3 Fool cards from 3 decks. Left to right: Rider-Waite-Smith publisher US Games, Tarot Illuminati by Eric C. Dunne publisher Lo Scarabeo, Gilded Tarot Royale by Ciro Marchetti publisher Llewellyn

If you know even a little bit about Tarot, you’ve probably heard of the idea The Fool’s Journey.

The main idea is that the Fool journeys through the 21 cards of the major arcana in order to gain knowledge and experience. 

In other words, to grow and evolve.

It’s a profound and helpful model and it goes without saying that in real life it’s not a linear journey as mapped in the model.

But there’s another way to look at this that doesn’t assume the Fool is actually moving anywhere. It changes the whole structure of what this journey even is.

Fools Journey In A Nutshell

Not including The Fool, there are 21 cards in the major arcana of Tarot’s 78 card total. The Fool is numbered zero. Most people place The Fool at the very beginning of the arcana. 

Note: for the uninitiated, “arcana” means “secrets” 

This makes complete sense as The Fool could be imagined as the soul a moment prior to choosing incarnation.

Once in human form, the soul goes through The Fool’s Journey.

The 21 cards are often divided into 3x7 horizontal groupings one on top of the other in 3 layers.

All major arcana tarot cards from the RWS deck published by US Games divided into 3 rows of 7 with The Fool present as well.

Don’t worry if you don’t know Tarot! The rest of this article will make sense even if you know nothing.

Simply follow along as best you can for now and I promise it will make sense by the end.

• The Magician (card 1) through The Chariot (card 7) summarize the development of the ego stage.
• Strength (card 8) through Temperance (card 14) describe the arc of integration and some depth to accompany the egos development.
• The Devil (card 15) through The World (card 21) show the breakdown of ego structure and its rebirth into something new that transcends the ego but still includes it.

My New Model of The Fool’s Journey

Here’s my new perspective on The Fool’s Journey. 

The Fool is both at the very beginning AND the very end after the world card AND also behind every single major arcana card.

What?!

Hear me out…

If the Fool isn’t actually moving through a linear sequence, then the idea of a “journey” starts to break down. Not because experience doesn’t unfold, but because the assumption of linear progression may not be the only way to organize what’s happening in the first place.

Instead of thinking in terms of stages, we can start to ask a different question: what if all of these cards are already happening within the same field of experience?

Zero Is Not the Beginning. Zero Is Everything

Since The Fool in tarot is numbered zero, it’s almost universally accepted that it’s placed before The Magician (number 1).

Oswald Wirth, a French/Swiss occultist and one of the most revered Tarotists of the 19th century, places The Fool at the end of the deck.

He did this to show The Fool as representing the divine spark within each human being having successfully met the trials and tribulations of earthly life and now transcended it with the potential to break the past karmic cycle.

This is an elegant way to view the card and it lines up with my perspectives as well.

That said, I still think it belongs at the beginning too.

Which brings me to the main thesis I’ve been laying the groundwork for.

The Fool is also behind every single major arcana (and every card in the entire deck for that matter) as the witnessing Presence.

I 100% agree with Wirth and other occultists and mystics who have shared their experience of uniting with Reality and the divine spark within.

The Fool is symbolic of this divine spark we all have within us.

When and where in life could we ever be without it?

Maybe we’ve never felt it. 

Or maybe we have, but many times it seems absent.

You’ll have to take not only my word for it, but the countless mystics across cultures who have said the same essential thing.

This Presence, or Intelligence-Space, allows for the content of your life to be.

Without this Presence, you would not be aware of any thoughts, feelings, sounds or experiences.

The Fool is the unchanging awareness behind every form.

Some people call it the I Am.

This Presence watches The Tower’s fall, sits in The Hermit’s solitude, feels The Lover’s risk and endures The Moon’s uncertainty. 

Presence as symbolized by The Fool both moving through AND un-moving through the complete map of human experience.

How Does The Fool Move But Not Move?

The cross is an ancient symbol, in use long before Christianity made it their own.

Its horizontal arm represents movement through space and time. And both traditional placements of The Fool live here. Whether you place The Fool at the beginning of the deck (the soul before incarnation, about to step into experience) or at the end as Wirth does (the soul having met every trial, now transcending them), both are still sequential ideas. Alpha and omega. A journey with a start and a finish.

That's not wrong. It's just not complete.

Because the cross also has a vertical axis.

The vertical isn't a position on the journey. It isn't the beginning or the end. It's the dimension of Presence itself, the witnessing awareness that doesn't move through time at all, but that is here for every moment of it.

This is what it means to place The Fool behind every card in the deck. Not before them. Not after them. Behind them. Present for The Tower's collapse and The Hermit's silence and The Moon's uncertainty, unchanged by any of it.

The horizontal and the vertical aren't two separate things. They're one cross. Movement and stillness. Time and the eternal now. Both real. Both part of the same whole.

The Fool isn't just a card you pass through at the beginning. It's what you actually are, beneath every role, every experience, every card the journey moves through.

What This Actually Means For You

The Fool isn't just a card. It's what you actually are beneath every role, every experience, every triumph and difficulty the other cards describe. The journey happens. This is the alchemy of experience. The actualization of Love. 

BUT the one who witnesses the journey was never actually lost. Curious about that witnessing Presence? I explore it further here.

If you'd like to experience this directly rather than just understand it, Presence Sessions are exactly for that.