Trumps
The Fool
A beginning before the plan
Make room for an experiment before asking it to justify its whole future. Openness is useful when it lets you notice; it becomes costly when it excuses ignoring what is already clear.
What can you try without pretending you know the outcome?
Correspondences
- Attribution
- Air
- Hebrew letter · Thoth
- Aleph
Sources
Book T lists The Foolish Man with Aleph and Air. The Thoth letter is shown above; changes are explained below.
Symbols
Air and the unformed beginning
Crowley assigns the Fool to Aleph and Air, with the number zero.
The Book of Thoth · Part II, The Fool ↗Try this
Try reading this as a moment before a possibility has acquired a fixed identity. Write three different beginnings for the same situation. Notice which one makes you curious and which one merely repeats a familiar escape.
The animals at the threshold
The account discusses both tiger and crocodile in the Fool’s imagery.
The Book of Thoth · Part II, The Fool ↗Try this
Look at how the figure meets its surroundings. A beginning can hold danger, appetite and delight together. Your own reading can distinguish willingness to encounter the unknown from a refusal to notice a concrete obstacle.
Read it beside the Universe
The Book of Thoth places the Fool at the beginning of its sequence and the Universe at its completion.
The Book of Thoth · Part II, The Fool ↗Try this
Put a beginning beside an ending. What does the finished work make available that did not exist before? This comparison lets a completed project become the setting for an experiment rather than a demand to repeat the same achievement.
Two accounts
Book T: The Foolish Man · Aleph.
Thoth: The Fool · Aleph.