Tag: The Fool

The Fool’s Journey through the Tarot Major Arcana: SunFest 2016: The World and the Fool

Posted C. LaVielle2 CommentsPosted in Major arcana, Tarot, The Hero's Journey

So what did I tell you? All that wondering around looking for enlightenment and It was right under your nose the whole time. So was it worth it? Did you learn anything? The point is, you are all the cards. Each one of them lives and works inside each one of you. Understanding each card and the unique way it manifests in your life helps you solve your problems more effectively and with much less trauma and drama. *** The ritual closes with the major arcana cards appearing all together and doing a one card tarot reading for the Seekers.

All You Really Need to Know About the Tarot Major Arcana

Posted C. LaVielle7 CommentsPosted in Major arcana, Tarot, The Hero's Journey

In her definitive book, Seventy-eight Degrees of Wisdom, a Book of Tarot, Rachel Pollack begins the first chapter with this spread:   These are the four most basic tarot archetypes arranged in a perfect pattern of spiritual evolution. I call this the “everything you really need to know about the major arcana” layout.  The vertical axis is The Fool and The World. The beginning and the end. The Aleph and the Tav. The Alpha and the Omega. Most authors describe these figures as androgynous and both figures are dancing. In fact, they are the only dancers in the major arcana. Death dances in some of the decks, but Death will always dance, and who are we to say it can’t. All of the other figures are pictured in static positions, like they’re posing for a photographer—they each represent a distinct, fixed state of existence.  The Fool is dancing along a precipice high above the rest of the world and looks to be about to leap… Read More »

The World: The Hero’s Journey and the Major Arcana, Part I

Posted C. LaVielle4 CommentsPosted in Major arcana, Tarot, The Hero's Journey

She dances freely in mid-air, unconstrained by the laws of gravity and perhaps any of the other laws of this world. She looks totally feminine to me, but all my sources say she’s an androgynous being, which is probably why Pamela Coleman Smith and many of the other tarot artists discretely drape her private parts. Each of her hands holds a wand, suggesting positive and negative poles of energy. The symbolism here is thick and obvious. When we are able to integrate our masculine and feminine natures, our positive and negative sides, our conscious and not conscious minds, we enter into a state of being in which we can accomplish wonders (see my previous posts on The Sun and Judgement). “What can we say of an understanding, a freedom and rapture beyond words? The unconscious known consciously, the outer self unified with the forces of life, knowledge that is not knowledge at all but a constant ecstatic dance of being….”* A quick troll through the… Read More »

A New Site for My Blog and a New Year For Me

Posted C. LaVielleLeave a commentPosted in Tarot

Welcome to my new domain! It will be the same blog, just in a different place.  If you’re following this through a wordpress email subscription, you’re automatically subscribed to my new blog.  If you follow my blog through an RSS feed, please resubscribe by clicking the appropriate button below.  If you are new to this blog, and would like to subscribe by email, please enter your address under email subscriptions in the right hand column and hit Sign Me Up. Subscribe in a reader But not only do I have a new website, I’ve started a new year. I just turned 60! Several months ago my girlfriend said: “You’re going to turn 60. What would you like us to do for your birthday?” “Oh, nothing much,” I said, “Don’t worry about it.” “We are going to do something, so you’d better start thinking about what you want.” I decided that I needed to figure something out and let her know or this… Read More »

The Major Arcana and The Hero’s Journey: The Fool and The Hermit

Posted C. LaVielle1 CommentPosted in Major arcana, Tarot, The Hero's Journey

And androgyne looks up at the morning sky and dances on the edge of a cliff. He/she could be either going up the mountain or coming down. The point is, He/she is going. The Fool is a card of beginnings, of endless possibilities, the card of the seeker. And old man stands at the very top of a mountain holding a lantern up against the night and looks down. He has arrived. There is nowhere higher for him to go. The seeker has found what he is looking for. And to make sure the reader doesn’t miss that these two cards are related, Coleman-Smith and Waite made them the only cards in the tarot deck that place their subjects high up in the mountains at the edge of a drop-off. (The Emperor has rugged cliffs behind him, but he’s not so high up, there’s no drop-off, and he’s seated.) The Fool (0) and The Hermit (9) are the beginning and the end of the ten-digit… Read More »

The Hero’s Journey and the Tarot Major Arcana: The Fool

Posted C. LaVielleLeave a commentPosted in Tarot, The Hero's Journey

I met him once. I was doing a guided meditation on The Fool, and  had just stepped into the card. I was high in the mountains at the edge of a cliff, and I wasn’t thrilled to be there—I don’t do well with heights. The Fool appeared out of nowhere, laughing maniacally. I gazed into his insane, Gene Wilder eyes, shivered, and turned to run. I wasn’t fast enough. He grabbed me up, and jumped off the cliff. The Fool is the wild card, the Joker, and the divine androgyne. It’s number is zero. Paul Foster Case has this to say about zero: “An ellipse, representing the Cosmic Egg….Zero is a symbol of absence of quality, quantity, or mass. Thus it denotes absolute freedom from every limitation whatever. It is a sign of the infinite and eternal Conscious Energy, itself No-Thing, though manifested in everything…. Boundless, infinite potential, living light, it is the rootless root of all things…..” It’s Hebrew letter is Aleph, which sounds… Read More »