention, court Fools were employed in ancient Egypt, Rome, and by Aztec royalty. This shows us how deeply our ancestors valued entertainment and amusement.
The court Fool also had the power to tell the truth when others would have been punished for doing so. A Fool could couch criticism of a monarch’s methods or policies as humor that would be laughed off by the object of the joke. However, this was an effective way to spread subversive ideas. The court Fool, therefore, could be a very powerful ally, indeed.
Many of us have also heard of the Holy Fool, a historic figure or archetype who often occupied the streets of a village or city and attracted attention to themselves through outrageous behavior, usually to make a moral or philosophical point.
Holy Fools are well-known for brazenly flouting social norms by wandering the streets in various stages of undress, speaking in riddles, and disrupting the peace with loud shouting or singing. By making their fellow citizens uncomfortable, Holy Fools challenged the status quo and forced others to think about the state of the world and their actions and daily life. Since their ramblings were assumed to be divinely inspired, the Holy Fool could say things others couldn’t, making them essential to the spread of ideas and inspiring social reform.
The Holy Fool also performed the important functions of prophecy, clairvoyance, and sometimes the performing of miracles. Their unconventional lifestyle often made others fear them and, while this sometimes made them the objects of abuse, that fear also helped them garner a fair amount of respect. For instance, those in authority were more likely to believe a Holy Fool predicting disaster than an ordinary citizen.
The Fool in Tarot
In every tarot deck, the Fool is the beginning of everything. He/she/they are the numeral 0 in the deck, both signifying the cyclical nature of our journeys and the idea that we all begin life as Fools—ignorant, naïve, erratic, brazen, and full of wonder.
In tarot, the Fool is usually depicted as gaily strolling near or balanced at the edge of a cliff. In my favorite deck, the Shadowscapes Tarot by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, the Fool is a woman balanced on her tiptoes atop a stone pillar. A handful of small birds hold the ends of the ribbons circling her waist, barely able to hold her up.
Yet, she shows no fear. Her arms are spread wide as the wind lifts her hair and robes away from her body. Her expression is serene. She’s trusting, confident, and eager to see what happens next.
In the Wildwood Tarot, my wife’s primary deck, the Fool is renamed the Wanderer. An adolescent girl dressed in frayed clothing trustingly moves forward from the sturdy earth onto a rainbow bridge stretched across a misty chasm.
This, above all things, is what the Fool represents to me—the ability to take that first step on the journey, no matter what it brings.
Love tarot talk? Check out episode 7 of the Metaphysical Apothecary Podcast: Unique Methods for Studying Tarot.
The Fool in the Hero’s Journey
Let’s circle back to Fool being a Disney villain’s favorite insult. At the climax of many Disney films, the villain appears to have the upper hand. The hero is down and out, and it looks like things may fall into disaster. The villain, gleefully secure in their victory, calls the hero a Fool trying to serve the greater good.
And then, through clever thinking and trust in themselves, the hero wins by a hair—because, you see, the villain is right.
They’ve lived on the fringes of society, they’ve stood out from the crowd, they won’t be silenced by the status quo, and they can’t understand why harmful or inconvenient traditions still exist. They’ve acted against what their culture expects and ended up both learning plenty of lessons and enjoying enriching adventures. They’ve discovered the incredible alchemy of melding knowledge with adversity.
The hero is a Fool.
The Fool as a Mentor
Regardless of time or place in society or culture, all Fools have a few specific things in common:
They trust their ability to learn and improve through adversity
They speak the truth—both objective truth, and their truth
They flout societal conventions in favor of their true nature
They challenge outdated conventions simply by existing
They understand others’ judgment and ridicule is just an expression of fear
When we think of Fools, above anything else, we picture someone different. Someone who stands out. They honor their journeys without second-guessing what they should be doing.
We can follow the Fool’s example, by both placing ourselves in the role of Fool, and by walking next to them. The Fool has experienced and learned a myriad of lessons, gleaned deep wells of wisdom, and understands an array of objective truths. If we embrace the Foolishness in ourselves, we can also gain access to these incredible depths of knowledge and fulfillment.