The Fool (tarot card) - Wikipedia
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The Fool (tarot card)
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Tarot card of the Major Arcana
The Fool from the Rider–Waite tarot deck<br>The Fool is one of the 78 cards in a tarot deck. Traditionally, it is the lowest of the 22 trump cards, in tarot card reading called the 22 Major Arcana. However, in tarot card games it developed to be not one of the (then 21) trump cards but a special card, serving a unique purpose by itself. In later Central European tarot card games, it re-developed to now become the highest trump. As a consequence and with respect to his unique history, The Fool is usually an unnumbered card with a unique design; but sometimes it is numbered as 0 (the first) or more rarely XXII (the last). Design and numbering-or-not clearly indicate its role as a trump or special card in the specific game.[citation needed]
Iconography<br>[edit]
Standard allegories of Foolishness, painted by Giotto (1306, left) and Quentin Matsys (ca. 1510). The Fools in the earliest surviving painted decks resemble these depictions.
The Fool is titled Le Mat in the Tarot of Marseilles, and Il Matto in most Italian language tarot decks. These words mean "the madman".
In the earliest tarot decks, the Fool is usually depicted as a beggar or a vagabond. In the Visconti-Sforza tarot deck, the Fool wears ragged clothes and stockings without shoes, and carries a stick on his back. He has what appear to be feathers in his hair. His unruly beard and feathers may relate to the tradition of the woodwose or wild man. Another early Italian image that relates to the tradition is the first (and lowest) of the series of the so-called Tarocchi of Mantegna. This series of prints containing images of social roles, allegorical figures, and classical deities begins with Misero, a depiction of a beggar leaning on a staff.[1] A similar image is contained in the German Hofämterspiel; there the fool (German: Narr) is depicted as a barefoot man in robes, apparently with bells on his hood, playing a bagpipe.[2]
The Tarot of Marseilles and related decks similarly depict a bearded person wearing what may be a jester's hat; he always carries a bundle of his belongings on a stick (called a bindle) slung over his back. He appears to be getting chased away by an animal, either a dog or a cat. The animal has torn his pants.[3]
In the Rider–Waite deck and other esoteric decks made for cartomancy, the Fool is shown as a young man, walking unknowingly toward the brink of a precipice. In the Rider–Waite Tarot deck, he is also portrayed as having with him a small dog. The Fool holds a white rose (a symbol of freedom from baser desires) in one hand, and in the other a small bundle of possessions, representing untapped collective knowledge.[4]
In French suited tarot decks that do not use the traditional emblematic images of Italian suited decks for the suit of trumps, the Fool is typically made up as a jester or bard, reminiscent of the Joker often included with the standard 52-card deck.
History<br>[edit]
In the decks before Waite–Smith, the Fool is almost always unnumbered. There are a few exceptions: some old decks (including the 15th-century Sola Busca) labelled the card with a 0, and the 18th-century Belgian decks labelled the Fool as XXII.[5] The Fool is almost always completely apart from the sequence of trumps in the historic decks. Still, there is historic precedent for regarding it as the lowest trump and as the highest trump.
Traditionally, the Major Arcana in tarot cards are numbered with Roman numerals. The Fool is numbered with the zero, one of the Arabic numerals.
The fool may be the precursor of The Joker.[6] However, the Joker more likely evolved independently in the 1850s as a permanent trump specifically for the game of Euchre.[7]
Examples<br>[edit]
Pierpont Morgan Bergamo (c. 1451)
Charles VI (or Gringonneur) (15th century)
Sola Busca (1491)
Jean Dodal (1701–1715)
F. I. Vandenborre (1780)
Besançon (c. 1820–1830)
The Fool's tarot card, (c. 1831–1838)
Florence Minchiate (1860–1890)
F. F. Solesio (1865)
Lequart (1890)
Grand Etteilla (c. 1890–1910)
Papus (1909)
In tarot card games<br>[edit]
The two most common Fool cards in tarot card games, l'Excuse (left) of the Tarot Nouveau and the Sküs (right) of the Industrie und Glück.<br>In tarot card reading, the Fool is usually considered part of the Major Arcana. This is not true in tarot card games; the Fool's role in most games is independent of both the plain suit cards and the trump cards, and the card does not belong to either category. As such, most tarot decks originally made for...