Dark Grimoire Tarot - The Fool

A man wearing a straight-jacket is seated beneath a lamp surrounded by a multitude of creatures, some human, some not. A town or city appears in the far distance.

The Fool is often seen as the introductory card to the deck. He sets the tone, the theme and is often considered the naive traveller passing through life and emerging an enlightened person at the end. In this deck however, the image seems to suggest the end of the journey rather than the beginning.

He has already travelled through the deck, and the crowd around him suggest the weird experiences he has encountered along the way. The straight-jacket would suggest he has gone mad from the journey, and yet his face is calm - almost at peace. The lamp above could indicate his enlightened state and although he may not be physically free, in his thoughts the nightmarish crowd can't bind him.

In older decks, the Fool was often unnumbered. He was the outsider, not belonging in one place, but everywhere - and nowhere. Thus in this deck, he reminds us that all the weird and ominous images we encounter can be thought of as all in the mind of the Fool.

The Fool in the Dark Grimoire is none other than an image of H.P Lovecraft himself! One of the things I really love about this deck and also his image on the backs of the deck of him holding tight to his book, which represents the whole deck and the stories therein.

I think it's a eerie and splendid way of starting the whole deck off, the image of Lovecraft in a straightjacket with all his creations, monsters and worlds lurking behind him in a very heavy doom-laden way.

http://alangullette.com/lit/hpl/gent.jpg

Thinking on it, I think that showing him like this in a straighjacket on the fool card is showing the beginning of the journey through this particular deck. His nightmares, instincts, visions, paranormal experiences are all behind him screaming to be let out and written about on paper. And the deck proceeds to do just that in it's way. Lovecraft had so many of these stories and visions in his head long before he wrote about them.

This is one of the images that I saw in the Lo Scarabeo history book back when the deck was called the "Tarot of the Unspeakable" that sold me on the deck.

The man is in a restraint jacket, bound sitting on a crate. There is a light shining over his head and casting his face in shadow. While my first impression was that he was inside but the image in the top right corner seems to suggest that he is actually outside becuase it shows the tops of houses and towers on the horizon. He is surrounded by all types of monsters and dark people.

My thoughts of this card is the question "What is sanity?" Is sanity being in the state of mind that the world requires and is in conjunction with it. Is the sane man the fool in a world full of madness?

I like how this may be Lovecraft stuck sane in the mad world of his own creation. Can we be the unintended victim of our own creation?

How opposite is this Fool to the standard imagery. He is bound, trapped, surrounded, and aware of the danger that he is in as opposed to the Fool image that is free, careless, and ignorant of the danger that is before him?

The more that I consider this card the more that I find I like it for the tone of this deck.

Onyx.

A man is in a straightjacket. His eyes are wild and shadows fill the room, gaining solidity and becoming monstrous shapes. The walls of his room in the asylum seem to dissolve and he sees a landscape, a dark hillside, superimposed on the room so he is both inside and outside. Hands claw at his knee and strange voices mutter, bay, and howl all around him. He wills himself not to hear them, not to allow the sounds to resolve into intelligible speech. Focusing on the harsh overhead sanitarium light helps. The yellow light bathes his stoic face as he tries to force himself not to hear, not to understand.

If you use old grimoires to discover things man was not meant to know (or cross the boundaries of concensus reality in some other way) your mind may not be able to withstand the strain. People do go crazy following this kind of investigation. Of course, it seems to be people with somewhat disorderly minds who attempt it in the first place. Once you open the doors can you close them again?

Taking a great risk; the price of knowledge; clinging to reason (the light on his head); Starting out bravely but foolishly.

This card reminds me that in some of the old decks the fool was a "deranged beggar".
Is his lost sanity a product of the fools journey, or is he already insane and the journey has yet to begin? - alpha et omega.
Also, a spiritual person is often considered foolish since they are usually innocent (as a child) in nature and in contact with unseen realities.
The restraints are physical, but his mind is still free; albeit populated by nightmares.
Is the light above his head (the sun in BOTA & RWS) a source of inspiration (for the rest of the grimoire) or spirituality? Or does it just "shed light" on his delusions and folly?

Both of Lovecraft's parents were committed to the sanitarium in Providence, RI, which is adjacent to the cemetary in which they, and Howard, are interred.

Lovecraft's father went mad while Howard was still a small boy. In reading Howard's fiction, it's notable that many of the male hero figures are not fathers, but grandfathers.

Committment in an insane asylum; seeing and hearing what others do not; degenerating gradually due to one's ancestry; rape of women by malign entities and their subsequent terrifying pregnancies; these are all repeat motifs in Lovecraft's fiction and in his dreams.

His Fool's Journey setting out on the alchemical process of transforming nightmares into creativity very much begins in the sense of being trapped, mad, menaced in a padded cell...