How Tarot of Cosmic
Consciousness Cards were created
The Fool – Zero
Someone asked what my inspiration was for the design and
colors of Tarot of Cosmic Consciousness
cards. So to begin, in looking back, I first discovered Tarot cards in an
occult bookshop in 1973. Then the Rider-Waite deck became the impetus to find
out how and why the older decks were designed the way they were. What inspired
the artists of early decks in choosing subject matter, colors, and arrangements?
What was the original meaning of each card? I was especially interested in seeing
how the art was somehow related to Renaissance Art and Medieval Art that I had learned
about in art history classes. Some cards resembled the paintings of Durer,
Mantegna, Hieronymus Bosch, and other religious artists’ work of that
period. Therefore, I began collecting Tarot
decks and reading a lot about their meaning.
Much of the art for Tarot
of Cosmic Consciousness cards started in my sketchbooks and progressed from
there. It was always an “aha” experience: “Yes, that sketch would make a good
start for a Universe card,” and so on. Since there were already so many Tarot decks
depicting people, I decided to just get to the core of meaning through symbols
of geometry and color, so my cards appear more abstract. But in the
accompanying book for Tarot of Cosmic
Consciousness, I have followed the general interpretation based on the
earlier decks. In this blog, I will start by describing my art choices for The Fool and continue the discussion
about the rest of the cards in future blogs.
The Fool: In Tarot of
Cosmic Consciousness, The Fool is depicted with a zero. Why? In most decks, it’s
usually found at the beginning of the 22 Major Arcana cards: a vagabond or
adventurer who starts with nothing.
Why is The Fool
placed at the beginning of the Major Arcana but also, sometimes at the end? It’s
place value is zero. In the frontispiece of the Paul Foster Case book, The Tarot: The wisdom of the Ages, is a
diagram showing how a zero figure can evolve into the numbers 1-10, (I have drawn
this in detail in the Tarot of Cosmic
Consciousness book). The meaning of the term zero is described as the
absence of quantity or mass. In Sanskrit, it means an empty place, naught. It is also a mathematical
value that is neither positive or negative. The essence of The Fool card is simplicity. In a reading, it can represent someone
or something starting out with nothing, no-thing, yet is full of
possibilities. It is not just a dark blank emptiness. The Fool presents us with a reality check in getting back to “Who
am I, where am I, and what is this place; where am I going”? It is the unknown
underlying every card of the deck.
Upon contemplating The Fool card, we can peel back several
layers of questions and answers about oneself. First, think about the birth of
a newborn. That baby is a tiny soul who literally starts out in an instant with
nothing. It has no awareness of self,
knows nothing, has no name, no ego. It is a simple beginning. But then, immediately,
everything starts to impress and influence this little person. Right away, this
new person starts accumulating “something:” food, warmth, love. A sense of surroundings begins; a personality begins
to form. A sense of self begins to correlate a relationship with the material
world. What is self-awareness? What else is there? As we begin to mature, we
may seek to know something more and pursue a path to a spiritual self by digging
into a deeper layer of ourselves. Then later in life, in seeing how life always
changes, we may want to work on transcending material worldly goings on. We
wonder what lies beyond this earthly life, if anything? Tarot of Cosmic
Consciousness helps point you in the right direction through meditation on its
symbols.
In meditative practice, people start by contemplating
nothingness, emptiness, and work on the elimination of wants and desires,
especially those desires that lead to suffering as revealed in Zen Buddhism
practice, and in some Christian retreats. What is the difference between
nothingness and emptiness? “True
emptiness is Wondrous Being,” says Keiji Nishitani in Religion and Nothingness (University of California Press, 1982).
Bernadette Roberts, in her book The Experience of No-self, (Shambhala,
1984) writes: “So this is what I
discovered: that self is the entire affective emotional network of feelings,
from the most subtle unconscious stirrings of energy to the obvious extremes of
passionate outbursts” (p. 170). As we
progress on our journey through this life, we soon wonder about spiritual
selfhood and the impermanence of a material sense of self. “Here today, gone tomorrow. Is this all there is?” For some, it is
the transcendence of ego, a spiritual awakening. For others, it is the
transformation of ego by finding the true spiritual self in union with God, or
the One Being, or the Cosmic Mind of the universe. It’s the essence of
something bigger then oneself. That may be why The World card or Universe
card is at the end of the Major Arcana. “What goes around comes around,” and we
are back to The Fool again.
This is what I was thinking about in creating The Fool card. It’s meaning can be a
step into an infinity of possibilities for oneself throughout a lifetime. They
say “tomorrow is a new day,” so when you get up in the morning to face that new
day, it’s good to start out as the innocent fool who knows nothing and let the
day unfold as it should.
“Are we ever alone?” Or are we carrying
with us all the burdens of yesterday?
Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known (HarperCollins,
1969)
