November/December 2008 Cosmic
The Tao of Tarot: The Fool

by Christina Bjero

The secret of the Fool card in tarot is his spiritual faith and the understanding that the mightiest secret that one can possess is realized by following the way of spirit.

The word tarot is derived from "tota" meaning "total" and "rota" meaning "revolving wheel." The tarot is a deck of cards that uses symbolic imagery to express universal truths. With each movement of the wheel, deeper understanding into the cycles of life and the seasons of the soul is accessible. Ultimately, the journey around the wheel takes each of us inward to the center of ourselves, to the totality of our being, the source of all healing.

The Major Arcana are the original 22 cards of the tarot. Webster's Dictionary defines arcana as the great secret of nature which the alchemists sought. This mysterious remedy is the formula for long life and spiritual transcendence sought after by alchemists and spiritual seekers in almost every culture since the beginning of human culture.

The mysterious origins of alchemy came from Egypt and China then spread through Greece, early Islam and medieval Europe. In China, the earliest practitioners appear to have been the Taoists. Less interested in transmuting metals to gold, like their western counterparts, Chinese alchemists focused primarily on inner cultivation techniques such as qigong to purify the physical body and become one with spirit. Qigong, translated as working with universal life force energy, is a means to physical vitality, emotional wellness and unity consciousness.

Unknown to most people, alchemical wisdom set the foundation for contemporary traditional Chinese Medicine. The Asian secrets of health, longevity and spiritual illumination are likewise hidden in the symbols of the Universal Waite tarot deck.

The Fool

The first and sometimes the last card of the Tarot's Major Arcana is The Fool. Rather than the Fool, however, I would suggest that the youth depicted as both the alpha and the omega is like Jesus Christ, the archetype for the spiritual adept. A spiritual adept being an initiate who has passed all challenges (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual), who understands the mysteries of reality, and experiences a state of enlightened oneness of consciousness.

Hindu philosophy uses the term avatar to describe the descent or incarnation of the supreme being into physical form on Earth. This term is also used to reference the incarnations of God or highly spiritual teachers such as Jesus, Abraham, Muhammad, Shiva, Quetzalcoatl and Buddha. The Inner Traditions of Chinese Medicine teach that we can all experience health, long life and the absolute. The great teaching of the Chinese Taoist philosopher and alchemist Lao Tzu is equivalent to the archetypal meaning of the Fool. We each inherently have everything we need within us to live healthy, happy lives. We are already perfect. Returning to a state of innocence, through alchemical transformation we remember who we truly are.

Each of the 22 Major Arcana cards is represented by a number. Above the picture of the Fool, we see the number zero as a black circle. The Chinese character for the number zero means emptiness. Emptiness, also known as "Wu" in Chinese philosophy, is the way back home to our authentic nature, the Tao. Returning to this state of emptiness is the original purpose of qigong movement meditation.

Cultivating emptiness is the most potent of spiritual practices. It is surrender to the highest power - the transcendental and unifying state of nonbeing. Prayer is also the practice of emptiness of the highest degree when it is a letting go of the ego's control and limited vantage point. For when we can truly release attachments and fears, we create a space to receive the omnipotent power of pure consciousness. This timeless, eternal state of the absolute can then speak through our hearts and guide us.

In Chinese Medicine theory, the heart is the heavenly abode of spirit and the center of our being. The heart as fire element is equivalent to the brilliance of the celestial sun. All the other organs and officials of the body take direction from this emperor of the body. Likewise, the purification of the heart is a means to all healing and body-mind-spirit wellness, as all diseases are in a sense related to the heart.

In qigong movement meditation, we quiet our minds allowing the radiance of the universe, of omnipotent consciousness to channel through and harmonize our bodies and hearts. This practice of prayer in motion cleanses away limiting beliefs, dualistic thinking, emotional constraints and stored traumas believed to compromise the immune system.

As scientist and researcher Candice Pert, Ph. D. explains in Everything You Need to Know to Feel Go(o)d, these negative influences are held within the cell receptors of the physical body. Yet as we release old programs and patterns, our cells themselves dance to a higher vibration allowing us to embrace life with joy and experience greater states of peace. As science is now showing, when we feel good we strengthen our bodies and connect with God.

In The Records of the Historian, Confucius speaks of his visit with Lao Tzu saying, "Today I have seen Lao Tzu and I can say that I have seen the dragon." Dragons, a symbol of the Tao in Asia, possess a divine and angelic nature. Pictured in Chinese art, they coil among the clouds pursuing or surrounding the flaming pearl of spiritual illumination. A dragon or serpent in circular form creates the ouroboros, an ancient revolving symbol of cyclical change leading to primordial unity in many cultures.

As "self devourer" they have universal representation in ancient Aztec, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Norse, Hindu, Native American, Christian and alchemical teachings. The space within the circle is the central life force energy or "Chong qi" in Chinese Medicine. Described as the whirling emptiness created from uniting heaven and earth (the yang and yin opposites), it is a tool for returning to the great abyss or void of the eternal and infinite Tao.

We find the ouroboros symbol representing the cosmos in mandalas, megalithic structures, church window Cathedrals, Native American medicine wheels, Pueblo sand paintings, the zodiac wheels, the I Ching and dreamcatchers. Applied to the human body, the central qi is more commonly known as the kundalini or spiraling serpent energy.

Dragons in China represent spiritual energy, the direction of the East and the time of dawn when the sun begins its ascent into the sky. They are further represented on Earth as the element of wood and the greenness of plants in the springtime when new growth sprouts upward towards the warmth of the sun to flourish once more. The energy of the east and the dragon is characterized by a rising upward movement of yang or masculine energy.

The Fool and the Dragon

We can observe this symbolism expressed in the imagery of Waite's the Fool card in a number of ways. First we find our youth is a young male (yang energy), lifting his countenance and heart upward toward the sky (upward movement is characteristic of the wood's energy). We also see the young man wears images of fruit and leaves (wood element) on his clothing to reinforce this concept. He further carries a single white rose as a symbol of transcendental energies and a wooden pole reflecting the kundalini dragon's ascent up the central channel and the spine. That the Fool has experienced enlightenment is shown both in the red feather in the hat (kundalini energy now at the crown of the head) and the similarly colored sack carried at the top of the wooden pole.

The ancient Taoists likened that the consciousness of the body was equivalent to spirit, represented by the sun. This connection is depicted by the placement of the red feather linking the young man to the sun in the background. This physical to spiritual correspondence demonstrates that what appears to be two and separate (body and spirit) are in reality unified as one.

The imagery of the Fool is reminiscent of the constellation of Orion the hunter followed faithfully by his dog Sirius or Canis Major in the night sky. Similarly, the youth in Waite's image walks forward in serene confidence with his canine friend afoot.

Dogs have universal symbolism as guides to the dead in the underworld. Buried in tombs of ancient China they guided the deceased to the heavens. Deified in India as an aspect of Shiva the destroyer they were liberators of the soul. Similarly, in ancient Egypt the jackal-headed god Anubis taught humanity how to attain the immortal body and preserve or mummify the physically deceased. Priests wearing jackal-headed masks prepared the dead through extensive ritual for their journey to the stars. It is through the underworld or the world of dreams that we receive guidance from the infinite intelligence of the universe into the eternal nature of reality.

In Greek mythology it was the three-headed dog Cerberus who guards the entrance to the land of the dead until the hero Hercules as a final labor brings him into the light of day. The 18th century interpretation by writer Zachary Grey is that the three heads of Cerberus represent the past, present and future that "devours all things."

It is only through Herculean efforts that one can be "victorious over time" and find true liberation. In the 20th century, famed psychologist Carl Jung highlights the importance of exploring the personal dreamscape to liberate and reunite the splintered aspects of the self that have been relegated to the underworld of myth, the shadows of the subconscious. The journey to healing is, therefore, a return to wholeness. The circular shape of the number zero on the Fool card reflects this.

Walking in the pure consciousness of divine light we see that the dog as symbol of the inner self has gone through an alchemical transformation. His body consciousness has been alchemically cleansed or whitened and is without burden. Illuminated, he is white light, representative of spiritual perfection.

Christina Bjergo is a Vancouver-based acupuncturist, shiatsu practitioner and shamanic worker, and a qigong grand master of sacred serpent spiral qigong. For upcoming classes, visit www.wildirisasianwellness.com or email cbjergo@msn.com.