Here’s the image I’m thinking of using for The Fool in my deck. I keep going back and forth about whether or not the outline of the fellow is obvious enough for doing readings. Here’s the text that will go with it. Let me know what you think in comments, please. Many thanks! (Image Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester, A. Loll (ASU))

Keywords

beginning, taking risk, trusting, spontaneity, apparent folly, the world in the egg, innocence

The Physics

The Crab Nebula is a supernova remnant from an event that occurred relatively recently in universal time, your time of 1054 CE. Chinese and Arabic astronomers recorded the event. Supernovas are my most creative entities, since they make the heaviest chemical elements right when they go off. Without them, we wouldn’t have gold, silver, or lead, for example. It takes great mass and great focused energy to pull this off. And now, all the ingredients for a brand new creation! In addition, at the center, there’s a pulsar, a neutron star as massive as the Sun but so dense that it’s only the size of a small town.

Metaphysics and Myth

The Fool began life as a pretty wild character, literally a wild card character in the original use of the Tarot as a playing card deck.  He looked like the village idiot with an animal nipping at his heels. But the Golden Dawn esoteric shift in the deck thanks to Pamela Colman-Smith and Arthur Waite gave him a whole new function as the initiate into the realms of magic. He seems to have taken on the role of the innocent going on the hero’s journey (only more like Don Quixote going off to tilt at windmills) or a version of the court jester; foolish and clever at the same time.

In this image, depending on how one looks at the lines, there could be just the little dog (facing right), or the Fool himself towards the right side of the shape, standing upright and maybe looking down and to the left at his hobo bag.

In the universe, the Fool represent the singularity at the time of the Big Bang. Even smaller than the neutron star at the center of this Crab Nebula. Much smaller. He is the Cosmic egg, holding all of the universe in potential and just about to expand into existence, into particles like these that will organize eventually into stars.

For the Reading

Your Self, like the universe, won’t be built in a day, and will include many spirals of creation and destruction. Life may look like the primordial soup when everything is in probability but not actuality. Take a small step in the direction of your passion; it may not look like more than the unconnected particles at the beginning of the universe, but the combination of expansion and the gravity of your intent will coalesce into beauty. But you have to give that intent; you have to say, “Let there be light.”

The Story

I’m just sitting here on this wall,
The sun is beating down,
I wonder if I’ll fall.

What am I waiting for?

Could be a true blue norther,
A major avalanche,
Or a world to be born.

What am I waiting for?

You’re standing in the doorway
With shadows on your face,
And longing in your eyes.

You hesitate; you stop,
You bend and tie your shoelace.

What are you waiting for?

Could be a windblown kiss,
The light from a lantern,
Or gateway to bliss.

What are you waiting for?

Lying here among the stones,
With hearts in our eyes,
And songs in our ears,

What are we waiting for?

For stars to fall, the sun to die,
The earth to quiver,
Clouds to vaporize?

What are we waiting for?

Now’s the moment and here’s the time
To be, to do, to live, to shine.

What are you waiting for?
What are you waiting for?