0 - The Fool or the Moment of Divine Consciousness

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Serpentwand
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Re: 0 - The Fool or the Moment of Divine Consciousness

Post by Serpentwand »

Oh well spotted. I'm sure it will be important, whether intentional or not 8-) .

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CharlotteK
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Re: 0 - The Fool or the Moment of Divine Consciousness

Post by CharlotteK »

I don't know anything about Thoth, or much about astrology, but it makes sense to me. Art as a creative process... benefits from freedom from conventional limitations?

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Michael Sternbach
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Re: 0 - The Fool or the Moment of Divine Consciousness

Post by Michael Sternbach »

Nemia wrote: 14 Jul 2017, 02:31 I want to share with you a little tidbit about the Fool that I noticed a long time ago but don't really have an explanation for.

When I trimmed my good old Thoth, my very first deck, many years ago (before I knew that others do the same thing and it's called trimming), I noticed strong synergies between cards. And the strongest of all - between the Fool and Art (Temperance).

Image

You can see the colours and composition are very similar - but where Art is symmetrical, there are asymmetries in the Fool, underlining subtly their meaning and the impression they make on us. Just look at the two.

The similarities are even stronger when you put one card on top of the other, like this:

Image

or like this:

Image

The two cards seem to augment each other.

Now I do have some vague ideas what could make these cards interesting together.

The Fool is associated with Air, Art with Fire. But the Fool is elementary Air, while Art is a zodiac card, associated with the mutable autumn fire of Sagittarius. In the Fool, Earth makes a veiled appearance in the bag of coins; in Art, Water plays an important symbolic role. So in a way, with these two cards, all four Empedoclean elements are brought together - the active elements dominate, the passive elements are brought in to highlight or complement the active ones.

I would have expected the Lovers and Art to fit together ideally (in many ways they do), perhaps also with the Hermit as third mutable zodiac card, and the Fool with the Hanged Man and World, the other elementary atu. But no, Fool and Art make the most obvious visual pair.

I didn't check the Book of Thoth (will do that now) or Frieda Harris' letters about her work on the cards but when I read them last, I didn't notice any hint of an affinity. Maybe it's just an unintentional similarity that just happened while Harris was working.

I call it an elective affinity (Wahlverwandtschaft) and it's one of the things about the deck that I really love.
That's AWESOME!

While the BoT mentions Adjustment as the The Fool's female counterpart and elaborates on the relationship between Art and The Lovers, the visual parallels between The Fool and Art speak for themselves.

In the terminology of the deck, "Art" refers to the art of Alchemy, or the reunion of the polar opposites that were still unseparated in the beginning, at the stage of The Fool.

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Michael Sternbach
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Re: 0 - The Fool or the Moment of Divine Consciousness

Post by Michael Sternbach »

Polar opposites in original unison are also the meaning of the two babies below the Fool, facing opposite directions, yet entangled with one another. In keeping with Crowley's formula: 0 = (+1) + (-1), or 0 = 2.

Once again, we find an exact parallel in Daoism, where the original void (wu chi) splits up into the opposite, but ever complementary forces yin and yang (tai chi).

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Re: 0 - The Fool or the Moment of Divine Consciousness

Post by Serpentwand »

Michael Sternbach wrote: 16 Jul 2017, 21:36 Polar opposites in original unison are also the meaning of the two babies below the Fool, facing opposite directions, yet entangled with one another. In keeping with Crowley's formula: 0 = (+1) + (-1), or 0 = 2.

Once again, we find an exact parallel in Daoism, where the original void (wu chi) splits up into the opposite, but ever complementary forces yin and yang (tai chi).
Oh right, is that like the Pisces image?
Image

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Re: 0 - The Fool or the Moment of Divine Consciousness

Post by Michael Sternbach »

2dogs wrote: 20 Jul 2017, 08:12
Michael Sternbach wrote: 16 Jul 2017, 21:36 Polar opposites in original unison are also the meaning of the two babies below the Fool, facing opposite directions, yet entangled with one another. In keeping with Crowley's formula: 0 = (+1) + (-1), or 0 = 2.

Once again, we find an exact parallel in Daoism, where the original void (wu chi) splits up into the opposite, but ever complementary forces yin and yang (tai chi).
Oh right, is that like the Pisces image?
Image
Yes. The tai chi (not to be confused with the martial art) is actually sometimes referred to as a double fish; the black yin dot in the white yang "fish" being its "eye" (and vice versa).

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Serpentwand
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Re: 0 - The Fool or the Moment of Divine Consciousness

Post by Serpentwand »

Cool - so the Spring Equinox is the end of Pisces and start of Aries so the Fool could be at the end of a cycle as well as the beginning :) .

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Re: 0 - The Fool or the Moment of Divine Consciousness

Post by Michael Sternbach »

2dogs wrote: 22 Jul 2017, 01:00 Cool - so the Spring Equinox is the end of Pisces and start of Aries so the Fool could be at the end of a cycle as well as the beginning :) .
However, in The Fool, the separation of opposites hasn't occurred yet.

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Re: 0 - The Fool or the Moment of Divine Consciousness

Post by Serpentwand »

Before somebody moves on to another card, would you say the phrase "High joy serpent wand" relates to the Fool? It's a thing of personal significance but the "high joy" bit has puzzled me. Since starting this discussion though I'm thinking if translated into another language and back again it might be another way of saying "ecstasy".

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Re: 0 - The Fool or the Moment of Divine Consciousness

Post by Michael Sternbach »

2dogs wrote: 30 Jul 2017, 08:04 Before somebody moves on to another card, would you say the phrase "High joy serpent wand" relates to the Fool? It's a thing of personal significance but the "high joy" bit has puzzled me. Since starting this discussion though I'm thinking if translated into another language and back again it might be another way of saying "ecstasy".
I am not familiar with this phrase. Where does it come from?

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