Anybody who would go exploring in Florida dressed like that has got to have a strong foolish
streak! But in the tarot, you have to do more than dress funny to get labeled as
The Fool.
Despite the nicer and more optimistic portrayals of this
card that are often in vogue in New Age circles, The Fool is not about starting
off on a new journey or simply being oblivious to your surroundings (although a
certain degree of cluelessness is a trademark of this card). No, when The Fool
shows up, it’s because somebody is being a jerk or an a**hole, according to my
first tarot teacher. The Fool doesn’t even get a numbered card—he’s a zero! If
you’re using the tarot as a predictive tool, this card represents foolish
ventures. In the reversed or upside-down position, the card indicates someone
who is being consciously stupid—throwing caution, and possibly sanity, to the
winds.
If you are wise, you don’t dance on the edge of a
mountain—as The Fool is classically portrayed—or go looking for magical
fountains of youth based on local gossip, which is what legend tells us Ponce
de Leon was doing when he landed on Florida’s shores in 1513. But that legend
isn’t true.
What Ponce was really looking for was gold and a way to salvage his
reputation after being ousted by Christopher Columbus’s son from his post as
governor of Puerto Rico. The myth about searching for fountains of youth was
tacked on to Ponce de Leon’s biography after the explorer’s death, but the myth
stuck and continues to percolate in our collective memory, so much so that Florida’s
fountains of youth have provided a pervasive inspiration for artists, writers,
and creative types for hundreds of years.
I chose Ponce as The Fool not because his exploration of
Florida is steeped in myth, but because he represents what I think is the true
foolishness of human existence that will haunt us until we finally give it up—the
idea that we humans can control Mother Nature, that She exists only to serve
our needs, and that continuing to do business in Florida the way we have for
500 years will never come back to bite us in the butt. That idea,
what one friend calls the Myth of the Extractive Economy, is the hallmark not
only of Ponce de Leon’s foolishness, but also of our own.
We see this foolishness everywhere—in the elevation of big
business and big agriculture to objects of worship by our elected officials, in
their continued calls for growth at any cost, and perhaps most of all in the
nonstop issuance of water permits by the boards of our water management districts,
even as our lakes and springs dry up, algae blooms, and the magnificent
Floridan Aquifer shrinks beneath our feet.
The tarot has been described as The Fool’s Journey. Shall we
see where this journey leads, here in the land of the Fountains of Youth?
My photo of the statue of Ponce de Leon, above, was taken at the Fountain of Youth attraction in St. Augustine, Florida.
My photo of the statue of Ponce de Leon, above, was taken at the Fountain of Youth attraction in St. Augustine, Florida.
