Daniel’s Journal #80 — A Journey of Fools
Who is The Fool? In the realm of the tarot, they’re a figure taking part in a brand new journey of adventure and discovery. They’ve got their bindle, a little canine companionship, and a shitload of unabashed optimism. The path they plan on traveling is fraught with hazards and oddities that will be new and somewhat terrifying, but they figure a combination of their wiles and dumb luck will be enough to traverse this weird landscape. The Major Arcana of the Tarot tells The Fool’s journey through the places he goes and the entities he meets. Such figures as The Magician, The Hanged Man, and The Devil to name just a few show up during their adventure.
But We’re not here to discuss The Fool’s journey as laid out by the tarot cards and my interpretation of it. Tarot is not only about the story told by the cards but the one told by the reader. The cards have their meanings, and you can find them in any of the hundreds or thousands of tarot books on the market. What matters most, in contrast, is how the one reading the cards interprets the cards’ meanings for that particular spread.
To paraphrase myself: I wasn’t going to write a blog topic about the tarot. This piece should have gone out weeks ago as it coincided with some other nonsense I was plastering on the internet about The Fool for April Fool’s Day, which happens on the first of April every year. Due to a heavy writing load, my impending vacation last week, and other impromptu factors, I’m writing and dropping this piece two entire weeks late! So thanks for your patience if you happened to be waiting for this one.
Getting back on task, The Fool isn’t just a figure from Card Zero of The Major Arcana of The Tarot for me. They’re the archetype of what a main character should be. An air of naivety swarms around their head along with a happy-go-lucky sense of “everything will turn out OK”. This isn’t to say The Fool is stupid. They may be foolish, which comes with the territory, but this isn’t about their intellect. Every story has moments where the main character, or characters in an ensemble piece, meander through their given tasks while reaching for their ultimate goal. They make mistakes, fuck up their own story, and generally have a bad time going about it. Unless you’re writing an extremely boring and infallible character, they’re going to make mistakes and have to change their plans on the fly. A good Fool rolls with the problems that arise, learning how to deal with them. If possible, they’ll do whatever they can to make a faulty turn work for them as they inch their way toward their climax, fulfilling the prophecy their writers have laid out for them.
Ignorance is another word that could describe our Fools. I’m not laying it out there as an insult or a bad thing. Neo at the start of the first Matrix movie is a genius hacker, but he is also ignorant of the world outside of the simulation. We can say the same thing about Frodo in Lord of the Rings. He was an astute hobbit who was ignorant of the wider world of Middle Earth outside of The Shire and the dangers it presented.
So where does that leave us? If you’re a writer, then you undoubtedly have written a Fool’s Journey or two of your own. You might not have even realized you’ve been doing it all along! The Fool resides inside all of us. We’ve all been naïve or ignorant in our lives, and we’ve embarked on journeys that send us into the unknown. It could be the first day at a new job, heading out on a blind date, or even leaving for vacation to somewhere you’ve never been. We are all fools at some point in our lives, and I’m sure there is a fool or two reading this right now. The inspiration for the start of your story already exists!
I feel like I’ve gone off on quite a few tangents, making this blog piece a Fool’s Journey inception. I don’t even remember where I wanted to go with this. Perhaps I relied too heavily on dumb luck to get me through it. Either way, I hope you got something out of this short piece, even if it was an unmitigated mess. Wherever your Fool’s Journey takes you, I hope it leads somewhere prosperous!
Daniel Aegan—4/17/25
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