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On Courage and Fools

by | Mar 3, 2022 | Journal, Strength, Wisdom Bites | 0 comments

Where do we get the audacity?

The Fool is the first card of the major arcana in a tarot deck (though it is technically card 0, pure possibility).

We are more familiar with the hero’s journey than the Fool’s journey, but both begin at the same place – blindness to what awaits them.

Similar to the hero’s journey, the Fool’s journey is through the field of human experience. They encounter magic, power, love, solitude, death, and faith, among other common steps and missteps. Each of these cars represents an archetype that, when drawn, tells us how we’re showing up for life.

Courage is not an archetype explicitly present in a tarot deck, though it sneaks into many cards on the journey. In fact, it is the journey. As the Fool finds, life is a challenging river to ford. We have to be nearly tricked by our naïveté to go into it and cajoled along by bittersweet sips of truth’s elixir.

The key to the Fool’s emergence at the end – into the glorious brilliance of the final card, the World – is their inability to know what’s coming at the beginning. If they had any degree of foresight, their mind would refuse to allow the outrageous risk of being.

Courage is not the opposite of foolishness, nor is it a synonym for strength. Courageous can appear foolish from the outside, but this action is often guided by the wisdom that the Fool will earn at the journey’s end.

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“On this path effort never goes to waste, and there is no failure.”

The Bhagavad Gita 2:40