Draw a card · What is tarot? · Major Arcana
The Fool
MAJOR ARCANA · 0
The Fool is card 0 of the major arcana. It shows a young man walking along the edge of a cliff with his eyes on the sky. Upright, it stands for beginnings, freedom and potential; reversed, for recklessness and carelessness, or the opposite, a hesitation that keeps you from stepping out.
Name and number
| English | The Fool |
|---|---|
| Old Italian name | Il Matto (the madman, the jester) |
| Old French name | Le Mat; Le Fol in the Dodal deck |
| Number | 0 (early cards have no number) |
Upright meaning
Keywords: beginnings, freedom, innocence, adventure, potential
The Fool is someone setting out on a journey. His bundle is small and his destination undecided. Even so, his step is light and his eyes are turned to the sky.
The upright Fool stands for the freedom of beginning something new, when nothing is settled yet. Having no experience or plan is not a weakness but open space: you can go anywhere. It is read as permission to stop weighing gains and losses and take one step toward what moves you. It often appears around beginnings: a new job, a move, a new pastime.
Reversed meaning
Keywords: recklessness, carelessness, lack of planning, hesitation
Reversed, the Fool's freedom is read either as going too far or as shrinking back.
One reading is the Fool who falls off the cliff without looking down: rushing out unprepared, making promises on a whim, ignoring others' warnings. The other is the Fool who stays frozen at the edge: wanting to step into something new but too afraid to move. Which one applies depends on the surrounding cards and on what you asked.
What the picture shows
- The edge of the cliff: one more step is open air. It stands for danger, and for an innocence that has not noticed it.
- The white rose: a sign of purity and an unclouded heart.
- The small bundle on the staff: how little he carries. Some read it as a parcel of past experience and memory.
- The small dog: read as a loyal companion, or as a warning of the danger at the cliff.
- The sun and mountains: a bright outlook, and the road still to cross.
History
The Fool was not originally one of the trumps.
In the fifteenth-century Italian Visconti–Sforza deck, he appears as a beggar-like man in rags with feathers stuck in his hair. In the game he was a special card that could be played in place of a card you lacked: neither a strong trump nor a weak card, and without a number. In the French game of tarot he is still called the Excuse.
In the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Tarot of Marseille he became a traveler walking with a bundle on a stick, while a dog-like animal bites at his trousers from behind. Here, too, he has no number.
In the nineteenth century, esoteric writers gave the Fool a number. Éliphas Lévi placed him between 20 and 21, while the Golden Dawn made him 0 and put him at the start of the major arcana. The Rider–Waite–Smith deck followed this order and redrew the Fool as the card of "the start of the journey." The animal biting his trousers became a small dog looking up at the cliff's edge.
Correspondences
The Golden Dawn linked the 22 major arcana with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and with the planets, signs and elements of astrology.
| Hebrew letter | Astrology / element |
|---|---|
| Aleph (א) | Air |