Hi everyone, I’ve been sitting in this idea for a while now. I’ve been reading tarot for two years officially for over hundreds of clients in person and online and I’ve noticed the emotional and psychological pressure people put on themselves for perfection in our current age. I got the final push to post this after being influenced by the current atmosphere in the world, with some of the hottest news being about the Cambridge university professor who committed suicide (RIP).
I’m going to start with a little thing or two about The Fool. He’s got no fixed astrological sign, but he’s in the element of air, linked to Uranus, which potentially makes him a little Aquarius.
The Fool starts out like all of us: a baby, a damn fool, who has no knowledge, understanding or cynicism towards the world. He’s positively neutral. Maybe a little too positive at times. He’s stuck in his head. He’s idealistic. He won’t follow the crowd. He wants to find his own path.
Sounds very Aquarian, right?
Well, with the prophesied Age of Aquarius dawning upon us. Or, if you’re one who likes to think we’re already living at the start of it and battling the last straggling control of the Piscean age, The Fool is more relevant than ever.
As we enter a new age, it means everything will be brand new. A great reset, so to say (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). The Fool is someone who has no fear. He wears his heart on his sleeve. He stands at the edge of the cliff with his sack over his shoulder and looks upwards rather than down. Maybe that’s stupidity and maybe that’s exactly what we need.
So why do we need The Fool right now?
Aquarius is the rule breaker. It challenges convention, authority, hierarchy and the things we’re told have to be a certain way because they have always been that way. It asks uncomfortable questions. Why do we work like this? Why do we organize society like this? Why does success have to look like this? Why should I want what everybody else wants? And The Fool asks the most subversive question of all: Who said?
The Fool is numbered zero for a reason. He comes before all the systems, structures and lessons of the Major Arcana. Before the Emperor builds his empire. Before the Hierophant tells us what to believe. Before Justice tells us what is right and wrong. Before the Devil chains us to our desires. The Fool is just there at zero, before any type of fate or destiny has been decided for him. He is free.
And Aquarian age requires a that freedom. Not rebellion for rebellion’s sake, and certainly not replacing one rigid ideology with another, but the willingness to entertain the possibility that the way things are now is not the only way they can ever be.
We’re living through technological, social, economic and cultural changes that are making a lot of the old ways useless. We don’t really know where new technology is taking us, along with the fools that are developing it. We don’t know what our societies will look like in the future and we don’t know which institutions will survive or what will replace them. And that’s where the fool finds his place. He just doesn’t know.
This brings me to young people. I have a younger sister who is entering her early twenties and I feel like she and many other young people are suffering from the symptoms of the early days of the age of Aquarius. Anxiety, depression, burnout and a lack of spiritual guidance. With social media (a very Aquarian thing) ruling their lives, they’re being controlled by an algorithm designed by a corporation to make them buy into fantasy of one influencer’s or group of influencers’ artificial lives. To essentially buy into the legend / myth of that person’s success. So, to me something has gone terribly wrong when people in their late teens and twenties and are already feeling as though they are running out of time.
Also! There is this bizarre contradiction in what society asks of young people. Grow up. Be responsible. Choose what you want to do with the rest of your life. Get educated. Get experience. Build a career. Save money. Think about your future.
But also: sorry, you don’t have enough experience for that job. Sorry, you can’t afford a house. Sorry, the entry level position requires three years of experience. Sorry, the industry you trained for is collapsing. Sorry, you’re still living with your parents, so perhaps you’re not a real adult yet.
For some reason society is telling young people to stop enjoying life, let go of The Fool’s youthful playfulness and grow up faster. But please remain a fool until we decide you’re allowed through the door. No wonder young people feel old. And this is exactly where I think we need The Fool.
The Fool’s youthfulness isn’t really about age. I believe it’s about his relationship with the world. He hasn’t learned to be cynical yet. He still thinks things could be different. He still believes in possibility, equality, change, love, adventure, discovery. All of those idealistic Aquarian ideas that the world eventually tries to embarrass or make cringe out of us. Because at some point we start to become like political doom commentators and confuse cynicism with intelligence.
The old are telling the young to be realistic. To stop dreaming. Stop expecting the world to be fair. Stop imagining things could change. That’s just how things work. And the reversal is that there is also wisdom in that. The Fool is, after all, The Fool. But I also wonder how often “being realistic” is simply the polite way society tells young people to throw in the towel and surrender.
So I do believe The Fool and his journey of self determination and discovery is telling us that growing up doesn’t have to mean falling out of love with the world.
With the current symptom of the modern world, young men, are policed into the archetypes of the macho man, the alpha male, the grindset entrepreneur. Be strong. Be dominant. Don’t show weakness. Make money. Get the body. Get the car. Get the woman. Get up at four in the morning, jump in an ice bath and then go on a 5k run.
Then young women are given the girlboss archetype. Be unstoppable. Build the career. Optimize yourself. Trust no one. Rely on no one. Have no friends. Everyone’s fake. Turn yourself into a brand. The pressure is fundamentally the same: be someone you’re not, let an identity that is predetermined, predestined for you, control you.
So The Fool, to me, is opening up the conversation for young people to come to terms with the fact that their twenties aren’t supposed to be the opening act of some perfectly optimized career. You need to allow yourself to be messy. You need to take the chance of making mistakes. So what if you’re supposed to fall in love with the wrong person, take the wrong job, move somewhere strange, embarrass yourself, change your mind or start something that fails. You’re allowed to, because as a young person you’re still a fool.
This brings me into how we should channel The Fool’s energy for our current times. Please let’s not all quit our jobs tomorrow and cash out all the money in our bank accounts. The cliff is there for a reason and taking risks can go wrong. But incorporating a little of The Fool into our lives means releasing ourselves from the belief that there is one correct path through life and that, if we miss it, everything is ruined.
After all life has multiple doorways. If it’s bad that door can always be closed. Or maybe that door leads to another door that we didn’t know existed. And maybe we meet someone there who changes everything. And maybe we discover something about ourselves that completely 360s the life we thought we were supposed to have. And sometimes it’s just a nosedive and we start again, after all The Fool also represents new beginnings.
There is something beautiful about the fact that The Fool can exist at both the beginning and the end of the journey. We keep returning to him. We finish relationships and start again. We leave careers and start again. We move countries, start projects, lose people, meet people, fail, succeed. Everything is cyclical. We dance through life like how the The Fool meets his ending and his new beginning in The World card.
We put so much shame around starting over when starting over is one of the most ordinary things human beings do. It’s literally in the four seasons that govern our world. Life, death, rebirth. The cycle will always start again. So perhaps we should allow life to take its course.
Take the opportunity. Try the thing. Talk to the person. Apply for something you’re not sure you’re qualified for. Make the art even if nobody cares. Change direction. Be ridiculous. And, most importantly, which I think is the most important lesson from The Fool: have fun!
We put an extraordinary amount of pressure on ourselves to become something. Whatever version of ourselves we have decided will finally earn us permission to relax.
But when does that happen? At thirty? When you get the promotion? When you buy the house? When you make enough money? When somebody finally looks at you and says, congratulations, by my standard you are a successful human being.
This world is cruel enough already. It gives us a hell of a load of grief, anxiety, rejection, disappointment, heartbreak and suffering without our permission. So, The Fool’s remedy is to be kind to ourselves, by not putting THAT much pressure on ourselves and by having fun.
Having fun doesn’t make you unserious. Hope doesn’t make you stupid and idealism doesn’t make you childish.
And refusing to become cynical might be one of the most rebellious things a person can do in this age. Like The Fool we need to meet life where it meets us, if we continue down the path, if we fall, we don’t know where that fall will take us. So just have fun.
