Journey of the Fool through Occult, Alchemy, and Literature

I think from a fundamental point of view, the important "practical" element of the "journey of the hero) in the Tarot (cards 1-21, which is the journey of 0, the Almighty Fool) is that it is really the "stages" mathematically as well as visually, the Alchemists mission and work (any sort of alchemy, from high magick to scientific research to literary writing). The journey of the fool also forms the basis of most msytical, epic or literary journeys (not that I'd call my novel The Last Troubadour "literary", but it is epic, and is based on the journey of the Fool from 1-22 in the trumps, or more correctly, the Alchemy of fiction.). But the practical hands-on aspect of this is the alignment with the trumps. (Please note, I work both systems (Strength as either 8 or 11) but Campbell's archetypal journey ONLY works with Justice as 8 and Strength as 11, per Hajo Banzhaf):

(P.S. .. as mapped below, these perfectly match most Greek epics, Dante's Paradise Lost... The Last Troubadour (smile)):

The entire journey is the Fool. The Daytime Arc of the Sun (path of Consciousness) is specifically Magician, Priestess, Empress, Emperor, Hierophant, Lovers. This is roughly the journey from EAST to NW. There is a whole symbology built around this journey, per Jung and Campbell that is applicable to East and Western Occult paths.

The Maturation path (development and overcoming of EGO) is Chariot, Justice, Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Strength.... NW to SW


The HANGED MAN is the GREAT CRISIS (right on the cusp of the Nightly Arc of the Sun (the path through the Depths) and is the TRANSFORMING EVENT in alchemical terms (or Tantric)

Then the Nightly Arc (the Initiation, is DEATH (change!) Temperance, Devil, Star, Moon... WORLD Is the culmination.

These also relate to (in both books and occult practice) to:
- Magician -- Heavenly Father
- Priestess Heavenly Mother
- Empress Earthly Mother
- Emperor Earthly Father
- LOVERS - DECISION

The second cycle begins with:
- Chariot - Departure
- Justice - Maturation
- Hermit - One's True Nature.
- Wheel of Fortune - The Calling
- Strength - Helpful animals or sidekicks

ENDING IN THE CRISIS - The hangled man

Then on to:
- Death (in Greek myth, the descent into the undnerworld, everywhere else, whatever metaphorically fits)
-Temperance (the GUIDE)
- Devil (realm of the shadow)
- Tower (usually the major climax -- Dramatic liberation)
- The Star (the fountain of youth)
- The Moon (the Dangerous return.

You could align these also with The Lord of the Rings... Tolkien was very conscious of it... The Tower -- the ring thrown into the fires really ended the dramatic events (this is why some people (not me!) found the third book and third movie a trifle drawn out because Tolkien literally took us through The Star (rejuvination) and The Moon (the very dangerous return) and then The World.

In Occult terms, this aligns with most alchemical practice and there's a very complex mathematical equation that meshes as well. All very cool. Best,

There's a delightful little tale by Fairfax Cartwright here for a Sufi version of same.

Not sure I see the Fool's Journey as an allegory for life, or drama, but I enjoy reading people's takes on it

It's funny, Troubador...

I'm not a fan of the "Fool's Journey" which Eden Gray contributed to popular Tarot literature. I think it's simpistic, derivative and adamantly New Agey. It smacks of Enlightenment in a Can.

This is not to seem obstreperous or dismissive... but the idea that the entirety of any story can be summed up in a monomythic linear pattern seems possible but pointless... Much like the attempts by screenwriters to reduce Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey to a sort of inescapable Ubermyth underlying every story from Spiderman to Milton. Or Medieval Christians who argued that all of the elements of older myths that predated Christ (Dionysos turning water to wine, Mithras in the manger) weren't appropriated but were in fact prefigurations of the Christian myth cycle. It's logic that proves itself. Cum Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc.

On the one had, YES you can take any story and boil it down into archetypal generalities until they are nondescript enough to apply to anything. You can do the same with any pop psych deconstruction of human complexity, which is why Self-Help books have been saying the same thing for 120 years and yet still outsell almost every other genre. On the other hand, there are stories which refuse to be patterned on these models because the "system" is by its very existence arbitrary and artificial. I suppose it could be useful to believe in one myth that explains everything, but then that isn't a myth any more, that's a credo... which exists in direct oppostion to the kind of internal contradiction that makes myth so powerful.

PARACELSUS (1493-1541) said:

"Magick has the power to experience and fathom things which are inaccesible to human reason. For magick is a great secret wisdom, just as reason is a great public folly"

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It's a little bit like the new age adoption of poor Carl Jung, who was infinitely more complex and contradictory than most fluffies would have him be. The idea of Archetype is closer to the philosophical notion of the Platonic form or the Arsitotlelian telos than a sort of generic hold-all into which we can dump the mythologies of disparate cultures. As if polytheistic ancients sat around saying, "Well, Isis, Kybele, Demeter what's the difference? I don't literally believe she's a literal goddess, it's the concept of motherhood to whom I sacrifice these birds." Umm. no. Religions are not made up of interchangeable parts. It's just that abstract thinkers (from Herodotus forward) would like to have it so, because it's so damned tidy. The world is not tidy. And though there are parallels between myths and patterns to human belief, they are more subtle and varied than something we could sum up as "22 easy steps to enlightenment," which always seems to me to have more to do with personal incapacity than transcendant awareness... boiling life down into platitudes instead of experiencing symbols personally, even gnostically.

On the other hand, IF we are to accept the "Fool's Journey" what do we do anout those damned unnumbered Trumps and alternate orders in the 15th and 16th centuries? What are we to make of the Golden Dawn's reordering? How are we to explain the fact that the Majors do not plop down in convenient sequence in every reading or that every human does not reach gnosis in identical tracks like ants walking parallel lines?

Especially in the case of Alchemy... so contradictory an Art and so inscrutable a science that the books do not even agree with themselves... So poetic in character that more wisdom is discernible in the bizarre etchings than in the convoluted mythic texts. Yes, there are stages, and yes there is some agreement about the process, but even if Alchemy did map exactly onto some Fool's Journey concocted in the late 20th century by a woman writing in the new age explosion of the late 1960s, what does it matter and what can it teach us?

Is life really that literal and linear? Are people that homogenous? Why can't a journey begin with the Hanged man and end with the Moon? Why can't I be betrayed by the World only to later learn something from the Devil? Any wisdom that tries to convince me that Enlightenment is a simple linear sequence of A then B then C sounds more like assembly instructions for an Ikea nightstand than an access code to the Anima Mundi. Th emoment someone starts talking about One Truth, I'm almost instantly convinced there is no truth to be had there. But maybe that's me.

For my part, I think that one of the great miracles of Tarot is the infinite flexibility and interpenetration of the symbols and ideas reflected. It is ideoplastic and can be mapped onto SO MANY models of understanding and being. If the Fool's Journey is THE map of initiation then doesn't that imply that every road is the same road, even though all of the extant literature, history and philosophy indicates that the opposite is true? If Alchemy (or magic or myth or film for that matter) were that simplistic why are the descriptions so varied and complex? It's all very well and good to decide that every journey breaks down into stages, but what does that teach us, and how is it useful?

I think what is special about the Fool (and this is borne out in the game of Tarock, for which the deck was quite possibly created) the Fool is separate and can enter anywhere. He has no power, and yet is wildly powerful in the proper context, and he is fundamentally a wild card, in every sense of the phrase. He is volatile or benevolent or disruptive or worthless or critical, depending... Of course, it isn't surprising that Gray would concoct this simplistic Fool's Journey model since her (terrific) knowledge of the cards was strictly based on Waite-Smith. I'd imagine anyone who has used a Marseille (or even the Crowley Thoth) would look askance at a system whereby Le Mat become the model for personal heroic narrative. Unfortunately what seemed easy and obvious to Gray about the Majors is exactly what the Majors are not: obvious or easy. As much as I love Gray's books (and I do, for what they are), I have yet to find life summed up in a mass-market paperback written to tap into Aquarian Age fad... Anymore than I could tell someone how to fall in love. It is beyond language.

The real secrets cannot be communicated.

Anyways, I don't say all this to be combative, but rather because the so-called "Fool's Journey" does get bandied about quite a bit as a model, especially because it's such a tidy misattributed narrative for New Age authors to glom onto, and I wonder sometimes if people merely repeat these things without thinking them through. I would love to hear if other people think along these lines, and if not if someone could explain the purpose and utility of Ms. Gray's invention in the act of using the cards.

Scion

*applause for Scion*

The thing that I find most troubling about the Fool's Journey is that it reeks of narrative structuralism...an analytical movement popular in its heyday, but disavowed later on by many of its most ardent scholars (Barthes, Burke, etc.). But then again, I heart the paralysis of poststructural theory, so perhaps that's just my bias.

Scion said:

I would love to hear if other people think along these lines, and if not if someone could explain the purpose and utility of Ms. Gray's invention in the act of using the cards.

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Different cultures have gazed into the night sky over the years and seen patterns in the stars that seem to make familiar shapes. Try looking at the Plough or Big Dipper and then try to make a different shape with different stars nearby - tough or what? Why - because it's what we've programmed our minds to see through the explanations and interpretations assigned by others.

I know from experience that in divination you can program any system to work - FOR YOU - and that I think is the key to Gray's journey. For her it worked and worked so well she became famous for it, and because it fitted where it touched it worked for lots of other folks as well. This does not make it intrinsically wrong or right - since there is no definitive source on Tarot there can be no wrong or right, it is what we make of it.

Accepting that the world of Alchemy is indeed an obscure and essentially occult world it would on the one hand seem quite rational to assign the various steps to the imagery in the Tarot, or is it the other way round? Looking at the pictures used in the early Tartots I find it hard to see where th e links may be, but having said that I also feel that there may well be a wealth of topical cartoon in those images that we just do not 'get' anymore because we've lost the references.

Personally I feel the Fools Journey and its links to alchemy are just too complicated, perhaps too contrived, to work for me, but that doesn't stop me asking a card to take me on a journey which is a different thing altogether.

in light

cw