Dodal
Le Fol · unnumbered
A figure walks to the right with a staff and a bundle over the shoulder. An animal reaches up at the exposed rear of the clothing. There is no numeral at the top and no precipice beneath the feet.
A traveller, a threshold, an eruption
A bundle and an animal survive the changes. The ground beneath the figure, the direction of movement and the number do not. Begin with those differences before deciding what a beginning means.
Start with the pictures
Le Fol · unnumbered
Jean Dodal · Lyon, 1701–1715
Open the source image ↗
The Fool · 0
Pamela Colman Smith · 1922 printing, p. 153
Open the source scan page ↗Notice what changes
Smith
The Fool · 0
A young traveller holds a flower near the edge of a height. A small dog rises beside the legs; the bundle hangs from a pole. Zero appears above the figure, with the sun in the upper corner.
Harris
The Fool · 0
The figure faces outward with legs spread, surrounded by looping bands. A tiger reaches toward one leg and a crocodile lies below. Grapes and several smaller figures crowd the space around the body.
Open Harris’s painting and reference page ↗Now read the authors
Waite’s explanation
Waite describes a spirit seeking experience. His account says the figure pauses at the precipice, despite the continuing suggestion of walking; it does not describe a fall already happening.
Crowley’s explanation
Crowley gives zero a place before the numbered emanations and assigns the card to Aleph and Air. His closing design summary identifies the tiger, crocodile and spiralling grapes within a larger account of creative emergence.
What changes when you describe each figure’s movement without using the words freedom, innocence or risk?
Write one thing you can point to in the image, one interpretation from a named author, and one inference of your own. Keeping the three separate gives you something useful to revisit.
Read the contemporary essay
Chris Gabriel’s essay prompted this comparison across decks. Our observations use the specific Dodal and 1922 Smith witnesses shown here; they do not establish a single meaning shared by every version.
Sources and image credits
The Dodal cards are one early-eighteenth-century Marseille witness. The black-and-white Smith plates come from the 1922 Rider reprint, whose title verso lists first publication in 1910. Colours in later editions can differ.
The images shown here are reproduced from public-domain sources, with their original borders and page context.
- Jean Dodal · source record and rights statement ↗
- Pamela Colman Smith · source record and rights statement ↗
Harris’s paintings are linked on their host’s reference pages. Crowley’s text is the separately identified Thelemagick transcription of The Book of Thoth. Neither a modern reproduction nor a transcription replaces examination of the original artwork or edition.