The Fool: Some thoughts and history

MadeiraDarling

I've been doing some meditations on the fool as it's one of the very few cards that's ever given me much trouble and I came across something really helpful in The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards by Michael Drumette, apparently he was originally called "the madman" and also sometimes "The Fugitive" (and was depicted in the Visconti-Sforza deck with a goiter) which helped me tie him in to Foucault's ideas in "Madness and Civilization" and "Discipline and Punish".

He is in some ways the socially necessary outcast, the delinquent, the madman, the threat to social order, identified and pathologized.
 

Bonny

I've been doing some meditations on the fool as it's one of the very few cards that's ever given me much trouble and I came across something really helpful in The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards by Michael Drumette, apparently he was originally called "the madman" and also sometimes "The Fugitive" (and was depicted in the Visconti-Sforza deck with a goiter) which helped me tie him in to Foucault's ideas in "Madness and Civilization" and "Discipline and Punish".

He is in some ways the socially necessary outcast, the delinquent, the madman, the threat to social order, identified and pathologized.

Hi Madeira,

Nice pick up and historical representation here too.

The lightness of the Fool is the quality that I tend to respond to. Old and ancient , largely un-arbitrated societies projected their angst and violence onto one was like them and yet either more gifted or more 'sacred' in some ways.
Not unlike the modern 'office scapegoating' practices.
The merit in this largely unconscious subversive dynamic was to be a vent for the populace to lighten their tension such that they would not attack one another.
The Fool, having the lightness of perception to see they must walk through the mash and paltriness as what you made reference to as the 'socially unnecessary outcast ' and remain afoot for their adventure into the new consciousness of their new adventure.
In a society that has sufficient differentiation / roles, where people know who they are and what they are on about but most importantly where there is a consciousness of turning the other cheek, the need for a Fool figure is dissolved. The tension doesn't build up.
Me thinks the Fool consciousness is the light consciousness ... Christ consciousness maybe?
 

MadeiraDarling

Hi Madeira,

Nice pick up and historical representation here too.

The lightness of the Fool is the quality that I tend to respond to. Old and ancient , largely un-arbitrated societies projected their angst and violence onto one was like them and yet either more gifted or more 'sacred' in some ways.
Not unlike the modern 'office scapegoating' practices.
The merit in this largely unconscious subversive dynamic was to be a vent for the populace to lighten their tension such that they would not attack one another.
The Fool, having the lightness of perception to see they must walk through the mash and paltriness as what you made reference to as the 'socially unnecessary outcast ' and remain afoot for their adventure into the new consciousness of their new adventure.
In a society that has sufficient differentiation / roles, where people know who they are and what they are on about but most importantly where there is a consciousness of turning the other cheek, the need for a Fool figure is dissolved. The tension doesn't build up.
Me thinks the Fool consciousness is the light consciousness ... Christ consciousness maybe?

Did you mean socially necessary? ^_^

I think that the fool/the leper/the madman are usually figures who are chosen partially as a scapegoat for the ills caused by the contradictions of society but also are chosen in many cases because they are the results of social contradictions, the fugitive is the result of criminality/delinquency being solidified into the identity of the criminal/delinquent.

Of course the fool is also contradictorily someone who can (within a limited scope) speak truth to power (as the figure of the jester) and can critique a society because in a way they exist outside of the social boundaries within it (which brings to mind the Nietzschean ideas about the social necessity of malcontents who don't fit in as a sort of social vaccine) though also I think the fool can represent what is positioned as other/abnormal so as to define the boundaries of normalcy, in order for a category to exist some category must be set up to oppose it.
 

Edward Tarot Hands

interestingly Crowleys take on the fool is a bit different. He associates him with the Spring and it's mythical representations such as The Green Man and think April fools day in England. According to him people naturally feel 'foolish' around Springtime.
He also makes an association between the fool and the holy man or prophet. Fools are often seen as enlightened persons in many eastern religions and 'silly' comes from a Germanic root meaning Holy or Blessed