room
The Fool is not numbered in this deck, as in older decks, because historically it doesn't seem to have been a normal trump card. Either not a trump at all or a trump that was like a wild card and could be lowest or highest.
This ties in with Robert Place's thoughts on the contradictory meanings of the Fool: first and last; most worthless or most valuable; poverty and illness or joy and freedom; a trusting beginner or an enlightened master--all much like the life of St. Francis.
Kenneth Clark mentions in "Civilisation," that despite the romance and extravagance of the Gothic world, those centuries "produced some of the greatest spirits in the history of man, amongst them St. Francis of Assisi and Dante. Behind all the fantasy of the Gothic imagination there remained, on two different planes, a sharp sense of reality."
We often forget amid the wimpy piousness projected onto Francis, that he was an educated, worldly carouser from a wealthy family, who loved sport, gambling, drink, and dancing. He is described as always being polite and much devoted to the romantic ideals of chivalry, and chivalric poetry and song.
It's not such a leap from chivalry to the ideal of God, or the Mother of God, his "Lady" as he called her, which is certainly an echo of chivalric ideal. Francis was not a pious wimp but a joyful man who loved to sing and carried the chivalric ideal of courtesy into his religious life.
Many thought him a fool in his day. He had that openness to experience associated with this card, as well as a tinge of the negative foolishness, at least when a youth, and perhaps in the way he took devotion and poverty to extremes and died at 43 because he'd worn out his body. But that was part of his idealistic romanticism, that stepping off a cliff Fool-ishness, that Gothic extravagance of gesture.
I liked the greyhound on this card. Apart from being an ancient breed used for coursing and racing, which reminds me of the life of Francis before his spiritual enlightenment, it symbolizes his compassion for animals. Greyhounds are brutally worked in racing circuits today and discarded when they no longer win and bring in money. Humane and rescue organizations in Canada, the UK, Europe, and the USA are devoted to saving these former racing dogs, which is something St. Francis would enjoy: Brother Greyhound finds a loving home.
The rabbit reminds me of energy, the growth of ideas, and very fruitful multiplication, since the Franciscans grew to be one of the largest and most respected orders in the Catholic Church.
And lastly, the stigmata on his hands also seems a Gothic extravagance to me, an over-the-top pronouncement of faith. Ever the romantic idealist, how like Francis to manifest the wounds of Christ in his own body.
This ties in with Robert Place's thoughts on the contradictory meanings of the Fool: first and last; most worthless or most valuable; poverty and illness or joy and freedom; a trusting beginner or an enlightened master--all much like the life of St. Francis.
Kenneth Clark mentions in "Civilisation," that despite the romance and extravagance of the Gothic world, those centuries "produced some of the greatest spirits in the history of man, amongst them St. Francis of Assisi and Dante. Behind all the fantasy of the Gothic imagination there remained, on two different planes, a sharp sense of reality."
We often forget amid the wimpy piousness projected onto Francis, that he was an educated, worldly carouser from a wealthy family, who loved sport, gambling, drink, and dancing. He is described as always being polite and much devoted to the romantic ideals of chivalry, and chivalric poetry and song.
It's not such a leap from chivalry to the ideal of God, or the Mother of God, his "Lady" as he called her, which is certainly an echo of chivalric ideal. Francis was not a pious wimp but a joyful man who loved to sing and carried the chivalric ideal of courtesy into his religious life.
Many thought him a fool in his day. He had that openness to experience associated with this card, as well as a tinge of the negative foolishness, at least when a youth, and perhaps in the way he took devotion and poverty to extremes and died at 43 because he'd worn out his body. But that was part of his idealistic romanticism, that stepping off a cliff Fool-ishness, that Gothic extravagance of gesture.
I liked the greyhound on this card. Apart from being an ancient breed used for coursing and racing, which reminds me of the life of Francis before his spiritual enlightenment, it symbolizes his compassion for animals. Greyhounds are brutally worked in racing circuits today and discarded when they no longer win and bring in money. Humane and rescue organizations in Canada, the UK, Europe, and the USA are devoted to saving these former racing dogs, which is something St. Francis would enjoy: Brother Greyhound finds a loving home.
The rabbit reminds me of energy, the growth of ideas, and very fruitful multiplication, since the Franciscans grew to be one of the largest and most respected orders in the Catholic Church.
And lastly, the stigmata on his hands also seems a Gothic extravagance to me, an over-the-top pronouncement of faith. Ever the romantic idealist, how like Francis to manifest the wounds of Christ in his own body.
