THE FOOL

This is where it begins. There is no safe position from which to observe life's grand parade. For better or worse, you are in the thick of it from the moment you take your first step. The Fool is usually seen stepping off of a precipice into thin air, sometimes blithely, sometimes enthusiastically. Either way, it's obvious that he's moments away from catching air.

It's foolish to involve myself personally in this post, but since it's also oddly appropriate, I'll point out that I'm the one in the photo above, jumping on my bed at the Sands Motel in Montauk during a trip I took with my sister. I was inspired by BedJump.com, which boasts feats of hotel bed-jumping the likes of which you thought only existed in legend. I'm impressed by the idea that treating hotel property like playground equipment has become more or less universally accepted. It's stupid, it's childish, it's disrespectful -- but it's also near-impossible to resist, and so easy to forget ourselves and let fly.

Everyone always says that we cringe away from high places as actually a defense mechanism to thwart our unconscious desire to leap off; whether it's true in life, it's definitely true in the Tarot. The height of clarity and totality of the World card fills us with such inspiration that we can't resist leaping from the summit and revelling in our own wonderful, imperfect, nonsensical existence.

The Fool is not assigned a number. He is zero, he's the air you inhale in order to laugh, or to scream, or to begin counting. And while he may not come up in every reading, technically he is where all readings begin: with a cipher. A question.

What's yours?