There is a wildwood somewhere, in the sloping meeting of giant purple mountains, where the oak trees dance in the wind and the animals can be heard whispering. If you look for it in your travels, you won’t find it. The woods will make sure of that. Good luck tracking a deer through there. You can try to follow their trails deep into the underbrush, but you will only find yourself popping out a little way down from where you went in. Some try following the glacier cold springs that flow out, in hopes that it will lead them far, but they always find the brush and trees too thick.
On one end of the wood, the trees make a wall, thick old trees that have seen many changes. Old gnarled oaks and drooping cedars line the perimeter. A smell of rotting rises from the forest floor, but there is always new growth mingled in. Some say this wood is in the Pacific Northwest, some say it is in old Europe, while others say it is the Garden of Eden in Africa. Wherever it is, only two kinds of people will ever find themselves in it: the worthy, and those that must be taught a lesson.
No human has visited this wild wood more often than the Fool. He almost doesn’t remember all the other times that he has been here; he just keeps wandering in. The branches move out of his way, and the underbrush bows to his dancing feet. The deer clear the way for him as he walks with idiotic confidence from one end of the trees to the other. But the forest doesn’t find this Fool worthy. That’s not why he is here. He is here because the forest knows he is in great need of wisdom that only this journey can offer.
The way gets steeper on the far end of the wood. The trees thin out, and you can see a mountain range circling the valley that spreads out in front of you. The mountains are obscured by mist and there is a precipice that falls an unknown height into the thick grey fog. You might catch the scent of the sea here, though you might find that impossible, too, since the nearest sea is unknown.
Only the Fool knows if he has been here before. But he can’t say.
No one knows how old the Fool is. He may have been made before Adam, but proved to be too injudicious to serve as the spearhead of the Gods’ ever-advancing creation. Some say he has magic carved on his bones that he won’t ever use. Others say he is thousands of different people. The Fool will just shrug if asked. He knows only that he is supposed to wander.
The Fool is neither the beginning nor the end. He exists everywhere, not like a force or a spirit, but between the walls of the fabric of reality. He didn’t mean to be there, but there he is, and he is all of us. No matter how wise or intelligent we may be, there is a Fool in all of us. We never consider everything. We sometimes willingly stay ignorant, but still walk and talk with Foolish confidence.
Sometimes the Fool is the idiot that expels some great wisdom that no one had considered, and then he goes back to being dumb. Sometimes the Fool is a great king who doesn’t understand why his kingdom falls around him. The Fool can pay the role of the hero or the villain, but he just might be the Trickster most often. Every story that teaches us a real lesson uses a Trickster. The Fool either is the Trickster or the one being tricked.
The Fool has lived infinitely more lives than you, but he doesn’t absorb any of the lessons. Is he too dumb, or does he just not care?
*
Our Fool one day found himself wandering down the steep hillside, towards the precipice. The Fool was in threadbare clothing that was patched up and barely hanging off his skeletal frame. His white beard was long and tangled. He wore his hood up to keep the sun from burning the small circle of scalp that peeked from his snarl of hair. Everything he owned was in his bindle, which was tied to the stick he had over his shoulder. He felt he didn’t need anything more. He was barefoot as he walked through the woods, and although his feet were tough, they were still cut up and bleeding.
It was a bright warm day, and the Fool’s back felt the bite of the afternoon sun. The sun was lighting his way towards the wall of mist. There was a valley below, where things aren’t like they are in this world. The Fool would cross through the mist and into a different world, a world older than ours, and from which they have watched us, unknown to almost all.
Some of us in this world have heard their messages, and have relied on their advice. Some of them have interfered with the progress of humans, causing us to call them Gods, but they are not Gods. Maybe we have detected them as a blur in our peripheral vision, or as the soft voice we hear when we need inspiration in our darkest hours. Sometimes it is just one of them, but other times it takes a few of these different denizens to change our Foolish course.
On the end of his bindle stick, the Fool carried a bell, a gift that came from that other world. He once received it after learning a lesson that would help him on his journey, but now he only had the bell, and none of the education.
This is why the Fool is a Fool: he is in a cycle that only he can get out of, and the only thing that will help him do it is some ambition to learn how he operates in the world. To not be a fool is to break this cycle, and ascend to another journey.
In his free hand, the Fool gently carried a lotus flower. He was holding it out with pride. The lotus flower is a symbol of enlightenment, but the Fool wasn’t enlightened. He had the means to find enlightenment, but chose to keep it an arm’s length away. Like the bell, the lotus was a gift from a previous journey, but the Fool chose to forget all he had experienced.
The Fool walked with his head up and his eyes closed as he blindly headed into the mist and over the precipice. He didn’t realize that he’d done this before. He’d been here before. He fell off this same precipice before. He was too busy being inside of himself to understand what was around him.
Nearby, a fox was jumping on his hind legs. Was it trying to stop the Fool or was it pushing the Fool into the abyss? The whole universe was using this fox as a revelation for the Fool.
The fox is a Trickster. Like all tricksters, it must keep the world in balance, and will punish one side or the other if it grows too strong. It can be said that the Trickster is Chaos, but sometimes the trick doesn’t need to unseat all that is known and replaced. Sometimes it is just a bump in one direction or the other.
In our human world, Chinese and Celtic mythology considers the fox to be a guide into the afterlife. Japanese and some Native American myths see foxes as more general spirit guides. In a lot of plains Native American myths, the fox is a trickster or a spirit that is guiding someone to their death. In the natural world, the fox is playful, sly, and a born hunter. Foxes can even hunt in the dead of winter by pouncing through a thick layer of snow to grab prey below. The fox knows the right action. This fox that has found the Fool knows that the Fool must go a certain way. He remembers from the last time he met the Fool.
A slight breeze pushed the grass down as the wind traveled over the meadow and down the cliff into the mist. The mist swirled and swelled. There are spots like this one all over the world, places where the fabric of reality is thin and one can cross with little to no resistance. These places are the gates through which those needing a journey must travel. The breathing of the trees keeps the life around the escarpment full of purpose and meaning.
This is the Fool’s journey. Will this be the last time he falls into the place between space and time? How many times must the Fool reincarnate before learning what he needs to learn? What is it that he must learn? Will he remember those that he met before? There are a lot of questions about this Fool’s story (and just as many answers).
Remember, the Fool isn’t the hero of this story. Sometimes the Fool is center stage and other times he is a mere prop in the background. Unlike the other Major Arcana, which are numbered, the Fool in this deck is zero, which means he is neither the start, nor the end; he is the mirror we all need to understand this other world. We are not just looking through his eyes; we are seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting, and sensing everything the Fool does. While the Fool might not get the significance of what he is experiencing, we might. The smart person learns from their own experience, but a wise person learns from other people’s experiences and mistakes.
So let’s watch the Fool fall into the abyss and the mist, into a valley that is outside of time and space. As the zero, the Fool will have to do the impossible: he will try to find wisdom from nothing. The Fool will walk across a world where even the landscape is a character. He will meet archetypes, ideas, angels, and demons. He will sit and talk with ghosts, myths, kings, queens, and knights. He will meet dreams, thoughts, and legends. He will be in the world of myth and mystery. Every leaf and branch can mean something, even if the creator didn’t mean for them to – for if the Fool looks hard, he can find much more than the creator intended.
By wisely observing the Fool, we will find ways of learning how to get along in our world. His story will be our story. His story will be her story, and her story will be their story. And it is all of our story. The Fool is the vessel empty, but that is an optimistic dilemma, for it is a vessel that will be filled with wisdom and knowledge.