ha . ok so what happened here was . i had been drawing the next card like , a day or two after writing a given entry , and then giving it a little while to sit out on my desk so i could absently ruminate on it before writing the next entry . and then i didnt write one for a couple months because its covid and i cant keep track of anything , and honestly im kind of fine with just doing this particular project whenever the mood strikes me . but the one i had drawn thats been out on my desk this whole time is the fool . which also might have something to do with why its taken me a minute to get in here . its intimidating ! i feel like this entry is supposed to sum everything up or something . you only get one shot at this one ... although i suppose thats true for every other card , too . they all contain the total in their own way , from their own perspective .
so it came about that it's april fool's day and i thought well i ought to do this on april fool's day . i always considered this a tarot holiday , perhaps *the* tarot holiday , in that the fool as card 0 is at the beginning / end of the cycle just like the spring equinox , and sets the calendar in motion like easter . and its a kind of springy looking card , our hero gayly traipsing about the cliffsides with a pup , sun shining ... end of one cycle , beginning of another . the moment between , infintessimally small , of absolute stillness when the last has ended but the next has not begun . 0 the completed circle , swingset airtime , the apex of a breath .
so this is what im saying like how do you write this up ??? it would either have to sum up everything in the world or just be nothing , like , a joke entry , april fools , there's nothing here ... ! just upload a blank page . but here i am doing it despite the paradox .
so its like , the cipher card , right ? its not even really part of the major arcana ... theres this thing called "the fool's journey" that a lot of people talk about , where you look at the major arcana as a series of encounters being had by the fool , like , first the fool meets the magician , then the fool continues on down the road and meets the high priestess , and so on . and this is like , a metaphor you can read a bunch of ways , like it's the process of the fool's life from birth to death , for one example . or like a spiritual kind of progress that a soul is making over the course of a spiritual practice . or any number of other kinds of practices and things ... its a very deep well , you could just go on coming up with ways to apply the metaphor to different situations . its like a really rich way of looking at the cards as a way of seeing how all kinds of different things go through these seasons , little births and deaths and rebirths .
but here when you meet the fool on this card , none of that stuff has happened yet . its just a person who nothing has happened to ! [sidebar: i sorta love that the baseline platonic solid of a "person" in this system is kind of a bumbling romantic . because thats so what we are . humans are just built to vibe ... change my mind.] so anyway you can use it like that in readings , like , something new is about to happen , or if it comes up that you're at this apex still-point between the end of one cycle and the beginning of another . ive heard that the fool's bag in the colman-smith drawing has all the experiences from the last cycle in it , like all the lessons from a past life ... i thought that was a nice reading . and it's like an applicable metaphor to points in a life when you feel really between two different lifetimes , like our friend on the precipice here . it can get to feeling like you have to let go of so much sometimes , when the future is unknown , and things don't stay the same even if we want them to . but there's also those things we carry with us ... ready for us when we need them .
in a really lovely imagining of the fool as a person at this kind of precipice in life , cristy c. road writes in the "next world tarot," "understand that the cost of starting new is growing up , but the cost of growing up is not your wayward magic." more than even the precious bagthings , the very spirit of the fool is with us throughout the journey . the dreamer looking off the edge into the big sky , unafraid , unprepared , at one with the unknown ... this is the very dreamer living through each mundane moment . through cycles on cycles , the spirit remains . april fools !