Oh, the Fool...

As I stand at the beginning of my new journey I reflect upon the first card in the major arcana, 0 - The Fool. As the major arcana tells the story of the path through life, the fool represents the beginning of that journey, wherever it may take you.

He stands at the precipice of a cliff, pausing to consider whether to leap from the cliff in the hope that he will land where he is meant to be, or whether to look before he leaps and see if he can set out a path to where he desires to be. All of life's journeys require some planning before they commence, for enthusiastic embracing of wild ideas with gay abandon will only take you so far in that journey. For without a pause to reflect before that journey commences, how will you make it through the times that test you and call your faith into question?

Yes, the Fool speaks of beginnings, of journeys and paths that you will follow, but he also speaks of caution and approaching things in the right way. It is only through conscious intent that we are able to manifest a way through the muddy waters of life, and in order to manifest that which you would be you first need to be able to see that destination, that goal, that person you were always meant to be.

The Fool talks of journeys and paths, but as with all fools he speaks in riddles and tongues. All of life is a journey and on that journey we encounter endings and beginnings, lessons and opportunities, and how those pan out is shaped by how we approach them. The Fool relates to spiritual journeys as much as life events, and the level of spiritual development that we approach life's journey with will influence how we interpret those life events and our response to them. The Fool, for all his youth and enthusiasm reminds us that there are two paths we need to follow in this life, the low road where our physical bodies act out our intent, and the high road where our spiritual consciousness can shape our intent and influence the reality around us to bring into being the destination that we wish to achieve.

The Fool's appearance in a reading usually indicates something new on the horizon, but as a reader it is important that you are able to differentiate between events and people that are on the physical realm, and those that interact on a more spiritual plane. A person's spiritual development is as important as their physical and mental development, and we live in a world where the former has been greatly neglected. The role of a tarot reader is to help bring that physical, mental, and spiritual together, to provide a holistic interpretation to the cards. You have a responsibility to encourage your clients to look inside themselves for the solutions to their problems, to examine the cycles of their life they participate in that are bad for them, and to understand why they perpetuate them.

And so I stand here before you, a fool on the start of his journey with a destination firmly in mind. I invite you to join me on that journey, through my blog, and as I travel along this path I hope that I can encourage you to join me on it. The aim of this blog is to demystify the art of reading the tarot, remove the veil of myth and misinformation that has sprung up around it, and to hopefully show that the process behind reading them can be understood by anyone if they are prepared to put the work in on a spiritual as well as physical level.

The Fool learns through the experience of doing, and it is often in the negative experience that his folly has led him into that he learns the lesson that he needed. And if that lesson is not heeded, then the fool will encounter that same cycle again and again until he makes a conscious choice to choose another path. On our journey together I hope to show you that by focussing on both the physical and spiritual planes, the tarot cards can provide a holistic understanding of your path, and show you what you may need to do to adjust it if you are not happy with the destination to which you are currently heading.