Dreampower
Tarot - Fool
R.J. Stewart and Stuart Littlejohn
(artist).
1993 Aquarian Press
ISBN 0 85538 300 4
It is night. You are standing on a flagstone
path in front of a massive oaken gate. The left door of the gate
is partially obscured by a gnarled stubby tree, while to the right
is a stone wall. You can't see anything behind the gate; only the
stars in the inky blue sky above. The gate is made up of two doors
which come together in the shape of an arch. They are reinforced
by iron bindings. The right door has a keyhole, while the left has
a gargoyle knocker. If you have the key, you can simply enter.
Otherwise, you may knock with the knocker and summon whoever or
whatever is on the other side to let you pass.
"Very nervously he watched that narrow oaken
gate in the high and ivy-clad stone wall. ... Then he sensed a
soft tread or tapping on the walk inside the gate, heard a gentle
fumbling at the rusty latch, and saw the narrow, heavy door swing
inward." (H. P. Lovecraft)
What is on the other side? Do you dare step
through?
The door in the hedge, the gate to the
secret garden, the wardrobe into Narnia all are entries into other
worlds. Different decks support different twists on this: some
decks make it more apparent that the Fool is the higher self
leaping into incarnation into a new mortal lifespan on this Earth;
others emphasize the qabalistic emanation from the one point of
Kether to dimension as the light moves to Chokmah. This deck is
designed around R.J. Stewart's work with the Underworld, of which
the Faery Realm is a part. Stewart, like Charles de Lint, a folk
musician, looks to ancient folk songs as storehouses of tradition,
and has also created a deck based on the Vita Merlini, the Merlin
Tarot.
I see this picture and immediately think of
Greg Bear's novel The Infinity Concerto, which early on has the
hero stepping through a gate into faery. It also suggests the
gates Inanna passed through on her journey to the Underworld, with
all the transformations that wrought. The gargoyle door knocker
suggests to me another mysterious figure carved on Irish churches,
Sheela na Gig, guardian goddess of gateways. Hag of birth and
death. Kathryn Price Theatana, in her site dedicated to Sheela
states that, "In much of the Scottish lore the year is ruled
alternately by the Hag of Winter and the Maiden Queen of Summer.
Yet I see Síla as another, lesser known, third face of this
well-known duality: the manifestation of the usually-hidden
doorway that emerges when these forces are balanced or in flux.
She holds the doorway which opens in the liminal-times: the days
of Bealtaine and Samhain, the twilight of sunrise or sunset, and
when the mists arise where the land and the sky meet the waters.
She is both and neither, an Otherworldly force that refuses to fit
into either/or categories."
The cipher manuscript of the Golden Dawn
states that "These two numbers have corrupted Egyptian Titles: 1
to the 0, Mat - to the 1 Pagad. These are Maut = Mother Goddess
and Pekht = Extension. Maut of all extended through the Universe,
“and above the shoulders of that great Goddess is nature in her
vastness exalted.” " (quoted by Paul Hughes-Barlow) In the Book of
Thoth, Crowley states, "If Tarot is of Egyptian origin, Mat really
stands for Maut, the vulture goddess, who is an earlier and more
sublime modification of the idea of Nuith than Isis." His purpose
is ultimately to show that "This card is therefore both the father
and the mother, in the most abstract form of these ideas." (which
he does by relating the ancient notion that vultures were
impregnated by the wind, and as this card represents Air, it is
also Father), but as I was reading this, my mind paused at the
theme of the vulture goddess, and how she fit with Sheela. The
other vulture goddess of Egypt, Nekhbet, is in fact associated
with childbirth.
Again, Kathryn Price Theatana: "When we
approach the doorway to sacred space, or the gateway to life and
death, we go with openness and acceptance of the Mystery: No one
truly knows what awaits us on the other side. Will the Goddess who
greets you be hideous and challenging? Or will She welcome you
with love and open arms? Are you sure She will even be there at
all? And which of these challenges is truly the hardest for you to
face at this point on your soul’s journey? "
Joan Cole |
