O THE FOOL, The Jester, The Trickster, The Harlequin, The Green Man, Parcivale, The Holy Ghost

The Fool is the first personification we meet on our Adventure in Consciousness, as we begin to ride down the Tree of Life in the direction of The Creation on the white Light streaming from the Crown of Creation, Sphere 1 (Sephira, “indefinable Idea”).  The Fool is the first emanation and creation of the Crown, Eros’ prototype: positive and impulsive, silent and still, giving and mild.  As you will see in a journey through the Tree of Life, the Fool and all of the Keys of Tahuti are meant to remind us of the natures of ourselves, which are often hiding and hidden in our subconscousness. Therein are all of the truth we need to comprehend. In our Adventure, for our understanding and to begin to apprehend where we are going, we begin as creations of the Crown and work our way through the spirals of creation portrayed on the Tree. Yet we can truly know the Fool only when we traverse the Tree from the opposite direction, moving from the Earth toward Union with the Crown.  

Our journey will take us through the many some-things and back again to where the All is No-thingness: It is here that we begin on our way to nowhere. 

There is no use trying to think of the Idea of the Fool, for it transcends our self-nourishing and our self-generated Creation of Realities; the imaginings of egos passionately pursuing meanings to make sense of their supposed existence — falling under the tyranny of an organic computer(s) seeking to rearrange the physical world to insure the survival of ego’s personality, drives and aspirations. The Fool, knowing nothing about a possible autonomy or sovereignty, remains innocent and guileless as he lives out the idea of liberty with an always-joyful vigor.  So, he is utterly without conscience or restriction, as once we were.  He reminds us of the potential of our own innocence, oft forgotten or denied.

The Fool bursts forth from the Crown with Energy unbounded, unlimited, uninhibited and totally spontaneous and carefree, much as a newborn babe. As a newborn babe, the Fool is original Innocence. As the ploughshare with which the Fool is associated, he is essentially Phallic, i.e., penetrating, yet the Fool is sexually androgynous in the sense of being before the distinctions of sexuality have been formulated, above the Abyss.  It is an Idea indeed, as ideas lay behind all of the formulations that are brought forth as creations.

Here is the measureless potential and power inherent in every new moment, in any birth of anything, when there is the sense that anything goes - nothing is certain or regular.  This is an Idea in Physics, of the Energy fueling everything that grows on the Earth; unfathomable, never-ending and completely without conscience or plan.  We can feel this energy our selves in the quickening of the senses in an adventurer joyfully setting forth with excitement on a bright and promising day, happy is going, with no thought at all of destination or danger. The Fool’s only guide is a small, still voice, a voice we can hear only in the silence of a mind not deafened by thoughts or by the noise of our interpretations of the input of our senses. 

Air is the Element and Sign of the Fool.  The Ancient Ones have told us that Air is the first of the Mother Letters: Aleph, Mem and Shin, or Air, Water and Fire (Spirit). These are the triple elements, invisible and incomprehensible, from which the Universe formed, and which underlie and are interwoven throughout the Tree of Life.  Trinity is portrayed as images we can see with our eyes on all of the hieroglyphs (sacred marks) of the 22 Keys of Tahuti: Fire Wands, Water Cups, Air Swords; Father, Mother, Son; Sulfur, Salt, Mercury; Rajas, Sativas, and Tamas; Osiris, Isis and Horus.  The Fool is invisible as the very air, yet in a way that there is no way our thinking can fully comprehend until our mind can remember our divinity.

The Keys all have elements of the arts and sciences geometrical and mathematical.  As you consider this and the laws of triplications here revealed on your adventure, remember and keep in mind the ever-present phenomenon of the number three.

And also, we will want to remember the worlds of duality, the number two. How often twins and opposites appear to us! Our minds contain internal images of the world and what constitutes it, images entirely within the mind that we have come to believe are external realities. The Fool is awake to this paradox and to the ever-present mind-game with its relentless rhythm and clamor of thoughts, words, opinions, beliefs and passions. The Fool is entirely without intellect, not pursuing the knowledge and answers that eternally threaten to enslave his twin, the Magus Key I.  Yet he is not ignorant, being the essence of a natural knowledge of grace and enthusiasm for making Life bloom for no reason save for the bliss of enjoying his self-generating Energy. 

The Fool is an actor living myriad lives without a script on a boundless stage with no company and no audience, affirming and perpetrating an Idea that is not he, not of him and not his at all. Realizing that questioning raises only more questions, he is content to know nothing at all, remaining always only in his experience of Life, of Now. If ego is the mind of thought, behavior and external reality, the Fool is the instinctive Energy of the libido and beyond.  He thinks for the mind, not with it.

The Idea of the Fool transcends the self-delusions of an ego always recreating itself and passionately pursuing meanings to make sense of its imagined existence.  The Fool could never fall under the tyranny of an organic computer that seeks to rearrange the physical world to insure the survival of its fictional personality, its drives and aspirations. The Fool, knowing nothing about a possible autonomy or sovereignty or survival, remains innocent and guileless as he lives out the idea of Liberty with an always-joyful vigor.  So hw is, utterly without conscience or restriction.

The Fool remains Silent in the shadows between the real and the unreal and knows that the unreal cannot be possessed or known or 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 there is only one Doing; to Keep Silent, to do, say and think Nothing.  The Sage-Fool of truth is empty, yet seeks nothing.  A Way that must be sought is not the true Way and a god who can be seen is not the true god. A life of struggle, involving work, economic imperatives, denial, sacrifice, chastity, abstinence, envy and fear, does not bring Enlightenment but only the ending of the struggle.  The Sage-Fool is ignorant and makes ignorance his teacher, darkness his home and folly his wisdom.  He smiles in pity for those tethered in slavery to religions, creeds, idols, divine decrees, dogmas, rewards and punishments, false miracles, pie in the sky and bleeding saviors.  They fear the silence, filling it with prayers, talk, shouts, chants, bells, choirs and conflict. Their hopes and dreams fulfilled will be the silence at the end of their infatuations, the end of their confusion and perplexity, ignorance and false logic, pain and sorrow and, most of all, the end of their pride of hubris.  Holding compulsively tight to what is unreal, they push away that which they desire most.

The Buddha-Fool carries no load, and does not care where his paths lead, seeking no direction since he knows that all roads lead from, and back to, himself. The Christ-Fool can dine with the lepers and emperors, harlots and preachers, and teach both something new while he himself learns those things whereof cannot be communicated but must be earned by experience. How do you possibly describe to someone else how it really feels to parachute from an airplane? The Sage-Fools are uncontained because they do not seek to contain, and are free because they do not aspire to possess anything or anyone. Like the invisible Air, the Fool exists above, below, on either side, behind and within all that can be apprehended by the senses and the brain. He has learned to inhabit the "space in between," and come and go through the mazes of opposites and twins; between light and darkness, self and other, good and evil, exhale and inhale, dream and nightmare, failure and defeat, the laughter and the tears, and on and on and on.  Always the Path of the Fool leads from the Crown to the Sphere 3 of Understanding, itself connected by Love with its twin Palace of Wisdom, Sphere 3, and there he embraces them as one.