Tarot In-Depth: The Fool (0)

1/13

The madness descends. Beginning with the Fool (which is sometimes numbered zero, and sometimes not numbered at all; sometimes placed at the beginning of the deck, and sometimes placed as the penultimate Major Arcana card just before the World/Universe).

Maybe this is appropriate. Last night reading Pollack's chapter on the Fool, I found myself frustrated and disappointed. Though her book is the result of forty years of study of the tarot, and more specifically of a workshop intensive she taught during which she focused on a single card for an entire day, her chapter on the Fool left me feeling like there just wasn't much to say. Her insights jive with the same repeated ideas also found in Place and KHZ — which is that the Fool is a card of potential, that which comes even before manifestation, the urge towards new beginnings and new journeys that begins its work even before we are conscious of it. She adds the interesting note on the card's historical meaning, which for a long time emphasized it as depicting a madman, someone who was a wanderer and even somewhat dangerous in his carelessness and unpredictability. He was not someone to emulate. He was not the innocent, happy-go-lucky Wise Fool who leaps off into the abyss to start his exciting new adventure, but the "outsider" who, in an almost threatening but also pathetic or pitiable way, lingers beyond the rules and structures of society, is passed over and overlooked by them. Eventually, this interpretation evolved into the more mystical or esoteric meaning of the "pure potential" and the childlike innocence that compels us to act on impulse or intuition (or, not even either of these, not yet, it is the urge behind impulse) — the unformed urge which, when it does eventually express itself, expresses itself as movement in such complete harmony with the forces of the world that it seems to have no will of its own. The Fool steps off the cliff without worry, because he cannot even conceive of what reason there would be to worry, and in this way he is carried along. Pollack compares this to the Taoist concept of wu-wei, active nonaction. I disagree here, as I think this passive fluidity is itself a kind of expression, and here supposedly the Fool is what is prior to any expression. It's important to note, for instance, that wu-wei is not the Tao, it is a way of following or embodying the Tao; for the Tao that can be named is not the Tao.

And that's it. That's all there is to say about the Fool. And saying even that much is too much, since the Fool that can be named is not the Fool.

Which is profoundly boring. Because how can you have a discussion about something that cannot be talked about? What is there to say about the lack of manifestation, the urge that comes prior to movement and embodiment, that which is defined by its absence?

I was in a cranky mood last night while reading and thinking about this, and feeling bullied into silence by the complete lack of interesting insight I had into this card. I really could not see the point in it. I felt, in fact, downright hostile towards The Fool. I felt like yelling at it, "What is the point of you?! All of these people have built up systems of symbolism around this deck, and they have made one neat little box into which they have shoved the concept of 'Nothing' and called it 'The Fool' — but of course, you aren't nothing, because you have a place in the system now. How can a 'something', like a card or a symbol or a placement on the Tree of Life, be a 'nothing'?

This frustration ended with me remembering our walk with Finn at Deception Pass earlier in the day, and the cliffs that fell off into the water below. I was suddenly overwhelmed by a nauseating sense of horror and vertigo at the thought of standing on those cliffs — like The Fool on his precipice with his dog nipping at his heels — and I found myself breaking into a cold sweat. I'm not sure I can explain exactly why it seemed so horrifying to me, but it had something to do with the fact that I couldn't feel the height, or the depth, or the absence. Though my eyes could see the drop-off and the water far below and I could perceive the depth of the fall, the physical experience of my body was as solidly grounded as usual. It was as if the cliff wasn't real, as if the edge was an illusion and, for all that my body could tell, I might walk right up to the edge and out into the air. The thing that it reminded me of most, honestly, was that episode of Doctor Who, when the Tenth Doctor is on the edge of the underground pit on the planet that is circulating the black hole, and he's saying how, looking down into the depths, it's like a little voice in the back of his head, urging him, saying, "go on, go down, go on..." Except that doesn't really capture it. What I felt was a sense of disorientation, the complete untrustworthiness of my physical body in being able to sense, to feel the shape of its surroundings. It was as if my body itself were The Fool, blindfolded or blinded by the sunlight, feeling completely safe and at ease — the very physical part of me that is most bound by the physical laws like gravity, completely insensate of the danger.

It was... the exact opposite of my experience of stargazing on Cadillac Mountain, when I lay on my back on the huge, broad peak of the mountain (so broad that it has an entire parking lot and a visitor's center on it, with slopes that are mostly gradual drop-offs), and yet looking up into the vast distances of the stars I suddenly felt as if the earth were tipping me off into the spacious void and I felt giddy and light and hardly held by gravity. It was the opposite of that feeling, this horror of feeling so absolutely grounded and safe on the edge of a cliff despite what my eyes were telling me. And the cognitive dissonance of the physical sensation of groundedness and the perception of my eyes made me back away from the edge. Thinking on it later, I found it all too easy to imagine what it might have been like to walk right up to the edge, to peer over the way I might peer down a flight of stairs, with no more vertigo or fear, to even jump off the edge out into the air as if just jumping down off a stepladder.... And how easy it was to imagine this, and to feel how unafraid I was, made me horrified, unable to trust myself.

1/14

That experience that I just related happened on Saturday night before bed, and Jeff and I went to bed fairly early and then slept in a little bit late on Sunday morning. I was awake by 6 AM or so, but lay awake allowing my mind to wander a bit as I thought about the most recent essay I was working on &mdsh; this one on biophilia, the love of nature and the nature of love. I have been playing with this notion that the mystery or paradox of love is related in a very deep way to the mystery or paradox of nature.

In this case, love is paradoxical because it both unites and divides: through love, the lover participates in the being of the beloved and is united with the beloved in loving what the beloved loves; but it also divides, for the lover cannot love the beloved without acknowledging the individuality and separateness of the beloved, for otherwise how can there be an experience of union in the first place? Love ceases to be love if the beloved is completely subsumed into the lover, for then the lover is not taken beyond themselves in uniting with the beloved and loving what the beloved loves. This is, incidentally, the explanation that Bruteau gives for the Mystery of the Trinity in the Catholic tradition: a god of love is inherently a god of plurality, because if the nature of god is love (and to love), then that god is both lover and beloved — but if that god were only lover and beloved, then the lover would unite with the beloved in loving the lover, and the act of love would collapse back into itself like a closed circuit. In order to be and remain open and self-giving, the lover has to participate with the beloved in loving a third thing. And so a god whose nature is love must be at least tripartite, three being the sacred number of stable manifestation that doesn't collapse back down into a self-referential unity. I see this as very similar to the Taoist idea that the Tao gives rise to the One; the One gives rise to the Two [yin and yang]; the Two give rise to the Three [yin and yang joined in a dance of tension, the movement or animation of which is chi/lifeforce, symbolized by the familiar yin-yang symbol itself]; and the Three give rise to the ten thousand things. Three is the number of stable manifestation that makes the multiplicity of manifestation (i.e. the ten thousand things) possible, and so the Three is the most basic number of sacred community, the Many. This is somewhat besides the point, but in any case, the point is that the way love actually works in the world, it both longs to unite with the Other, the beloved, while also upholding the individuality of the Other as sacred and inviolate (for if it violates the individuality and sovereignty of the beloved, it would no longer be love, but a kind of violence or subjugation, for what the lover wants most is to participate with the beloved in the individuality or uniqueness of the beloved, and this cannot be done if that uniqueness is itself destroyed).

This parallels our on-going struggle with the idea of "nature" and whether we are a part of or separate from nature. When we think of nature in terms of the beloved, we can see that the answer is, in fact: both. Our relationship with nature gives rise to a paradox, in the same way that love as a creative, participatory force creates a paradox. There is no doubt that we are a part of nature, we arise from nature and in a way, nothing that we do is really "unnatural." Again, this has strong parallels with Taoism, in which the Tao is not only a "guide" but also simply the Way Things Are, so that you cannot ever really not follow the Tao. In this sense, nature just means the reality of what is. But on the other hand, we have an intuitive sense that nature is not the man-made structures and mechanisms of civilization. This intuition is confirmed by the fact that current research into human psychology and neuroscience shows that being exposed to "nature" (whether scenes of what we think of as natural or wild landscapes, or just having a pet or a houseplant around) actually does improve our sense of well-being, as well as having other benefits like improving concentration and creativity while reducing stress. So there is something substantive to our intuition that "nature" is a particular something that is not just "the way things are," for we have been able to create environments for ourselves which are not "natural." The intuition goes deeper than this, though, since if it were really that simple then we could isolate what it is about "nature" that has these effects on us, and then create a simulated version of that. But, firstly, we don't seem to be very good at doing that. (Some people have tried to get out of this paradox by saying that it is not "nature" that has these beneficial effects, but "wilderness." And while it is true that getting away from certain human-invented stimuli and stress when we go out into the wilderness does make a difference... there's also evidence that something as simple as having a houseplant will also have an effect. I hardly think most people would consider a houseplant "wilderness.") Secondly, this would not really address the ontological sense that we are, in some way, apart from nature, and that this separation has to do in some way with our self-awareness. I think it has to do not with our self-awareness, but with our capacity for creative love. (And I also think that, in that case, it may very well be likely that other animals and beings besides humans also experience this paradoxical division, since there's no reason to think human animals are uniquely capable of love.) If the natural world around us — which is to say, if the world itself or the Way Things Are — inspires love and reverence in us, then the paradox of love as both uniting and separating would "kick in," so to speak. In other words, both our perceived separation from nature, and our desire to "get back to" it, is not a flaw or imperfection, but an expression of our capacity to love existence itself.

Okay, so what does all of this have to do with The Fool? Well, I was lying in bed running through this argument in my mind and letting my thoughts wander a bit as I tried to feel out the best way to actually articulate this and illustrate it in a blog post... I kept coming back to the Romantics, and the use of the word "romanticism" as an insult to imply sentimentality. The issue of sentimentality is basically the problem of love that is unable to respect the separation that is necessary for it to be love — sentimentality reduces the object of its sentiment from a unique and whole being in its own right, to merely the stimulus for pleasurable emotions. In other words, the problem with sentimentality is the lack of distance, and this is why Romanticism as an aesthetic and philosophical movement is often attacked by modern Enlightenment/scientific thinkers for sentimentality... because nothing is more important to the scientific mind than objectivity, the distance between the observer and the object being observed which allows the observer a supposedly unbiased perspective on the Way Things Really Are. The problem, of course, is that this desire for objectivity collapses in the other direction. If sentimentality is the lack of distance that upholds the uniqueness of the Other, then objectivity is the lack of longing for union with the Other. This is why the Romantics themselves were so distrustful of the scientific/modern mindset and saw it, too, as a form of reductionism. Because, really, it is. And this distrust of science persists even today in some artistic circles. To drive this point home, I thought about using the example of my experience in grad school going for my MFA, the time I workshopped a poem I'd written based on the proof in first-order logic of the Law of Excluded Middle. When I shared this poem with the workshop class, everyone thought I was being ironic. Irony is the artist's way of maintaining distance; it doesn't appeal to objectivity, but evokes a kind of "third perspective," in some cases the perspective of the audience, which has the insight into the Way Things Really Are. So people thought I was being ironic, critical of science and the "cold hard objectivity" of logic by mocking it through poetic language.

I ended up teaching an impromptu class on first-order logic to the workshop group, in order to show them how amazing this proof of excluded middle actually is. Because it is profoundly beautiful and poetic in a completely un-ironic way. In fact, the Proof of Excluded Middle does not need irony, for it addresses and embodies the very paradox of union and separation — and of existence and nothingness — that irony seeks to address by resisting sentimentality.

1/15

One of the things that makes the Proof of Excluded Middle profound is that it is a tautology. In writing or speaking, a tautology is a redundancy, an unnecessary repetition — like that just was, I guess — and since repetition can obviously be used for the sake of emphasis, then calling something a tautology is usually a kind of insult, a way of saying that the repetition was poorly done. But in logic, a tautology is something that is true by necessity or by its very structure. In first-order logic, tautologies can be proven without regard to the premises and even without any premise at all. In this case, the Law of Excluded Middle states P ⋁ ¬P — i.e. P or not-P. In other words, statement P is either true, or it is not true.

That seems obvious, but the proof is a series of nested arguments by contradiction in which every supposition leads to a paradox. Another aspect of the proof is that the "or" — ⋁ — is an inclusive "or". An "inclusive or" holds open the possibility that both statements are true. The proof won't work any other way. In other words, hidden within the statement P ⋁ ¬P is the possibility of P ∧ ¬P (that is, P AND not-P). Interestingly, the proof begins by supposing ¬(P ⋁ ¬P), which is another way of saying P ∧ ¬P (by De Morgan's Law).

The paradox of P ∧ ¬P is an impossibility, it leads to a contradiction (represented by the symbol ⊥). It is basically nonsense. A statement can't be both true and not true at the same time (that is, if it has a determinate truth value, as all grammatical statements in first-order logic do). And yet, the Proof of Excluded Middle just won't work without that paradox. At the heart of this tautology, this truth that arises out of nothing, is a seed of nonsense, a seed of nothingness.

That is The Fool. He is the seed of madness at the heart of sense itself, the seed of nothingness that makes existence possible. And his nature is to break open the exclusive "or" which wants to insist "either this or that, but not both," and to force it to remain inclusive, to hold open the possibility that there is a little bit of madness and nonsense and nothingness in the world. (Interestingly, besides the symbol ⊥ used to designate a contradiction, first-order logic also uses the symbols 0 and F.)

Thinking of this while lying in bed that morning, I found myself getting really excited. It seemed to be especially significant that I should find myself thinking about the Law of Excluded Middle while considering the nature of love and the love of nature, and how the paradox of one might reflect the paradox of the other. But as these things sometimes happen, the longer I thought about it, the noisy my thoughts became, until there seemed to be a clamoring jumble in my mind that I just could not sort through. I'm pretty sure I had some deep, deep insights during that hour or so that are now completely flown away because they were too slippery to grasp firmly. It was a profoundly foolish experience (sorry to keep using words like "deep" and "profound"), because my mind seemed to be chaotic with noise and excitement, ready to drive me over a cliff if I let it.

I set the whole question aside for a time. Sunday afternoon (1/13), after some more rest and some food in my stomach, I sat down to begin typing this all out while Jeff was at Panera cranking through some of the work he was trying to get done. When I got to the part where I was writing about my panic attack while remembering my experience on the cliffs at Deception Pass, I set my journaling aside for a bit in the hopes of getting some of my focus back. (Again, I'm sorry if this journal entry is turning into something of a mess, since I am now writing about events that have happened to me, and thoughts I have had, since I began writing. I am trying to capture a thought process that went very quickly but in fits and starts.)

I'd already read Pollack's chapter on the Fool and refreshed my memory on Place and KHZ, both of whom I'd already read. So I settled down first to read Duqette's commentary on the Thoth tarot, which turned out to be shorter and less involved than I was expecting, though it had some interesting notes on the imagery Crowley and Harris used. (Since reading Duqette and laying out the Fool cards from my various decks, I had some insight into the three-turn spiral that circles the Fool in the Thoth and Sun/Moon deck... and it's connection to the Proof of Excluded Middle... but whatever that insight was, it's gone now.)

Then, I pulled out Meditations on the Tarot (from here on out, MotT), the anonymous text by the Christian Hermeticist written between 1900 and 1970. Reading this text held some surprises, but also helped me to ground back in my own senses a bit more, so at this point, I'd like to go through and quote some interesting passages.

I should note that, although I started this book years ago, I never got more than a few chapters into it. One reason I want to revisit this book is because Carl once told me that it was the book he was reading during that period in his life when he was transitioning from a Pagan path back towards a Christian one, and it was around the same time that I read it, moving from a Catholic path to a decidedly Pagan one. So I've always had a sense that revisiting this book might help me grapple with some of the aspects of my spiritual path that I haven't yet grappled with, and it might give me some new perspective on Catholicism that I didn't have the first time I attempted to read it.

In this particular book, the writer places the Fool in the position of the twenty-first card, right before the World, and since I never read past the fourth or fifth cards, this was my first time reading the chapter on the Fool. So I was pretty astounded when I read this, regarding the Fool's Cabbalistic correspondence when placed in the twenty-first position:

Now, it is the letter Shin (ש), the twenty-first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which was attributed to the Arcanum "The Fool." It was said that this is the letter of the Arcanum "The Fool." And confidentially it was added that the esoteric name of the Arcanum "The Fool" is AMOR (Love).

Two things to note quickly. Firstly, there's a bunch of interesting stuff about the Hebrew letter Shin, including a couple bits of trivia: a story that centers on the fact that it can be pronounced with either an "s" or a "sh" sound gave rise to the English word "shibboleth" (meaning a word, sound or custom that is unfamiliar to certain people and can be used to sniff out foreigners or people who don't belong); also, Leonard Nimoy apparently based the Vulcan hand signal on a priestly hand sign made to evoke the three-pronged letter shin as one of the names of God.

Secondly, in both the Thoth tarot and the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, the Fool is associated with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph (א) ("ox"), not with Shin. (I remember reading somewhere recently that there was some debate for Waite about whether the Fool should be the first or twenty-first card, and that a three-pronged rather shin-looking wrinkle in the Fool's tunic in the original Rider-Waite-Smith deck might be Smith's nod to this fact, but I can't seem to find where it was that I read that.) In any case, I'm not sure where the anonymous writer of MotT got his association of the Fool with shin rather than aleph, but he does seem to be basing his meditations on the Marseille deck, which places the Fool in the twenty-first position.

Weirdly enough, every time I try to google the phrase "Hebrew letter aleph" so that I can get a link to the letter and see if I can find out more about it, Google seems to crash. What's up with that?

Wikipedia has this to say:

The name aleph is derived from the West Semitic word for "ox", and the shape of the letter derives from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph based on a hieroglyph which depicts an ox's head.

In Modern Standard Arabic, there is a word [...] which literally means "tamed" or "coy" [...]. This has sometimes been connected with the name of alif in folk etymology. In modern Hebrew, the same root [...] gives "me'ulaf", the passive participle of the verb "le'alef", and means trained (when referring to pets) or tamed (when referring to wild animals).

And also:

In the Sefer Yetzirah, the letter 'Aleph is King over Breath, Formed Air in the universe, Temperate in the Year, and the Chest in the soul.

'Aleph is also the first letter of the Hebrew word emet, which means truth. In Jewish mythology it was the letter aleph that was carved into the head of the golem which ultimately gave it life.

Aleph in Jewish mysticism represents the oneness of God. The letter can been seen as being composed of an upper yud (Yodh), a lower yud, and a vav (Waw (letter)) leaning on a diagonal. The upper yud represents the hidden and ineffable aspects of God while the lower yud represents God's revelation and presence in the world. The vav ("hook") connects the two realms.

Jewish mysticism relates Aleph to the element of air, The Fool (Key 0, value 1) of the major arcana of the tarot deck, and the Scintillating Intelligence (#11) of the path between Kether and Chokmah in the Tree of the Sephiroth.

Pollack also notes in her book that one can imagine the aleph glyph as a windmill that spins faster and faster until its blades can no longer be distinguished and it seems to be a single, complete circle. What I find intriguing, however, is the association of aleph with the ox as a domesticated or tamed animal, and also with the virtue of humility. These two aspects seem to be somewhat in conflict with the more mystical, airy associations of the Fool. I certainly don't think of the Fool as tamed!

In any case, MotT has this to say about the choice to position the Fool as the penultimate Major Arcana card, rather than the first, quoting Paul Marteau in his book Le Tarot de Marseille:

This Card is not specified by any number, for it would be necessary to put '0' r '22'. It cannot be '0', otherwise the Fool would then represent the universal indefinite, when he is actually mobile and symbolises a passage of evolution. On the other hand, it cannot be characterized by '22', i.e. by two passivities, implying inaction, which is absolutely contrary to the bearing of the personage represented on the Card.

This is exactly how I feel about The Fool, and why I think I struggled initially with the idea of the Fool being '0' and associated with the All/Void prior to manifestation. To me, the Fool is far too energetic and active not to manifest, and simply is not content to be '0'. To be fair, Pollack, Place and KHZ all make mention of the Fool as in some sense "mobile," the very hero who journeys throughout the cards of the rest of the Major Arcana, and who can reasonably be understood to show up everywhere (or nowhere). It's just that, compared to the emphasis on the Fool as beginning and impetus, this energetic and mobile aspect didn't seem to hold much weight. For me, however, it makes little sense to see him any other way. I'm reminded again of the Proof of Excluded Middle — though there is no premise for this proof (in other words, the premise is effectively empty, for it could be anything or nothing), the paradox of P ∧ ¬P is both the first supposition to be made within the proof, and also an essential aspect of the eventual conclusion. So for the Fool to show up twice within the deck, or to refuse to hold still in just one position but to hop back and forth from the beginning of the Major Arcana to the end and back again, is perfectly in keeping with his nature (if he is associated with the Excluded Middle, as he seems to be).

1/16

I find that I'm starting to lose my thread again, since I'm trying to recreate a thought process that happened very quickly what was now several days ago. So this will be a brief rundown of somewhat scattered ideas and insights based on my reading in MotT.

Hierarchy and Anarchy

MotT spends some time examining the connection between The Fool and political philosophy, especially in contrast with the philosophical trend towards communism/socialism in the 20th century, which the writer sees as a somewhat misguided pursuit of modern convenience and comfort. I'm inclined to think that there's a great deal of potential connection to the political philosophy of anarchy (though not necessarily the libertarian kind), and the writer seems to be heading somewhat in that direction, too, by suggesting that the Fool has a natural tendency to undermine the hierarchies of socio-political structures — a connection, clearly, with the idea of the court jester or fool who, because he is beyond the rules that govern the society, is free to criticize and mock the king. To quote:

Tijl Uelenspiegel [a trickster figure in Dutch/German folklore ...] is the archetype of revolutionary anarchism who, as a consequence of complete disenchantment in human authority, has neither faith nor law. His is the spirit of rebellion against all authority in the name of the freedom of the individual — the freedom of a vagabond who has nothing, who obeys no one, who is afraid of nothing, who expects no recompense and who fears no chastisement, beyond as well as here below ...the mocking spirit who, at the same time, turns the temples and altars of humanity upside down, making them collapse by means of his magic wand: ridicule. This wand, in touching things, transforms them: the solemn into the pompous, the moving into the sentimental, the courageous into the presumptuous, tears into snivelling, love into passing fancy... [...] Tijl Uelenspiegel is an archetype because he is at work with his wand always and everywhere whenever a mocking spirit thinks of himself as being "enlightening" by turning the things, ideas and ideals to which others hold into ridicule.

Here you can see both the light and dark sides of such a figure. On the one hand, a champion of the common people who mocks the powerful and reveals their power to be just so much hot air. On the other hand, such mockery and ridicule can run amok and turn everything to ash. The writer follows up on this with a comment about the role of doubt in much of the philosophy of the 19th and 20th centuries, quoting Kierkegaard saying, "Doubt is a despair of thought, despair is a doubt of the personality." Going on to note:

The existential philosophy of our time thus differs from traditional speculative philosophy in that it is founded on despair, i.e. upon the doubt of the whole personality, whilst speculative philosophy is founded on doubt, i.e. on the despair of thought alone. Now all despair, all doubt of the personality, amounts to — and is summarized by — Hamlet's famous question: "To be or not to be?" [...] He is the archetype of the isolation of completely autonomous consciousness, cut off both from Nature and the spiritual world &mdash man at the zero point between two fields of gravitation: terrestrial and celestial.

So the Fool is not only an archetype of rebellion and revolution and individuality, but also of despair, self-doubt and existential indecision. He is the paradox of free will and independence. He really is Buridan's Ass! (In this way, I think the depiction of the Fool in the Thoth tarot is maybe the best reflection of this aspect of the Fool, because he is pictured suspended mid-air, both feet completely off the ground, and while this might seem to be an amazing mystical ability to levitate, it also makes him look like a right fool who isn't just about to step off a cliff, but doesn't know which way to go once he has!)

In this way, he also reminds me of the figure that I called the Orphan in the manuscript of poems I was working on while in grad school. The Orphan who, through a powerful magical act of his mother (the Witch), was born of himself and wrote his own name into the book of the world. The Orphan's power was his complete independence from everything and everyone, but this itself was also a deep weakness (in the same way that the Witch's power came from her complete interconnection with everything and everyone, which rendered her incapable of connecting with another as Other and gave rise to her desire to give birth to the Orphan in the first place).... The contradictions represented by the Orphan and the Witch could only be reconciled through the figure of AnaMaria, who was the beloved-lover.

I really should have started my own religion.

Anyway, this "dark side" of the Fool that turns all things, through ridicule and mockery, to ash is what leads the writer of MotT to suddenly make a turn towards Heaven and drive his real point home, which is that no amount of worldly pleasures or pursuits on earth will satisfy our hunger for God.

.....Eh. I find this argument unconvincing, for rather than undermining hierarchy in general, the writer has merely replaced what he sees as an imperfect and ultimately unsatisfying hierarchy with one that is supposedly infallible, untouchable and "divine." I don't think the Fool's tendency to undercut authority stops at the feet of God. Interestingly, spending this week in the company of the Fool, I feel more comfortable now than I did before with his ability to undermine the idea of hierarchy, and it seems much clearer to me now than it did before that this insistence in MotT on the preservation of a divine hierarchy is really a departure from The Fool, not an expression of him. Yes, he may make a mockery of our limited knowledge and earthly pursuits, but surely our religious pursuits themselves (especially when they take the form of organized, socio-political constructs, i.e. religion) fall into that category, too? What pushed it over the edge for me was the writer's inclusion of several stories on the variation of "look at these various people who were involved in occult secret societies and eventually became disillusioned with the secrets and power they promised and went back to being regular ol' humble Christians"... To me, it seems like he gives very little convincing evidence that the practices and beliefs of Christianity are any more or less bread and circuses than the more mystical/occult traditions that he's deriding, and it smells a bit too much like the "I dabbled in Wicca before finding the true path" kind of silliness that is supposedly meant to bolster someone's claim to deep insights for having "walked on the wild side" for a while.

I'm much more interested in what happens when we hold that tension between the creative and destructive aspects of the Fool and commit to grounding ourselves here and now rather than escaping to some heavenly Big Master Plan that will resolve that tension for us. If we can see our way to a place where things appear to us to be both ridiculous and meaningful, I think we have discovered the real source of the Fool's freedom.

Job and Faust: Suffering and Success

On the other hand, I'm very much intrigued by his discussion of the biblical figure of Job and the folkloric figure of Faust as two different versions of how the world (or God) "tests" us.

In the story of Job, the test is one of suffering — the classic Problem of Evil that most monotheists face if they believe that God is both omniscient and benevolently all-loving: why do bad things happen to good people (and their wife and children, who in this story really get a raw deal since not only do they die, but they're treated as replaceable objects that indicate Job's wealth and status)? The temptation for Job is, can he keep the faith when everything goes to shit? And it's important to note that, in the oldest version of this story from the oral tradition, there's no point at which God steps in and is like, "Well done, Job, here's all your shit back." Job just suffers and sucks it up, gets schooled in God's hugeness and greatness, the end.

In the story of Faust, the test is of a different kind. Instead of suffering, it is the test of success: what happens when good things happen to bad (or at least, not so great) people? Faust finds himself bored and listless despite his worldly success, and so makes a deal with the Devil for access to unlimited knowledge and pleasure. Whereas Job is pushed to the breaking point by unjust suffering, it's arguable that Faust is pushed to the breaking point by unjust privilege and success (though in later versions of the story, he is saved by God's grace and the love of a woman he seduced who ultimately forgives him and pleads his case).

MotT makes the point that the modern world is very much a Faustian kind of world, where our knowledge of and mastery over the physical world around us seems to give us more and more power.... and we run the risk of pursuing knowledge and power for their own sake, eschewing the hard work of ethical reflection.

What I find interesting is that, in both cases, we again have a story of disconnection. In Job's case, his suffering disconnects him from society (through poverty), from his family (through death), from the natural world (through the failure of his livestock and land to provide for him) and even from himself (through diseases which transform his physical body into a kind of torturous prison).... And yet, his faith remains: he refuses to voluntarily disconnect himself from God by denouncing him. In this way, he remains connected to the wonders of the world in a way that transcends his own experiences of disconnection. When God shows up to lecture him, he awes Job with a display of his power and majesty as manifested through the natural world. ...With Faust (and I'm not as familiar with these stories, so forgive the less thorough analysis), the disconnection is in the opposite direction: knowledge and power that lead Faust to see everyone and everything around him, including his own physical body, as mere means to an end, as objects to be used and manipulated for pleasure rather than as whole individuals with intrinsic value in and of themselves. Insofar as Faust never recognizes the source of his disconnection and never seeks to remedy it, he ends up in Hell with the Devil — but in some stories, he is saved by God's grace, who rewards his striving itself, for in some ways, that striving (no matter how badly done or wrong-headed) is at least some way of refusing to give up on the possibility of connection and wholeness.

I think it's interesting that in most decks, the Fool is depicted as a kind of wandering vagabond, with only a single small bag of belongings to carry with him (if that), and yet, he is portrayed as serene and content. He neither suffers from his deprivation, nor allows a desire for more to burden him or disconnect him from the rest of the world. (**At some point, I plan to come back and turn a more careful eye on how all of this can be brought to bear on an ecological or natural polytheist perspective, and I think here might be a very interesting jumping off point (no pun intended!) into a discussion of sustainability. Just noting it now for further thought later on.)

1/17

This is getting ridiculous. Today is my last day working on this card, I swear.

In the chapter on the Fool, MotT spends some time talking about the inner alchemy of the "philosopher's stone," which the writer identifies as the union of spirituality and intellectuality:

This means to say that the process of induction (which "ascends from earth to heaven") and that of deduction (which "descends to earth"), the process of prayer (which "ascends from earth to heaven") and that of revelation (which "descends to earth") — i.e. the human endeavour and the action of grace from above — unite and become a complete circle which contracts and concentrates to become a point where the ascent and descent are simultaneous and coincide. And this point is the "philosopher's stone" — the principle of the identity of the human and divine, of humanism and prophetism, of intelligence and revelation, of intellectuality and spirituality.

What I find interesting in this is (a) the complete lack of focus on the reality of our physical embodiment as an aspect of either intellectuality or spirituality (let alone both), and (b) the deeply anthropocentric perspective. The writer spends a bit of time teasing out the differences between an avatar ("revelatory one," a god who descends to earth in human form) and a buddha ("awakened one," a human who ascends to enlightenment)... in order to make the point that Jesus Christ, as both fully human and fully divine and so the perfect union of divine revelation and enlightened humanism, could kick all y'all's asses.

In this conversation, it seems obvious that divine incarnation in human form is considered the epitome of a god "descending to earth," by which I take the writer to be referring, if only obliquely, to embodiment... There are no references to gods embodying or manifesting in physical forms other than human. Likewise, it seems pretty clear that the awakened or enlightened human being is the closest that embodied physical existence comes to reaching towards the divine, putting humanity (as usual) pretty high up in the hierarchy of physical beings. I think it's especially interesting that the writer refers explicitly to this human striving as "intellectuality" (and connects it to prayer), for this itself suggests there is something not-quite-physical about the whole process in any case. It would not be the case, for instance, that a woman who strives to "perfect" her physical body through diet and exercise would be considered "awakened" in the same way as the contemplative monk who strives to "perfect" himself by adhering to specific rituals and exercises in meditation and prayer. At least, this seems to be the clear implication from MotT.

Insofar as The Fool is an airy character to begin with, it might not be inappropriate to see him — as a figure poised on that cliff between sky and earth — to represent a certain degree of "intellectuality" that strives to bridge the physical world and the world of ideas and ideals. But perhaps it's also important to remember that his is a Fool's Errand, after all, and regardless of his idealism, if and when he steps off that cliff, he will find himself subject to the physical laws of embodied existence. For the intellect, this might not be so bad. It might just be the first lesson (or the last), which is that mind and body and spirit are not actually separate to begin with, and so the effort to "unite" them may very well lead the Fool to being taught that lesson in a most definite and abrupt fashion. But then, as my own experience on the cliffs at Deception Pass taught me, there can still be a kind of disconnect between the physical sensations that communicate an awareness of my surroundings, and my intellectual grasp of the situation that perceive the potential for danger in the future. Perhaps by stepping off the cliff, the Fool is already demonstrating that he has learned not to separate out these two, one from the other? (And now we're going in circles again...)

MotT also refers to the process of inner alchemy (fusing intellectuality and spirituality) to create the "philosopher's stone," as culminating in a final stage in which logic is "transformed from formal logic (i.e. general and abstract logic) — passing through the intermediary stage of 'organic logic' — into moral logic (i.e. material and essential logic)." The writer explains further:

In order to illustrate the transformation of formal logic into organic logic and this latter into moral logic, let us take the example of the axiom of formal logic: "the part is less than the whole." It is an axiom because the notion itself of "part" signifies nothing other than a quantity less than that of the whole. This is evident, when it is a matter of quantities. But this axiom is no longer absolutely valid with respect to the functions of a living organism. Here the part — and even a small part — can be as essential as the whole organism. The heart, for example, is only a small part of the body, but remove it from the body and the whole organism will cease to exist as a living organism. For the domain of organic functions it is therefore necessary to modify our axiom in the sense that "the part can be equal to the whole". But if we proceed from the organic world to the world of values, the moral world, we are obliged to modify the axiom still further. Here it should be said that "the part can be greater than the whole," because Caiaphas' reasoning that "it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, that the whole nation should not perish" (John xi, 50) is right only with regard to the domain of quantities, but is false with regard to the domain of moral values. For this "one man" that he proposed to sacrifice in order to save the people was the very reason for the existence of this people: the Messiah. Moreover, history has shown that the measure taken on Caiaphas' counsel aiming at preventing military intervention by the Romans was in vain: the Romans came all the same in A.D. 70, destroying Jerusalem and the temple of Jerusalem after having massacred its inhabitants, which was exactly what Caiaphas wanted to avoid...

Moral logic, in contrast to formal logic and organic logic, operates with values instead of notions of grammar, mathematics, or biological functions.

It's going to take a while to unpack all that is problematic with this particular argument (which is why this examination of the Fool never seems to end).

My first issue with this line of reasoning is that I think the writer's example of "moral logic" is pretty shitty, since it takes for granted a very specific worldview and set of religious beliefs, and if you do not share those religious beliefs, the gist of his argument is no longer immediately obvious. For instance, if you do not happen to believe that Jesus was "the very reason for the existence of this people" — either because you don't happen to hold to this particular Christology, or because you think it might be problematic and potentially racist to suggest that Jesus was the "point" of the Jews (which kind of suggests that their only "point" now is to be the target of conversion). Even among Christians, it's arguable whether or not Jesus was "the very reason for the existence of" this particular community or even humanity in general, or if (taking Jesus' own words at face value), humanity was the very reason for his existence, as, you know, it's kinda implied in that whole "for God so loved the world that he sent his only son..." bit.

Setting that aside, I think the writer is pretty much spot on when he refers to this reasoning as "passing through" organic logic, since he seems to be arguing primarily against formal logic and its focus on quantities, and not really giving much thought at all to what he calls "organic logic" and its emphasis on qualities and relationships. Arguably, the idea of "values" (which he assigns to "moral logic") is inherently tied up with this idea of qualities and relationships, and it's not at all clear to me why organic logic by itself isn't enough to show why Caiaphas acted unethically in this scenario. If you want to illustrate why it's wrong to sacrifice one person for the sake of the many, all you need to do is posit that parts can be equal to the whole, which is the very way in which the writer characterized organic logic. It is not necessary to believe that the part is greater than the whole, only that they are of equal value. Once you make that consideration, the question of sacrifice becomes a question of the free will of the individual. Jesus's sacrifice would not have been an act of sacred redemption if he had not willingly submitted to his fate. It was the attempt to violate the sanctity of the individual for the sake of the greater good that makes Caiaphas' act unethical. And you can tell that it is a violation of organic logic rather than the supposed moral logic the writer claims that makes the act unethical because we know, without having to be told, that it would have been just as wrong to say "Let's save Jesus by killing all the Jews." Even if we accept the writer's claim that Jesus, as a part, was greater than the "whole" of the Jewish community.... we still know that it would be wrong to sacrifice that "whole" for his sake.

At least, I hope we do. I have a feeling that a failure to grasp the very obvious reason why such an act would be unethical is the very thing that led to, say, the Crusades for instance. Or almost any other example of when someone takes it upon themselves to harm or oppress others "in the name of God."

The other way we can tell that this kind of "moral logic" is not actually all that moral is that it's difficult to think of even one other example where it's an obvious ethical statement to say that "the part is greater than the whole." I asked Jeff if he could think of one, and initially he brought up Star Trek, when (and I'm not a big fan of the original series, so I might be getting this wrong) Kirk risks the entire ship to save Spock.

• First of all, it is not obvious that this is the best and most ethical choice to make, it's a heart-wrenching dilemma (which is why it makes for good, dramatic television).
• Second, it is a heart-wrenching choice precisely because, in this case, Spock is equal to but not greater than the rest of the ship and crew. I wouldn't say he is analogous to the "heart" of the Enterprise, obviously, but maybe some other vital organ, like the liver, filtering out the bullshit. Without him, the Enterprise wouldn't be the same, it would be impoverished. This is why we can joke about red shirts getting killed every other episode, but when it's Spock, damn it, not okay. (And as a television show, Star Trek takes this for granted. In the real world, we know that it would be unethical to shrug off the red shirt deaths more easily than Spock's and see them as "collateral damage" just because we don't personally have a relationship with them. This fact is handled more carefully in later Star Trek series.)
• Third, imagine a scenario in which they succeeded in saving Spock but at the cost of the lives of everyone else. This wouldn't be okay. It would be a tragedy. Why should it be a tragedy, if Spock were more important than all those other people? We recognize that the only really satisfying ending is if they are both saved. And it is precisely because we hope that they will both be saved that we are willing to accept the risk of sacrificing one for the other. If the situation were different, and the destruction of the Enterprise was absolutely certain, we would in general think that it was not okay to go ahead and kill everybody else just because Spock is so damn cool.
• Fourth and finally, we assume within the context of the show that everyone who's there has agreed to be there and is therefore a willing sacrifice if it should come to that. In real life, again, this isn't always the case and sometimes the underlings in a hierarchical and/or militaristic organization or institution have to follow orders even if it violates their own conscience. But generally, when this happens, we acknowledge it as an ethical failure, either on the part of the individual or the organization as a whole, or both. We don't generally excuse members of the military who commit gross ethical violations simply because they were "following orders"; even the lowliest soldier is explicitly told that they must abide first by the rules of their own conscience. Of course, the topic of military soldiers gets us back to the question of parts and wholes again, since it's usually assumed that soldiers fighting in a war are fighting for "the greater good." The fact that it seems so slippery and difficult to pin down when someone is acting in the role of the part or the role of the whole should itself be an indication that this whole conception of "moral logic" is not actually as clear as MotT wants to make it out to be.

But enough about Star Trek. The point is, MotT's biggest misstep is to make the very common mistake of equating moral reasoning with hierarchical reasoning, and from there to claim that hierarchy is necessary for moral reasoning. What else other than hierarchy could assert that a "part" can be not merely equal to but greater than a whole? What else other than hierarchy could create a structure for moral reasoning in which the good of certain individuals is held above the good of the community? This is the same logic which concludes that atheists can't be moral people if they don't believe in God.

But as we've seen, a morality of hierarchy does not help us to make ethical choices. In the cases when it leads us to make an ethical choice, we discover that organic logic would have been sufficient to make that choice. And there are occasions when a morality of hierarchy can lead us to make choices that are clearly unethical.

The real purpose of hierarchical morality is not to help us make ethical choices, but to make tragedy more palatable. In most scenarios demanding ethical reasoning, hierarchical morality is at best superfluous (when it doesn't unnecessarily complicate matters). It is at its most useful when stepping in to reduce the ethical tragedy of situations in which all of the choices seem equally bad. Hierarchical morality steps in to say, "Of course we need to protect the king at all costs, even if it means the whole army dies." No questions asked. Let's not make a big thing of it. It reduces the complexity of seeing not only the king, but also every individual soldier fighting for him, as fully whole and unique human beings who are all equally worthy of life. And it does this, ironically enough, almost always by resorting to formal logic by saying, "Oh, well, but we have to save the king because, without him, the whole community will fall apart!" Which is just another way of saying "sacrifice the few for the one, because the one represents and/or is needed by the many/the whole."

On the other hand, organic logic is Buridan's Ass all over again, torn between two choices that seem in all ways equal. That is the tragedy (and, in the Ass's case, the tragicomedy) of ethical reasoning. But it's not one that can be diminished or expunged by invoking hierarchy. Hierarchy can only serve to mask it, and we mask tragedy at our own peril, for it cultivates in us a tendency to desensitize ourselves and see the world in simpler terms. This seems so freaking obvious to me, and so deeply related to the Fool in his role as someone who undermines hierarchy, asserts the freedom of the individual in the face of this tragicomic paradox and pulls off the mask of easy answers to expose the complex mess underneath.... I mean, seriously, you guys.

(At this point, I'm closing in on 10,000 words devoted to this card. W.T.F.)

So let's take just a few more moments to think more carefully about the implications of "organic logic," since MotT did such a piss poor job of it and since it seems like a fruitful place to pursue this connection between the Fool and an ecological, nature-centered spirituality.

The writer describes organic logic as having to do with qualities and functions (i.e. relationships) rather than quantities and says that, in organic logic, "the part can be equal to the whole." But his later references to it seem to suggest that he actually views organic logic as just another kind of quantitative logic, lumping "biological functions" in along with mathematics and grammar. (I have to admit, I'm not sure I understand his reference to grammar in this situation — maybe Jeff has some more insight into this.) For instance, the heart is "equal to the whole" only insofar as the heart serves the body it belongs to. While we might imagine a case in which we have to save the heart in order to save the body, we're unlikely to think of saving the body in order to save the heart. And while we can, thanks to modern medicine, save the body and replace the heart with something that serves the same function, it would seem nonsensical to save the heart while sacrificing or replacing the body. So in this sense, it's not exactly true that the heart is really "equal to" the body, for its value isn't intrinsic so much as it is functional.

However, we don't need to postulate a hierarchy in which "a part can be greater than the whole" — it's perfectly possible to imagine things as having intrinsic but equal value. This is the challenge that environmentalists face in trying to talk about how best to respect and conserve particular ecosystems. On the one hand, we know that a wolf killing an elk is a natural part of a balanced ecosystem and that the wolf has intrinsic value as a living thing and deserves to be able to eat and, therefore, survive. On the other hand, we can also see the elk as having intrinsic value as a living thing that also deserves life. In addition, we might see the ecosystem of as a whole in which the wolf and the elk are only "parts" — but that doesn't mean that we can make the ethical choice to view wolves and elks as intrinsically less valuable as individual beings as the "whole" ecosystem. (This, incidentally, is the tragedy of humanity's place as just one of many intrinsically equal and valuable beings, some of which we need to eat to survive, and the things that many indigenous cultures tried to cope with and address through sacred rituals of the hunt. It's what I've generally called the "Problem of Justice," which is the non-hierarchical counterpoint to the monotheist's Problem of Evil.)

There is another aspect of "organic logic" that MotT leaves out entirely, and that's the idea that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." This is, basically, the concept of emergence — that relationships among individuals can give rise to an emergent order which then itself becomes a new whole. The science of ecology deals not just with systems, but with systems nested within systems, in which determining a clear-cut hierarchy of value is next to impossible. Understanding relationships in terms of ecology shows us not only that everything and everyone on the planet is interconnected, but that these connections are themselves multidimensional, so to speak. The story of modern society is one long story of running up against our ignorance about just how important even the smallest "part" can turn out to be to the "whole," and the discovery that what we took for granted as a whole is actually just one part of some other whole, while what we thought was a part is actually a whole in its own right. It's not only "turtles all the way down," but also turtles all the way up!

But now I really am talking in circles, so I think that about wraps it up. I'm still working towards clarity on this whole issue of ethics as it relates to ecology. Maybe some of the other Major Arcana cards will help me find some clarity on that issue.

I'll wrap up my work on the Fool by doing a divinatory reading (using one helpfully suggested in Pollack's book). But I'll save that for a separate post. I want to get this monstrosity up so I can stop worrying it like an old bone, at least for now.