The Fool

Key 0

Colour: Pale Yellow
Sound: E Natural
MATERNAL LETTER: Air

This Path connects Wisdom with the Crown. The first perception or will of the One having the potential for activity. From nothingness comes the potential for thought and that potential is the Fool. The card depicts a man about to walk off of a cliff with an animal companion by his side. The animal companion has been said to be the intellect, man's faithful companion. It also sybmolises the relationship between the Higher Self and the animal nature.

In the Golden Dawn deck the animal companion is a wolf which was historically considered a destroyer. The Fool's will to self-expression holds in check the counter energy which would otherwise destroy creation as it happened. In this card the Fool is depicted as a child balancing the wolf as creator/destroyer. This imagery stresses the point that everything contains its opposite.

Technically the energy of the Fool is all we know, we live in it and breath it. It is us. Every thing is an expression of the energy symbolised by the Fool.

The first of the maternal letters is Air, here referring to the life breath. As the Magician relates to words or vibratory patterns, the Fool is the breath which expels the sound. It activates the Magician.