The Fool

Upright

Everything

A new road, and you are stepping onto it with a light heart. You do not know the whole way yet, and that is fine.

Love

Something fresh is beginning, or wants to. Go in open, without old baggage.

Work

A new job, a new project, a new field. Say yes before you feel fully ready, because nobody ever does.

Money

A fresh start with money, maybe from zero. Keep it simple and do not gamble the first savings.

Myself

You are allowed to begin again. Curiosity is the strength here, not experience.

Folly, mania, extravagance, intoxication, delirium, frenzy, bewrayment.The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), p. 284

Reversed

Everything

A jump taken without looking, or a start that keeps getting put off. Check the ground before the next step.

Love

Rushing in, or running away. Neither is a choice; slow down and see the person clearly.

Work

Careless moves at work, or fear stopping a good move. Prepare a little, then go.

Money

Spending on impulse, or a risk taken on a whim. Wait one day before any big decision.

Myself

Restlessness without direction. Ask what you actually want before you move.

Negligence, absence, distribution, carelessness, apathy, nullity, vanity.The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), p. 284

The card, as Waite described it

With light step, as if earth and its trammels had little power to restrain him, a young man in gorgeous vestments pauses at the brink of a precipice among the great heights of the world; he surveys the blue distance before him—its expanse of sky rather than the prospect below. His act of eager walking is still indicated, though he is stationary at the given moment; his dog is still bounding. The edge which opens on the depth has no terror; it is as if angels were waiting to uphold him, if it came about that he leaped from the height. His countenance is full of intelligence and expectant dream. He has a rose in one hand and in the other a costly wand, from which depends over his right shoulder a wallet curiously embroidered. He is a prince of the other world on his travels through this one—all amidst the morning glory, in the keen air. The sun, which shines behind him, knows whence he came, whither he is going, and how he will return by another path after many days. He is the spirit in search of experience. Many symbols of the Instituted Mysteries are summarized in this card, which reverses, under high warrants, all the confusions that have preceded it. In his Manual of Cartomancy, Grand Orient has a curious suggestion of the office of Mystic Fool, as a part of his process in higher divination; but it might call for more than ordinary gifts to put it into operation. We shall see how the card fares according to the common arts of fortune-telling, and it will be an example, to those who can discern, of the fact, otherwise so evident, that the Trumps Major had no place originally in the arts of psychic gambling, when cards are used as the counters and pretexts. Of the circumstances under which this art arose we know, however, very little. The conventional explanations say that the Fool signifies the flesh, the sensitive life, and by a peculiar satire its subsidiary name was at one time the alchemist, as depicting folly at the most insensate stage.The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), p. 152

The plain-word meanings on this page were written for ShreeJyoti and are still under review.