History and Meaning

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 31 Mar 2002, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Umbrae	31 Mar 2002
Times change. Concepts, language and ideas that once were thought as being so, have been altered by time. Back in ’93, my wife and I were in Israel, visiting her cousins. Her cousin Menya’s family had left Russia in the late teens, and moved to Harbin, China. Menya was raised in a Jewish/Russian community there in China, until he moved to Israel in 1948. I asked Menya what the Russian word for Adventurer was. He thought for a bit and said there was not one. The concept of leaving your family, your village, and your duty them (family and village) was shameful. So, think about The Fool. He is leaving his family and village. What a shameful thing to do…Of course in the old decks, he would be a fool. I think of him as more of a hitchhicker. But also think for a second on the Six of Swords… Why would a journey be a shameful act? Because your actions forced you to do what is now called a “Geographical”. Forced you to leave your family and village! The Shame! History in the cards…

Talisman	31 Mar 2002
'Lo all, Umbrae, I find your story compelling and moving. Even at a remove, daily headlines exacerbate our feelings of terror and dread and sadness. But, this is not the message of the Fool. Somewhere, the bands are playing, and the sun is shinning bright. Somewhere, in our ripped up, war-torn world, a man who has never heard of our religions and our petty politics kneels before a stone lump his ancestors carved. And he prays. And, he looks at his stone idol, and he prays for exactly the same things you do. He prays for the safety and protection of his family and those he loves. He prays that the seasons will change, and that the barbarians will be held away. And his Fool carries the same message your Fool does. Talisman

Umbrae	31 Mar 2002
My apologies...I think I missed something... A historical point on Two (2) cards, and my personal story have little to do with each other. I do admit my personal story and the fool have much in common. However, little to do with the 6 of Swords. And not the point of my original post. Without getting "heavy" it [my original post] was about changes in ideas, attitudes, and language, and how they possibly related to the creation of the pictured archetypes.

jmd	01 Apr 2002
Thankyou Umbrae... I personally find this kind of living reflections the substance of true exegesis!

Alex	15 Sep 2002
many Fools of this kind in the 1920's. My ancestrals were among them, they left Russia to Germany and from there they tried to reach Argentina hidding inside barrels of a ship. Got thrown off the ship in Brazil, for some reason. Of course that's a story no one likes to talk about amongst my grandparents. It doesn't feel to me it fits any interpretation of "The Fool". It's more like Death or The Tower to me. Cause I think most folks see "The journey" initiated by the Fool as voluntary, some kind of rebirth, and those folks just had their lives broken appart and had to leave. Some five of Pentacles along with in the spread would help understand the picture. Alex.

Alissa	15 Sep 2002
One can journey far and never leave his home also. Although it is one way, I don't think "journeying" is only a geographical path.

Kiama	15 Sep 2002
I have also thought about this. I often wonder if our meanings for the cards are the same as th eoriginal one? Was Death at the beginning really meaning a change? I don't think so. I really think it meant physical death. Otherwise why would they name it so? Also, the Moon... Back when Thoth and RWS were created, this card meant illusion, deception, due to the fact that at night by moonlight, things seem different. Nowadays, we have a whole religion centred around the importance of the Moon, and I know of plenty of people who take this card as meaning following your intuition, listening to your dreams, and honouring the Goddess. And of corse, before 1969, the Moon was another untravelled land. It presented confusion and mystery.. Now, we have walked on it, and it doesn't present as much confusion as it did then. Kiama

Thirteen	15 Sep 2002
Most certainly times and concepts change. View of the feminine, for example. This was discussed regarding the fact that some LWBs still describe the Queen of Swords as a "divorced" woman, which in olden times would have been not only rare, but pretty shocking. Thus, making the idenity of Q/S pretty distinct in a reading. Whereas now, it's so common that if you do a reading and say, "This Q/S is a divorced woman you know," the querent is likely to say, "Which divorced woman? I know six or seven." In regards to the Fool's journey, however, I think that a different culture, which is what your story is about, requires a different interpetation of the Fool. In the USA, even back in 1948, you might rightly interpet the card as going on an adventure--"On the Road" was happening about that time to Jack K., as I recall, and there he was, hoboing about with no shame at all--though that was hardly the norm at a time when most men were back from war, settling down and creating families. But if one were back in Russian in 1948, this card could still, I think, be interpeted favorably for the querent in this regard: though it might be "shameful" to leave the family for adventure, it would hardly be shameful to leave the family in order to go to school or learn a trade that would later be useful to the village upon ones return, like going to school to be a doctor. So my interpetation would be either that yes, the person was going to leave, but that they would return with something of value to the villiage, or that the "adventure," as Alissa points out, is metaphoric, a spiritual journey or journey of maturation, not involving physical travel.

Trogon	17 Sep 2002
Interesting discussion Umbrae, provoked some intersting trains of thought in my feeble little brain... It did put me in mind of some of the very old, so-called "fairy tales". I have a book of the older versions of Grimm's Fairy Tales, and many of them feature the young person setting out on his own, leaving his/her home, family and village and ending up in some sort of wonderful/terrible adventure. Sometimes the adventure ends badly and sometimes the hero/heroine "lives happily ever after". In the context of those times, these were not always people leaving because of some sort of shameful thing they've done, or out of selfishness or even foolishness. Oftentimes they left out of necessity or some wrong-doing by someone else - as in the story of Hansel & Gretle who were led into the woods to be left to starve or be eaten by wolves because their stepmother disliked them. I don't really think there has been all THAT much of a shift in the way a young person is viewed, who sets out into the unknown on an adventure. Even in todays western culture, we still have the outlook, from a family perspective, that the person who leaves home for the purpose of seeking adventure, travelling for the sake of travel, is seen with a duality which existed in the context of those old fairy tales. The person's immediate family and community will, in many cases, look upon this person as the "black sheep" of the family. She or he is seen as being perhaps too lazy to go to work, help out the family, etc, because she/he is going on the road just to have fun. As you said, abandoning their family and village to recklessly seek adventure. The terms "hippie", "hobo", "tree-hugger" and so on, still carry a negative connotation in our culture. The duality is evident in that, a great many of the heros of our culture are exactly this type of person. The cowboy on the trail. The explorer. The Astronaut. And these are the same types of heroes as appear in those old fairy tales. The Prince Charming who is out seeking after the Sleeping Beauty, or the Rapunzel, or the Dragon's Treasure, or The Holy Grail, or any of the other of hundreds of prizes chased by hundreds of adventurers in our folklore. So, now that you have made me think about it in this light, I think that this too is part of the dual nature of The Fool, is it not? On the one hand he a fool for leaving behind his family and village and setting off on some "fool's errand". On the other hand, he is the hero of hundreds of tales of adventure which almost every culture on earth has passed down for generations as lessons to live by. He is the adventurer who has settled the frontiers of our planet and explored other worlds (well, at least one ;) ). He will always be seen as both an idiot and a hero. Well... that's what you get when you make me think :D

thefoolserrand	20 Oct 2004
Arthur Waite writes "The Fool is a prince of the other world on his travels through this one; all amidst the morning glory, in the keen air. The Sun, which shines behind him, knows whence he came, whither he is going, and how he will return by another path at his journey’s end. He is the spirit in search of fulfillment.” I much prefer the notion of The Fool as an adventurer, myself. "A man who says a thing cannot be done is quite apt to be interrupted by some fool doing that very thing." CLiFF

Original Destiny	20 Oct 2004
"Without getting "heavy" it [my original post] was about changes in ideas, attitudes, and language, and how they possibly related to the creation of the pictured archetypes." I guess the word is zeitgiest. As the world moves on each generation interprets the cards according to the social and moral climate. Tarot imagery has proved to be flexible enough to accommodate changing standards and outlooks(archetypes being relevant no matter what the social clime). When I first started to study the Tarot in the early 70's books and information was scarce. One of the first books i managed to get hold of was a rare copy of a book by Papus, if my memory serves me well i think it was called something like Tarot of the Bohemiens. I found card interpretations very different to R/W's, generally it seemed that "as yet" there was no sort of universally accepted standard of interpretation. time has shown how the likes of Papus have been eclipsed by the R/Waites deck which has become the most influential. Just as aside note... My Grandparents fled the Russian Revolution, they were Woollen Mill owners, minor aristocracy.they landed in the uk penniless ( a traditioni have maaged to uphold)

jmd	20 Oct 2004
Perhaps, like all eclipses, the hidden radiance of the Sun shines through after it passes... ;) This is indeed an older thread which arose at a time we were discussing, if I recall, other materials relating to exegesis. The Fou may indeed be travelling upon a path - but to what the path relates, and how he has reached such a state, may be for numerous reasons and metaphorically understood in myriad ways. For those who have not had the opportunity of reading through also a couple of earlier threads, here are two from the Marseilles section of the Forums: Major Arcana titles: le Mat ; and Le Mat (which has more details).

The History and Meaning thread was originally posted on 31 Mar 2002 in the Using Tarot Cards board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Using Tarot Cards, or read more archived threads.