The Fool represents Zero, the Negative around the Tree of Life that is the source of all things and the genesis of all numbers: the Qabalistic Zero, the equation of the Universe, the initial and final balance of opposites. 

Air in the Fool's representation is a vacuum.

In the most abstract form of the Idea,

the Fool is both the father and the mother,

a deliberate identification of the male and the female, as a fertilized ovum is sexually neutral.

 

Understanding the Fool Key 0 and the twin Magus Key 1 is something impossible for the logical mind to comprehend, and yet we have other ways of knowing and we can work with them here. These two Keys together with the the Priestess Key II are joined in importance as the Three Emanations of Kether and the Sphere which is the fountain of Cosmic Will. Or so you are asked to imagine. 0, I and II  are the paths in which Will is transmitted and transmuted.

 

 

 In ordinary life we can attempt to understand Nothingness only by making no-thing ness a some-thing, which is not possible, for no-thing ness is no thing.  Nevertheless, we symbolize nothingness with the Zero, the symbol of a circle, which is some-thing in the same way that the symbol 1 is some-thing. So, we have to use some-thing to symbolize no-thing and end up where we began, circling around in a paradox.  For some, it is imagined as an eternal spiral.

 

If it seems possible to understand Nothingness, our thinking must make it something and this is logically impossible.  Yet this understanding of Nothingness is exactly what our Fool has naturally! Could it be that this searching is simply an imaging ego which is trying to obscure something about itself and its genesis?  The ego is often obsessed with finding meaning as a means of justifying existence, its existence as a separate being.

 

A self-directed thought process can lead us as we continue to contemplate the Fool and the other hieroglyphs of the Tarot, attempting now to grasp this idea that seems strange to our consciousness; the simultaneity of opposites, of something and nothing.  To begin with, just imagine now in your mind the idea of the masculine element in anything — and then note how the feminine element immediately appears in a flash of thought in your mind to counterbalance it. Bam! Just like that, the two concepts just go together, coming in a flash of thought, if we pay attention.  Under the formula thus revealed: Zero equals plus one plus minus one, or 0= (+1) + (-1). 

 

Zero is the symbol of the Fool, in which all 9 numbers are inherent as a quality of Zero. 

 

Perhaps the solution of paradox is to apprehend that, as everything we think of seems to come in doubles, so this thinking is thus an illusion of thought.  If all a mind knows of the world and of itself is from thinking, all that it knows is unreal, for all it continues to be is thinking and so, is missing something.  We casually accept the concept of Nothingness and that 0 + 1 = 1, yet how can something be added to nothing? We cannot possibly think of something that is nothing, and something that comes out of nothing must be nothing.  So, how can anything be that comes from nothing?  How can number be?  How can Life be? The mind boggles.

 

It’s a good time to remember the divine Blake saying, “If a fool persist in his folly, he will become wise.”  Myths and legends tell of leaders who were naturally able to live freely in and between this world and others, often carried on the backs of magical creatures.  Yet, as life became more and more materialistic and the intrigues of power and mundane passion overtook the minds of the majority of "civilized" men, perhaps these abilities were lost and the portals to the other worlds became like the doors in ruined mansions, rusted and difficult to open, their Keys passed down only by a few and then nearly lost forever.

 

Now, there is only one Key and that is in the hands of the Fool, the only one able to pass between the dimensions of the mansion of many rooms, which is the Cosmos of Kether, Sphere 1.  Only the Fool can transcend all barriers, despite the illusions of space-time, including confusion and paradox, that keep the rest grounded.

 

In this hieroglyphic personification, this picture of a living being, the Fool Key 0 is the Wandering Prince who is always the fool of the family, mad, “possessed”, destined to be a vagabond, actor, holy man or a prophet.  The word “silly” in the old days meant empty, and the Fool is the vacuum of Air, Zero, “the silly buckets on the deck.”  Also, silly was derived from the German silig, which means holy or blessed.  It is the emptyness which is the innocence of the Fool that is his outstanding characteristic.

 

We see in our hieroglyph that the Fool is in the miraculous vegetative realms of the Earth, yet in his eyes we can see that he is not captive of any jungle, not confined by any time or place, and soon we can know for sure that any attempt to understand him or constrain him will fail, fall simply flat. Where the Fool is in the Supernal Triad, Understanding has not yet been formulated and the Fool has no understanding of constraint.

 

But it seems only a collage of images, this hieroglyph. There is no way to know the Fool in our lives for he remains unseen thus undetected, reclusive and elusive, an outcast wanderer, smiling at the sadness in the world, crying at its laughter.  The Fool Key 0 as the beginning is also a refection of the Universe Key XXI, the ending to come that is the new beginning, where is no space nor time, nor any such illusions.

 

Our minds contain many internal thought-images of the world and what we have construed to be realities in our lives, images entirely within the mind that we have come to believe are external realities. The Fool is awake to this paradox of being and belief, the ever-present mind-game with its relentless rhythm and clamor of images, thoughts, words, opinions, beliefs and passions.  He remains vigilant and Silent in the shadows between the real and the unreal and knows that the unreal cannot be possessed or known or even destroyed.  Only the real can belong to this happy wanderer, because only the real does he believe. He is real, all he sees is real and all of reality belongs to him on his never-ending path of ever-lasting Tao.

 

In the spirit world of Tao it is said that there is only one Doing: to Keep Silent — to do, say and think — Nothing. 

The Sage-Fool of truth is empty, yet this emptyness seeks nothing.  A Way that must be sought is not the true Way and a god who can be spoken is not the true god and

the only reward attained by a struggle for enlightenment —works, economic imperatives, denials, sufferings, sacrifices, chastities and abstinences —

is not salvation,

only the ending of the struggle.

 

The Fool is ignorant and makes ignorance his teacher, darkness his home and folly his wisdom.  His smile is a smile of pity for those bound in slavery to religions, creeds, idols, decrees, dogmas, rewards, punishments, false miracles, pie in the sky and bleeding saviors.  The people fear the Silence, filling it with prayers and talking, shouts and cheers, chants, bells, ipods, choirs and conflict:  The only paradise for the mad will be the silence at the end of their obsessions and compulsions, the end of their confusion and perplexity, doubt, ignorance, pain, sorrow and, most of all, the end of their pride of hubris. Holding compulsively tight to their unreal infatuations, they push away that which they desire most, if they only knew.

 

In the times of the Ancient Ones, the legality of the succession to royal power was to be determined by royal blood and the blood royal must really be royal blood, genuine, no doubt. And in the times of the Matriarchal Age before the coming of the male gods, the succession to royal power, to kingship, was not to the first-born son of the King but to the man who would "win" from him by combat his eldest daughter, which daughter is rightful successor to the Queen.

 

Men had menial roles, usually to just to produce for, "provide for," and to protect the females in return for their favors. The eventual royal bride must be kept away from suitors, in legend in ivory towers or ingeniously camouflaged, as Cinderella, or as an Enchanted Princess.  She must be kept chaste until an ambitious stranger comes along, always a foreigner, to kill the king in open competition, so to win the princess. 

 

The stranger, the wandering prince, often appears as a troubadour or bard, often disguised, sometimes in a repulsive form, famously a frog.  His process of royal marriage through combat and struggle fulfills a tradition of insurance for the virility and capacity of every new king.  As time evolved and the Patriarchal regimes imposed themselves over the women, "protecting" her temples to the goddesses from bands of alien men, the custom became more “civilized.”  The king was no longer killed and the suitor came with a letter from his father, a king. 

 

There were and are wandering princes who are capable of a great deal of chicanery, and we still love to hear stories of the good outlaws who disdain the curses of Lords of the Earth. They love to bring disaster upon them, to seduce their wifes, sons and daughters, purloin their valuables and, if morally justifiable, to kill them with their own hands, the “king,” the noble ones, the abusers of wealth, lords posing as protectors of the common good. Often, the legends tell us, the lord's purloined booty is transferred from the rich man to the poor families struggling with children, marking out in the story the major theme of conflict between rich and poor and one man who stood in between. Where there is wealth there he will come to court as a Harlequin, a clown, a lawyer, a buffoon, an actor, a jester - even a frog.  The Fool has no regret or conscience, for compassion has not yet been formulated in the creation of the Tree.  

 

We should remember that the age-old social traditions, still with us in degraded forms even now in these last days of the Age of the Patriarchs, represent social feelings and conditions much deeper than the symbols and stories can reveal.  The Fool’s story is not just a story of the union of opposites, the ultra masculine pursuing union with the extremely feminine, a princess who cannot even sleep if there is a pea under her seven foam and feather mattresses.  It's not just a matter of mediating between divisions. The deeper we enter upon the Tree of Life and adventure in its maze of opposites below the Abyss, the clearer to our consciousnesses become the identifications of the opposites, their sameness - the distinction becomes blurred for they are divisions that divideth not - the soft becomes the hard, the rough the smooth, hatred becomes forgiving. The dove, totem animal of lovely Venus of the Womb, is also the totem of the Holy Ghost, which Spirit is imagined to be the most sublimated form of the Phallus.

 

Remember again, with the Fool we are in the most exalted top of the Tree of Life, the Supernal Realm of the Ideal, where nothing material has been actualized.  Ideas so sublime are subject to being vulgarized in our limited consciousness as we attempt to contemplate the symbols, with their beautiful lucidity, in our hieroglyphic forms. Here, above the Abyss, is no Form of anything.  Here, All is the Mystery of creativity happening before there is time or space to hold the creation. 

 

It was the ancient Sage-Fools who manifested the Mystery, who took charge of time-binding the “unspeakable Universal” in a system for transmission to future Ages — but they thought it necessary to “diminish the message to the dog.” That is, they chose ordinary expressions and common symbols deemed most suitable for the lower-order, not yet enlightened, intelligences of their initiates.  Just for us.

 

So, the truths often appeared to many to be just fable, parable, legend, and many are the people who become entangled in their lessons and fashioned false creeds and dogmas, even fearing imaginary divine punishments.

 

From traditions of the Fool, the Wandering Prince, have come may legends, including The Green Man; April Fool; the Great Fool of the Celts; Percival the Rich Fisherman; the Egyptian sprit Mako the Crocodile, son of Sebek; and Hoor-pa-kratt, twin brother of Horus, twin sons of Osiris and Isis, the twin spirits at the head of the pantheon of old Egypt; and divine Olympian Dionysios, god of wine, festival and dramatic arts, who is double natured and two gods in one and of two births, one human, one divine. Dionysios wore a wreath of vine leaves on his head and walked with a tiger by his side.  

 

WILL THE CLASS COME TO ORDER

 

We come now to the answer to the first question of the Sage-Fool: “What is anything?”  He/she replies that any “thing” is a relationship to a chain of ten indefinable Ideas, represented for our imagination as ten Spheres or Sephira, any one of which can be fully comprehended only in relationships with all of the rest. 

 

The chain of the Spheres is not something going on in the background and it is not happening in a straight line.  Of course, Science has found that there is no such thing as a straight line but, appearing straight to our Consciousness, it actually turns out to be a curve.  Any point (a type of existence) moving along the line is seen through as on a ring, curving, and through time, spiraling.  So, imagine a curve that comes around in a circle and makes a sphere --- just kidding ---don't hurt your brain --- the mind is not able to comprehend the immensity of any Sphere of the qAbAlA, generators of Energy and Ideas in their realms of consciousness.

 

The process of modern science has evolved to become approximate to the wisdom of the Ancient Ones, creating processes for reintegration of differentials.  We are practicing such reintegration in our study of the Tree of Life as a Science. 

 

As we reintegrate this hieroglyph of the Fool, we can see him illuminated by gold, the color of Air, a Phallic cone of white Light and awesome Energy streaming from the glorious Crown above him, joining his head between his horns, horns we have seen on the Greek Dionysus, Spirit of theatre and merriment and god of wine.  Our Fool is bursting unexpectedly upon the world in a wave of Air drawing down from the Crown. Dressed in green in the tradition of Spring, his shoes are of the Phallic gold of the Sun.

 

In his right hand he bears the Wand of the All-Father, tipped with a pyramid of white, while his left hand holds a flaming pinecone symbolizing his powers of bringing about vegetative growth.  A bunch of purple grapes is slung over his shoulders, representing fertility, sweetness and the basis of ecstasy.  The stem of the grapes is evolving into a rainbow-hewed spiral, the Form of the Universe, the Negative manifesting in divided Light. 

 

The hieroglyph of the Fool in its entirety is of the manifestation of the creative Light, whose impulse originates with the Will of the Crown. 

 

Upon the spiraling whorls of Light are many other attributions of the Fool: the vulture of Ma’at; the dove of Venus (Isis, Mary); the sacred ivy of his devotees; the butterfly of the many-colored Air; and the wingéd globe of splendid Saturn with twin serpents, echoed by the twin infants embracing the middle spiral.  Above him hangs a benediction of many flowers in one as his tiger fawns upon him, for animals love him.  Beneath his feet flows the Nile with its lotus stems and the divine crocodile, Sebek. At the center of his figure is the prototype-ideal Phallus and focus of the macrocosmos in which we miraculously exist, the realm of our Star, named Sol or the Sun.

 

As we move though the Tree of Life we, the initiates, must allow all of the hieroglyphs of the 22 Keys of Tahuti and their variations of expression to overlap and coalesce in our mind as we observe them, recalling always that, even at the best, they are but simple representation of truths too profound for mere Images and Words alone. The principle of trinity demands a third: our active Consciousnesses.  The Keys are, as they must be, presented separately, yet they are only Paths through the huge maze of Houses that is the Tree of Life. Together, they are One Key for the One Mystery.

 

As we contemplate the parts as a whole, even those parts that seem contradictory, we can bring our Consciousnesses into an intuitive apprehension which might allow us to transcend our "civilized," intellectual minds through a process of sublimation, or in-taking. So, we use hiroglpyhic images to transform our powers of Comprehension, learning to think clearly and coherently in a manner most exalted. 

 

As all of these 22 Keys of Tahuti in reality exist far beyond and above reason, and because of the confused, dogmatic rationales of the Victorian materialism that is our heritage, attempts to transcend rationalistic modes of approach to reality are scorned, even outlawed as witchcraft.  Yet history since Victorian times has seen the onrush of mathematical physics, the most severe, abstract and logical of the sciences. Science always must and always has taken cognizance of the unreal, and the irrational, and of the Zero.  Yet science has to this day been unable to find even one reality in any intelligible idea.  Even now, in an age of science, out-dated Victorian materialism is experienced as a straightjacket of Consciousness and we must begin our study of metaphysics with the knowledge that we all were born in straightjackets.

 

The Fool reminds us on our adventure in Life that, on the circles we traverse no movement is really possible: at every point we will be as far away and as near as we are now from what we are seeking, for our destination is our Selves who is here now. For human beings Life is in the Being, not in the Doing or Having, and when we be Silent, we can hear; when we chose not to possess, Life can possess us, for we are the whole point and just a section of a circle as we have imagined. 

 

The Fool reminds us of the Silence, of the inner forces, the inner certainty, which is even less tangible than intuition - which is at the heart of right actions and great endeavors — as we come forth in Unity. This is the coming forth of the Fool, the very first path from the Crown, the Key of Tahuti whose symbol is Zero, the path that joins and unites the Father to the Mother:  0= (+1) + (-1).

 

As it is for ourselves, the Universe and us, the journey of the Fool is in one direction only and there is no turning back; both the Fool and we walk forward with a strangely compelling faith. Our consciousness is aware of an approaching precipice of the oblivion of non-consciousness, yet we continue forth because we must. So it is in Life, and so it is in our voyage through the portals of the Tree of Life, gateways to be opened by the Keys of Tahuti, while never far from our thoughts is the Abyss.

 

Each of us will see and read and experience the Keys in the same gate in different ways, one Key, and one Portal at a time.  We will experience these openings also in everyday life as well as in our dreams.  No one knows how the adventure will end or the places to which we will come, and only remaining will be the memory of the places we have been, to which we can never return.  It’s Ground Zero where Life is free! It is so that people imagine that the Tree of Life thrives within a Circle of Nothingness.