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THE FOOL
(Air)
“Thou art the breath, caressing my cheek, in thine incessant going;
yet Thou art with me always.”
MEDITATION COLOR: Yellow (infused with white.)
HEBREW LETTER: Aleph, bull or ox; also, “to learn.” The vital motive power in an agricultural community, that which makes the crops grow. a is the sound of free breath, silent, unstructured, unconditioned.
CARD NAME: Latin follies, “a bag or sack, a large inflated ball (balloon), a pair of bellows.” Users of the word in Late Latin saw a resemblance between a bellows or inflated ball and a person who was what we would call a “windbag” or “airhead.” Fool is first recorded in English in a work written around the beginning of the 13th Century with the sense “a foolish, stupid, or ignorant person.” (This was near the origin date of Tarot.) From the Indo-European root bhel-, “to blow, swell”; with derivatives referring to various round objects and to the notion of tumescent masculinity (bowl, bull, ball, phallus, full; cf. Aleph = Ox). Contrast this name to “wisdom” (= Chokmah).
ESOTERIC MEANING: The Scintillating (or Fiery) Consciousness. It is the essence of the veil that is placed before the ordered arrangement of the Powers. Who walks this way acquires a special dignity: he can stand face to face before the Cause of Causes.
TREE of LIFE: Chokmah to Kether. (Links ‘Wisdom’ and ‘the Crown’; or Infinite Will with Unconditional Being, Chiah with Yechidah; or ‘the Father’ with ‘the Ancient of Days.’ Wisdom (which is Folly) stepping off into Nothing.)
ESOTERIC TITLE: The Spirit of Æther
TANTRIC & ALCHEMICAL SIGNIFICANCE: Alchemical Mercury (Sattva). Kundalini, Life Force.
DIVINATION: In spiritual matters, The Fool means idea, thought, spirituality, that which endeavors to transcend Earth, originality, audacity. In material matters, it means (if badly dignified) folly, stupidity, inconsideration, eccentricity, or even mania.
