Without reiterating too much of what those familiar with the
tarot will know already, and what anyone can discover with a quick web search, I’d like to say a little about my illustration for
trump 0. Any standard definition of the meaning of the fool will talk about the
combination of childlike innocence with an intuitive wisdom, about the start of
spiritual journeys and their cyclical endings. The fool is to many the quintessential
tarot trump, even more so than the final trump, The World, as it contains
within it the potential for all the other cards. The world gazes back at us
from the end of the major arcana, omniscient and omnipresent but the fool is so
much more relatable. It’s a very human card and yet it contains the seed of the
godhead. It’s the seed for the entire oracle in fact, it’s nothing at present,
a present of the future. In the Rider-Waite illustration, and many others the
fool has a feather in his cap, a classic thespian token symbolising lightness of
spirit, gaiety and the tricksters’ nature. This got me thinking about birds in
general, animals I’ve always felt an affinity for as my father is a keen
ornithologist and I grew up surrounded by spotters’ guides and other illustrated textbooks on avian life. I conceived the first three trumps almost all at once and from then
on things got a lot more difficult!
In an earlier illustration for a deck I
never finished I took a more traditional composition and replaced the fools
knotted pack with a feather on a string, their belongings were literally as
light as air. They carried nothing with them but the world followed in
subservience. I replaced the dog (or cat) at their heels with the snake of
wisdom. Their body was a precarious skeleton, their head a cracking egg, a visual
juxtaposition and an oroboros of sorts.
It was a busy image, I liked it at the
time but the Mercurial deck needed to be more concise. So the cracking egg and
the feather remain, in an almost naturalistic composition. The nest in which it
rests is precarious too, echoing the looming cliff edge we are familiar
with. I kept the ten rays of the sephirot although in a simplified form. They divide
the cosmos and also create a focal point, mirroring the world card waiting at
the end of the journey. The egg itself is pure and blind, knowing nothing but containing immense potential. The drip of albumen escaping echoes a single tear, the pain of wisdom at the eternal joke of life!
As I said I conceived the first three trumps together and they continue and enhance this narrative thread. So on to the Magician next.
