--By Hyperion Night
The spirit searching for experience. Beginnings. Spontaneity. Taking a leap of faith.
When I was very, very young, I thought I was a poet. I wrote poems in a little blank book, and I could rhyme like nobody's business. I'd gotten the whole syllable game down too. And I was having so much fun, I showed my poetry book to an adult friend. She talked it up to my mother, and things quickly and obviously (even to my young mind), turned patronizing. I was so embarrassed, I put away the book and didn't write another poem until I was forced to, years, later, in some class or other. By that time, I'd lost my knack for rhyming. It's still a struggle.
I wish I'd never showed off my poems. Or at least had kept going. But my ego failed me on both counts. I was young and foolish, but I was not playing Tarot's pure-hearted Fool. Had I been, I would have kept on writing, and likely been a better writer today.
Sometimes, you need to just go for it.
The Fool in Tarot trusts his instincts. He takes the leap of faith. He goes for what he wants, even when the world is laughing, because the Fool believes. When the card is reversed, he might be foolishly or naively trusting. After all, in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, he is about to step off a cliff. But the little dog by his side barks a warning, and I like to think he doesn't fall to his death. A reversed Fool card could also indicate this energy is being repressed or blocked somehow.
In life, we need to take risks to move forward. The journey--every journey--starts with a step and a risk of some sort, a question that won't be answered until you reach the end. As we move into the New Year, this Tarot card asks us to consider how this energy is (or is not) playing out in our lives. How is the Fool's spontaneous energy affecting the situation at hand? Are we closed up, unwilling to risk, to play, to follow our instincts? Is something (perhaps ego?) stopping us from taking that leap? If so, what and why?