The Fool Tarot Card
Card number 0 in the Major Arcana, The Fool represents Innocence, freedom, originality, adventure, travel, foolishness, carelessness, idealism, youth, spontaneity, lack of commitment and new beginnings.
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The symbolism of The Fool according to Rider-Waite
“With light step, as if earth and its trammels had little power to restrain him, a young man in gorgeous vestments pauses at the brink of a precipice among the great heights of the world; he surveys the blue distance before him-its expanse of sky rather than the prospect below. His act of eager walking is still indicated, though he is stationary at the given moment; his dog is still bounding. The edge which opens on the depth has no terror; it is as if angels were waiting to uphold him, if it came about that he leaped from the height. His countenance is full of intelligence and expectant dream. He has a rose in one hand and in the other a costly wand, from which depends over his right shoulder a wallet curiously embroidered.
He is a prince of the other world on his travels through this one-all amidst the morning glory, in the keen air. The sun, which shines behind him, knows whence he came, whither he is going, and how he will return by another path after many days. He is the spirit in search of experience. Many symbols of the Instituted Mysteries are summarized in this card, which reverses, under high warrants, all the confusions that have preceded it.
- A.E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot: Being fragments of a Secret Tradition under the Veil of Divination (1910)
