The Fool's Path

Or There Are No Shortcuts

A few months ago I did a podcast with Paul Chek, a well-known holistic health practitioner, chatting about storytelling, archetypes, and pop culture. I met him through a colleague of mine after having given a talk on my paper appearing in Depth Psychology, Myth and Artificial Intelligence: Soul and the Machine. My focus in that paper was on AI and death while tapping into my passion around Tarot and spirituality. Paul wanted to dig a bit deeper into what I touched on, primarily around my love for symbols and narrative structure using Tarot as a cornerstone. For those new to this Substack, I’ve been exploring Tarot since the age of 11 after having bought myself a Rider-Waite-Smith deck with money I earned being an altar boy. A rather ironic twist, knowing that the Catholic Church is not too keen on what it would consider augury. Yet these 78 cards stuck with me throughout my entire life, building a foundation to what I would later expand on into the comics I’ve written for Marvel as well as so many other facets of my creative career.

As we all know, comics are a visual medium told through a series of images often constrained to panels. These panels are usually around 3-7 per page, and can be in any shape or size depending on what the pacing of the story calls for. A few years ago I had the opportunity to present a workshop I called The Power in the Panels discussing this and I’ll doing it again in August with The Last Tuesday Society. Images pack a punch when put into certain sequences and can unlock layers within our own subconscious. Comics have always had access to this ability as they take from the tradition dating back to early humans and our love to tell stories with pictographs and hieroglyphs. But where Tarot always has had profound significance for me is in both its order and chaos. While there are patterns deeply rooted in the cards, combining many forms of esoteric practices, the most fundamental key is how our intuition interprets the images and numbers within the context of the “panels.” With this in mind, we can look at each card as a panel unfolding a symbolic comic, telling a story that probes into our individual human experience.

I’ve often written about the Fool’s Journey in these articles as it is something that genuinely relates to each and every one of us. Our first step out onto this path begins with Nothing, the Zero, the quiet before the storm. It is the Fool taking that first step into the unknown where all reality unfolds with choices and circumstances. There is often the debate whether we have agency over our lives or if we are driven by a sort of “destiny” that has been coded into our spiritual DNA. That in and of itself is an entirely dense and different discussion than what I’m looking to explore here in this article, but it does have bearing on the bigger picture. If we are to believe in free will, than we believe that every choice we make is ours alone. When factoring in external forces, this can be argued any which way by saying that often our hand is forced due to survival or some other zero sum situation. Yet this also can be turned around by saying that everyone is responsible for their own direction, even if a string of unfortunate circumstances plagues one’s journey.

Midjourney prompt: the fool from the tarot deck not on a card but in real life

What unfolds in the Fool’s Journey is the arc of 21 cards, or three sets of seven. Both three and seven are very charged numbers being the trinity and that which is the triangle plus the square. Twenty-one is also the age of legality here in the U.S. and supposedly how many grams our souls weigh. Even with its real world implications, twenty-one is still symbolic as the subject travels from birth to death, moving through space while time takes its toll. It is a threshold that must be crossed on completion, marking a gate one must pass through in order to reach the next level on the journey. It is The World or, in some decks, The Universe card that signals this completion as the Fool has traveled through the other twenty stops on its way to enlightenment. Each septenary, or grouping of seven cards, has its own arc and symbolic through-line as the soul travels from The Magician to Judgement.

Similar to what The Book of the Dead or the Pistis Sophia in the Coptic Gnostic text holds, the Major Arcana of the Tarot are named archetypes who guard their specific gates that must be crossed to reach final enlightenment. The first seven begins with The Magician and ends with The Chariot. The next can be argued whether it is Justice or Strength, but always ends in Temperance. And the final begins with The Devil and ends with Judgement. If we are to look at our own journey closely there are many instances that directly correlate to these different archetypes. I remember it was probably around the age of fourteen when I really challenged my beliefs in Catholicism, facing The Hierophant (or Pope) which sits at the number five in the Tarot. For me it was the moment when I began to wonder why I needed to listen to an institution when I myself could discern what was morally deplorable and what was for the betterment of all humankind. At the time we were just learning about the hypocrisy within the system as multiple priests were being outed for inappropriate behavior with minors. My brain was at a quandary trying to rectify that disconnect.

No matter where you stand with your spiritual practices, the journey is filled with symbols. It is a constant job to decipher these symbols to better help illuminate your own path to peace and bliss. There are times we feel that chaos serves us better, but then after living through the turbulent twists associated with The Tower, we realize that all we want is The Star to show us the way home. Judgement is always the most painful as it is that moment where we face the mirror of Ma’at. Or if we are really brave, Choronzon. Both of these are two sides to the same coin. with similar outcomes. The life we live is an accumulation of energy, like a snowball rolling down a mountain. If we are on the path through the pure white stuff, our sphere will be a perfect circle. On the other hand, if we are thrown off course and bounce our way through all the sticks and stones, we will find ourselves made up of the stuff of this world. Snow returns to water when melted leaving only one pure form behind. But if our journey, as most are, is filled with the stuff that life throws at us we will have to face it when we are purified through the Judgement card.

Midjourney prompt: Choronzon and Ma’at playing chess

Whatever is left over is what we will need to purge. The more shit we pick up, the more we have to purge. Choronzon is the final boss in the game of life. It is the ego manifested through all versions of the self, knowing us better than we do. There is no weighing, there is only the abyss. But if we have done the work ourselves, not relying on others to carry our spiritual weight or off-loading any responsibility for hypocrisy, then we will be able to return that which is not ours. This is the Fool’s Path and it is both gnarly and branching as it puts you through your paces. The free will is if you wish to proceed as you pass through each threshold. Many stop at around The Hierophant as this allows you to rely completely on a structural entity to handle the accounting on your soul. But if you pass through this and truly question the why behind the organization, you will find yourself at the crossroads of The Lovers. So often this is mistaken as a card around an amorous encounter, but it is more about the duplicity around Severity and Mercy. It asks you to make a choice…yet after you make this choice you’ll realize that the only way forward is the Middle Path, which is the balancing of the two steeds drawing The Chariot.

It is at this superposition with the close of the first septenary where the real work begins. More to unpack in upcoming articles as I bounce back and forth between all these topics!