The Fool is placed on the Path connecting Kether with Chokmah and he represents the moving force of Atziluth (the achetypical world) before it take any form in Briah (the creative world). Atziluth is the fountain in whose depths we find the sexuality and the symbols of religion. Setting them in movement means informing them with life. The Fool therefore is the very first creative seed in the formation of the Tree of Life. He has not reached Binah as yet. It's supported in the card by the symbol of the Cadeceus Wand flying freely. The Caduceus is the Creative Word or the Logos of the Magus, who's fully in Binah.

The Fool is inspiration striking as ligthening, and of whom this author wrote:-

BACCHANAL DANCING

Forms break up in the Bacchanal dance of life. When I ceased to know right from wrong, I ceased to worry. Then people worried on my behalf, thinking I was mad. But I rejoiced.
Drunk as a sailor on liquor or life. What did it matter? I lived!
And the blaming eyes that followed me, embarrashed on my behalf, were not mine.
They mourned for me, while I rejoiced for myself. Now tell me, which of us was the smartest?


"Hear me, ye people of sighing!
The sorrows of pain and regret
Are left to the dead and the dying,
The folk that not know me as yet."


The Fool is Bacchus (litterallly meaning: "the furious") ... He's the furious aspect of Dionysus and his horns are explained by J.G. Frazer's The Golden Bough, who conclude of Dionysus: "We have seen that he was represented sometimes as a goat and sometimes as a bull .... " As the goat, he's closely assosiated with Pan and the Satyrs - and aspect of his innocent rage and frenzy. The bull is further represented through the Hebrew letter Aleph, which means an Ox. The bull in the Mithras myth symbolise fertility and the symbols seems to support the assumption that he's the Creator Himself, yet set in movement opposed to Kether which only carries the seed of a possible movement. Crowley support my view in The Wake World, where he write of The Fool: "But really it is the man who meant to wake up, and did wake up. So that is his House, he is the old King himself, and so are you. So he wouldn't care what any one thought he was."

The frenzy is the Magical Clarity in which form cease to exist and where there is no right or wrong. It is innocense in its purest form. All the symbols in the card suggest it. The wild beasts can not hurt the innocent of heart. The Fool step on a crocodile, leading the idea toward Hoor-Paar-Kraat (Harpocrates), God of Silence and the innocent Horus child.The Magical Clarity IS the Magical Silence (Tacere), the Fourth Power of the SphinX which balance the three others and absorb them. It seems to be suggested in the balance between Water and Fire (Diamond and Bolt) in The Fool's hands. In that way he has some common symbolism with ATU Art.

Of other symbols we find the Vulture, symbolic of nurturing the Pharaoh in Ancient Egypt and sacred to Isis. The Fool is the King Himself. There's the butterfly,symbolic of the transformation of the soul from one condition to another (for a strong use of this symbol, do see Kieslowsky's "The Double Life of Veronica"). There's the grapes, which is a common allusion to Dionysus. The Dove, symbolic of the informing Holy Ghost ... The Vesica Pisces around him symbolic of the Kteis or Vagina, again a symbol of creation. His breasts suggests his double sex. He's neither man nor woman, but both. His sack contain coins marked with the entire zodiac. He owns the treasure of treasures of the universe. One can go on endlessly about this card, so dear readers, not to tire you anymore I'd better stop here.... :-)
Bjarne Salling Pedersen (ccc12757@vip.cybercity.dk)