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  • The Fool

symbolism

  • man shown as 'funny' or awkward, accompanied by a dog
  • going somewhere, having nothing
  • walking stick, knapsack
  • 15C Visconti-Sforza deck, beggar, linked to carnival/saturnalia → 16C fool/jester who speaks truth, but not taken 'seriously'
  • divine foolishness (c.f Rider-Waite)
  • air-headed (c.f bagpipes)
  • musical instrument
  • wearing a cap (mocking royalty/aristocracy)
  • journey
  • naivety
  • greenman, april fool
  • primary, ill-matched colors

plant connections

colours

  • red
  • white
  • yellow
  • green
  • black

patabotany

The fool is a symbiosis between a vine and a fungus. The fungus feeds the vine with mischief and wish to travel, so that it carries the fungus along with it. The fungus will often take the vine in unexpected directions and trick it into visiting dangerous places. The fool has a long, twining body of a slim vine travelling along the ground and any vertical surfaces it can find. Occasionally it stops to gaze over the landscape, growing into a leafy face. The fungus grows on top of the face, as a carnevalesque pointy hat, and enhances the plant's worldview (so the plant can sense the landscape behind solid things). Once they jointly set a destination, they're quite acrobatic climbers, soaring upwards and plunging into depths without trepidation. They like to play jokes on other plants, linking them together, or twining around them so they can't move. Even though they don't mean to, sometimes they strangle plants and carry them along, and every so often there is a bunch of wilted flowers stuck in a tangle of the vine. When the fool makes such mistake, it camouflages itself so no one can spot it. Other times, it convinces a plant called dogwood to grow tall trellises along which the vine can travel. As it curls around the trellis, the fungus feeds the wood with a serum that makes it grow dog-head shaped flowers. When the Fool itself blooms, the reddish-blue flowers are shaped like stars, and distributed along the vine to mirror the constellations in the sky. The fool's fruit is a translucent, inflated sack or balloon. When pressed, it produces a melodious sound of the flute. The vine can play the fruit itself, so when it is in a particularly good mood, it sounds like a bunch of children whistling a cheerful tune.

other

note: work in progress for PARN. not general reference

major arcana

  • tarot/0.1344413422.txt.gz
  • Last modified: 2012-08-08 08:10
  • by maja