Thoth - The Fool

Alobar

hey! how do you rate an avatar?
 

floracove

Alobar said:
hey! how do you rate an avatar?
go to your user CP up ^^^ there and click 'options' then look for the avatar link and follow the directions.
;)
 

Wildchild

Shhh!! Just tell him it's coz we're special! HAHAHAHAHA!!
 

thorhammer

Uneducated thoughts on The Fool

I think he's falling. His pose is what one would see in a willing fall from height - the limbs spreadeagled, eyes resolutely turned to the sky.

Crowley, in BoT, says that Air, in this case, takes the form of a vacuum, which dovetails nicely with my thoughts on the Fool as a general archetype across decks and Tarot traditions. One repercussion of this is that, in a vacuum, there is no substrate or stable thing against which to push or pul - no leverage. No equal and opposing forces. Chaos. Hence, the Fool here is not in control of himself; but then, he has surrendered control to the vacuum, the void. He trusts that, just as there is no ground upon which to push his feet, there is no ground upon which to fall catastrophically. The idea of the vacuum contains endless possibility and at the same time none at all. All potential is meaningless without a point of reference.

His limbs protrude from the boundary of the spirals so eloquently described by MeeWah in post #9. He is in the process of transcending his impotent potentiality. Outside the vacuum, outside the bounds of eternity, he will find limitation but also leverage. He will be able to act and manifest his will.

I find the tiger a reference to the older Marseille-style decks, where the animal following Le Mat actually bites him, rather than being his companion in a Jungian sense, as in the RWS tradition. What is the meaning of this? I like the association with pain and paying it no mind, but I think it goes further. I have read that it was a dig at someone . . . who? Why? What was the point?

And the crocodile thing - over in this thread, it seems that ppl are stating that Harpocrates is the crocodile - but the crocodile *is* Sebek (according to AC, anyway, whose Egyptian mythology, I believe, was a little . . . loose) who threatens Harpocrates. So what's with the croc? I get Harpo - another face of the Fool - but not the croc, unless it's another way of showing the tiger?

I know that AC seems to have been trying to synthesise many world legends and fables to teach about the pure Fool archetype, but I must say that I find he belabours the point somewhat. And the hodgepodge of symbolism is jarring, to me. I hope I get used to it; right now I find it rather a distraction instead of a unifying approach.

\m/ Kat
 

Rosanne

You are right Thorhammer- the Fool appears to be falling backwards! That's why I read these threads- always a new take on a card. I always kind of looked on it like the three rings were somewhat magnetic and holding him there. Something of an acrobat in side a sphere- rolling around the Universe. Falling back and maybe returning is much better.
I was poking Borax at the animal biting him- not serious. The Cats revenge!
The Crocodile symbolically (I think) is called the devourer- sort of reincarnation- you pass through Death to come back to life. As Egyptian- it means deceit, treachery and hypocrisy- when things fool you you can cry crocodile tears- but maybe in this card it guards the gate to Hell? Life?- no doubt there is something sexual there- but I do not look for it.
~Rosanne
 

thorhammer

Rosanne said:
I was poking Borax at the animal biting him- not serious. The Cats revenge!
Um . . . yeah :bugeyed: is this one of those times when the Tasman gets in the way of translation :D?
Rosanne said:
The Crocodile symbolically (I think) is called the devourer- sort of reincarnation- you pass through Death to come back to life. As Egyptian- it means deceit, treachery and hypocrisy- when things fool you you can cry crocodile tears- but maybe in this card it guards the gate to Hell? Life?- no doubt there is something sexual there- but I do not look for it.
~Rosanne
There's something about it that suggests putrefaction, corruption, then purification through decomposition. Maybe because of the association with riverbeds, mud and sludge and darkness, and lotuses (I'm still infected by the Wheel of Change - the Three of Cups, in this case :rolleyes:). Another example - to me, at least - of transformation.

Thanks for responding :)

\m/ Kat
 

rachelcat

Well, here goes nothing, err, my IDS!

This is a very busy card. (When nicky started her “Learn the Thoth” thread, I almost pmed her a message advising not to start with the Fool. It has a million symbols and two long essays in the BofT to deal with. But it looks like she’s doing ok anyway!!) I remember first opening up my used-but-new-to-me Banzaf book and immediately feeling overwhelmed! And even now, I’m kind of glad he has waited to come around until the second half of my IDS!

Ok, quick but comprehensive description! The fool is all in green with gold boots. His eyes stare wide open. He has horns and a cone of light on his head. His feet don’t touch the ground. He has a crystal (octahedron) in his right hand and flames in his left, shooting over to the right hand. He has a huge bunch of grapes and a transparent bag with coins with astro sign and planet symbols on them. The very large stem of the grapes and a grape leaf (or is it an ivy leaf?) are around his neck. He is being bitten on the thigh by a tiger and a crocodile is below him in the water. But he’s smiling. Not aware of them? In the water are lotus stems. Between his legs are a very small crescent, two “embracing infants,” strange looking 3 white flowers. The sun is at his crotch. Around in front of him in a swirl of air are a dove, a butterfly, a caduceus. The swirl makes a heart over his heart. The dove has small light rays shining from it. The background is yellow with white dots in the middle and light blue in the corners (sky and water). The yellow is reminiscent of the yellow sky with crystals on the Ace of Swords. Oh, I think it’s a big, going off the edges of the card, upward triangle with line through it for Air. (The line goes through the sun at the crotch, and the point touches the point of the white point on his head, the bottom of the triangle is on the level of his knees.) Oh, and there’s a rainbow circle behind his head.

Whew, I think that’s it. The thing I don’t have a handle on for this card is the tiger. I get that it replaces the dog or other animal in other Fool cards. And, in some, the Fool is being attacked by the animal, instead of accompanied by it. But why is that the case here? And why a tiger? Especially when there is also a crocodile (more in keeping with the pseudo-Egyptian theme). Maybe he is being attacked by heat and cold, fire and water, tiger and crocodile. Like a new baby is first accosted by the variations of the air when he is born from his mother. Did I say air?

I wonder what deck first had a crocodile on the Fool? Crowley says the croc is a symbol of fertility because the ancients didn’t know how they reproduce. And I guess because they lived in the life-giving Nile. I’m thinking more a symbol of life AND death—they may be fertile and all that, but if you’re wading, I think they’re more a symbol of death! Crowley goes on to talk about Noah and Jonah, who had a lot to do with watery creatures and Jesus, a redeemer symbolized by a fish. But not a crocodile, so ?

I’m not sure about the “twin infants embracing,” either. Unless they are the precursors of the Lovers/Brothers? The Fool represents the young man and woman equally? Well, not really, because the next thing to realize is the masculine nature of the card. The flowers and the sun. I think they symbolize that the Fool is the card of potential life, like a penis. Nothing has been conceived yet, but it the potential for it is right here in our faces!

The horns and grapes (and ivy leaf) show that the Fool is Bacchus/Dionysus. Innocence and pleasure meet drunkenness and madness. Both sides of the Fool.

The coins again show potential, this time of personality qualities. The fool has just been born. His personality is not set yet, his horoscope hasn’t even been cast yet. He can be anything; there is no distinction for him yet.

The circle behind his head and the cone of light shows the Fool comes directly from Kether. He is the first emanation from Kether in the creation of the universe. Potential indeed!

Dove, butterfly, and caduceus are all small and swirly, again showing potential—for redemption/sonship/mission, rebirth, and power of action, respectively.

Fire and ice in his hands equal tiger and croc at his feet? Octahedron symbol for air. But it would be cool if it were ice, huh? OH! <insert light bulb here> Fire and tiger on side of Chokmah/Force and Crystal and croc on side of Binah/Form (and mother, which would be watery). The tiger is fiery force and it’s actively biting and clawing. The croc is watery form, it passively waits.

Gleanings from BofT that I find interesting:

Fool is 0, so is important in 0 = 2.

He is the wandering prince who wins the daughter of the king and the kingdom. (Or the brute in the Golden Bough who has to kill last year’s king in order to become king.)

He is the Green Man or the April Fool, new life of Spring. (I’ll add court jester here, who keeps the king and the court honest in a different way than the killer prince!)

He is Parzifal, the perfect fool who ends up redeeming the whole world by winning the Grail and becoming the Grail King himself. So similar to winning the princess and the kingdom.

He is Hoor-Pa-Kraat, the “Crowned and Conquering Child” god of Crowley’s new Aeon. So we will see him again in the Aeon card, as both the baby with the finger to his lips and as Horus, the hawk-headed god on a throne.

Ha! I just saw something that DOES connect the croc to Binah! “The crocodile helps determine the spiritual meaning of the card as the return to the original Qabalistic zero; it is the “He final” process in the magical formula of the Tetragrammaton. By a flick of the wrist, she can be transmuted to appear as the original Yod, and repeat the whole process from the beginning.” Even though this says transmuted to Yod, I am thinking the princess Malkuth taking the place of her mother, the queen Binah, to “repeat the whole process from the beginning.” So I haven’t totally lost it! Maybe.

I’m having trouble seeing the Fool as Baphomet. Isn’t that the Devil? Except maybe that Baphomet is hermaphroditic, as are some versions of Dionysus. And as I thought with the babies in the card.

Crowley talks a bit about the nothingness or emptiness of matter that we think is so solid—the interstices between inter-atomic particles, etc., relating to 0.

I remember reading on this forum about the bottle BACBUC and the Word TRINC. (I don’t remember the whole story, but basically, the oracle says Drink! In a satire saying that drunkenness is holy.) In vino veritas. And then a bunch of visions from smoking weed. This just annoyed me because it’s a bunch of nudge nudge wink wink about intoxication and cute circumlocutions about the Psalms. If you can get more out of it, you’re better than me! (Actually reading the threads on the Book of Law have helped a lot. Once again, it’s a case of the more you read and learn other things, the more Crowley make sense! I just have a bad attitude toward intoxication. That’s my deal, not Crowley’s.)

In a reading: Something is just beginning and is full of potential! The innocence and wonder of a child will serve you well now. Just be open to everything that comes your way without planning on how to use it (yet). Beware of actual foolish behavior (which is often caused by having a closed mind instead of the Pure Fool’s open mind).
 

Kenshin Gordon

For me he is much like the Fool of RWS. He is looking somewhere, also unaware of his surroundings and potential danges. Chaos.
 

Kenshin Gordon

To enter into further detail, he is gazing wide-eyed and he is unaware of both the wisdom and power of the Universe(see the staff of Hermes flying around, the elements themselves etc) as well as the damaging factors(the tiger, and if you intercept it as treachery the crocodile) of life but he still is full of potential. The butterfly is a symbol which has been given various meanings from multiple civilizations and in all of them it is taken as a need to evolve and adjust.
 

Zezina

My first venture into Thoth Tarot: 0 The Fool.

Moderator, if I haven't entered this post on the correct thread, please move it to where it best belongs. Some observations and some questions:

In 'The Book of Thoth' Crowley (page 69 in my US Games 2007 edition, with the bright blue cover) describes the tiger beside The Fool as 'fawning upon him'. Surely 'fawning upon' does not imply attacking, but more ingratiating, and, maybe because I'm used to a large dog, I've always thought that those tiger teeth seem to be actually avoiding biting the leg, but are nuzzling against the leg of The Fool.

Crowley describes the crocodile as 'crouching', and the tiger does seem contented enough.

I can't locate in the Fool's right hand 'the wand, tipped with white', mentioned by Crowley. There are a series of vertical rods, and 7 white tips emerge just below the centre spiral, at the left. Do you think that's the Wand?

An unrolling piece of what looks like fabric emerges from the rings between the dove and the butterfly, and points towards the Fool's androgynous breast - does anyone know what that represents?

The sun emblem at the crotch of The Fool seems to me to be the buckle of his green belt.

The top flower of the three above the twins might be a white rose, although the stem is too thick, and Harris would not have made such an error. The lower flowers appear to be lilies. Perhaps the type of flowers isn't important? Crowley describes these as 'three flowers in one', and as 'the benediction' hanging above the twins.

And what is that which runs from below the dove's beak along the spiral to just above the butterfly? Is it a branch with a leaf?

I also counted 20 rays, each ending in short golden bars, around the dove, and I could;t explain the rays.

And what of the lines around the edges of this card? The top lines surrounding the number appear to be the wings of the caduceus?

Are the zig-zags near the bottom sides significant, or just an aesthetic design emblem? Presumably those edge designs were painted at some time by Lady Frieda Harris?

*Z*