Recently I began re-familiarizing myself with the tarot by coloring in the black and white deck available from B.O.T.A.* I haven’t done a reading or used the cards as a focus for meditation in years, so cracking open the deck was like starting from scratch.
Someone once told me that the major arcana represent our journey through life, that you can see yourself in each card and that the cards to which we feel a connection indicate where we are on our journey.
We all look at cards differently and at different times, we see different answers in the cards. Sometimes certain details within the card grab our eye and reveal the meaning of the card for us at that moment. At another moment, our eyes lock on another detail and a different feeling wells within, making the meaning of the card entirely different.
With Paul Foster Case’s Highlights of Tarot open on the table, I began coloring the Fool, the rhythmic back and forth scratch of the pencil lulled my mind as it turned over the card’s key words and phrases:
Aleph, Air, Breath, Beginnings, Limitlessness, Openness, Potential, Unrestrained, Zero
At this moment, I look and see the Fool as the freedom of youth, an adventurer striking out on a pure quest, operating under the assumption that all will turn out well and confident that whatever lay ahead can be handled.
I used to see potential danger in the Fool, precariously perched, staring up at the sky without the awareness that the next step will carry him over the edge I assumed him to be young and inexperienced, heedless of the dog at his heels barking a warning.
My old interpretation no longer applies. The Fool is not merely young, he is forever young, always aspiring to more and better, always seeking new adventures with the same enthusiasm with which he struck out on his first adventure. He is not inexperienced or unprepared, for he wears a wreath of victory on his head, carries his past in his wallet and intellect follows behind him, though he may not always heed its insistent barking.
At one time, I saw the Fool’s next step as immanent demise, but there is no reason to assume that to be the case, because we know no better than he does what that next step will bring. There may be a boulder jutting out below to catch his fall or he may plummet to his death; the card doesn’t show us. The difference between us and him is that he has the will, desire, passion and belief to take that step.
What do you see?
*Builders of the Adytum is an organization founded by Paul Foster Case dedicated to “spiritual attunement through enlightened worship in the Tradition of the Western Mysteries”. One part of the lesson plan is to color your own tarot cards using the BOTA deck. When you color your own cards, they take on your personality and become deeply linked to you. The B. O. T. A. cards are black line drawings on stiff, white cardboard-like paper stock.
