The Fool
A mimic octopus displaying a range of colors bursts through the surface of the ocean using a stick and precipice for leverage. It holds a bouquet of seagrass in one arm, and the other arm is held up toward the sun, which refracts all the colors of the rainbow through the translucent arm web. A yellow cuttlefish bobs eagerly below the wave.
Symbolism of the Fool
The Fool symbolizes new beginnings, and the unknown that lies before the start of any journey. Naturally, it’s the first card (card number naught (0), because tarot uses base-zero indexing for the major arcana).
Like all the Tarot, they mean… whatever you read into them, but you’d be doing yourself a disservice to dismiss the Fool as a card representing a stupid person, or a mistake. The fool is closer to a clown: in playing cards it is the only card of the major arcana to survive, as the joker.
There’s caprice in the fool, of course— in the Smith-Waite deck it appears as though they’re starting out on a journey right off a cliff. But the fool is joyful in their ignorance of the future, open to the possibilities of a new day.
The Fool, Smith-Waite edition.
The Fool, Thoth Deck
The Fool in Octopolis
For this piece I looked to elements of past card interpretations for reference. I noticed in both the Thoth and Smith-Waite deck the instability of the fool’s position, on a precipice. Here they look like they might be about to fall right off a cliff into water. For Octopolis the corresponding action of both risk and exhilaration would be to burst out of the water and into the open air, a very dangerous place for an octopus to be.
I also love the little barking dog that appears in a lot of depictions of the fool. A dog is the perfect companion for the fool, anyone who’s had a dog knows they’re sweet loyal endlessly devoted to their human companions and mainly interested in fun, which is ultimately I think what’s driving the fool forward more than any goal is the novelty of the journey itself. In Octopolis of course, cuttlefish have been domesticated to fill the role of dogs in society. So I drew in place of a little yellow dog a happy broadclub cuttlefish, wondering what the heck their crazy master is up to.
The Sun
The last element of the piece that was important to me was the presence of the Sun. The Sun represents so many things, and it’s got its own card in tarot. It’s such a powerful object — the ultimate source of all Life on the planet — that it would represent many of the same things to intelligent octopuses as it does to humans. The Sun is important enough to warrant its own card in the major arcana, but here in the context of the fool it represents all the potential energy of the new adventure the fool is setting out upon.
Energy from the Sun arrives on Earth as pure, diffuse white light, and like the unrealized potential of adventures, it only takes on color after having reflected on or passing through things. I really loved the idea of the octopus, this creature best known for reflecting the environment around it, refracting the sun like a prism.
The Mimic Octopus
My initial thought was to make the joker a harlequin octopus, which would have been a fun pun on the joker, but ultimately I went with a mimic octopus, not just because they’re known for mimicry. Visually, their bright patterns allow for a really striking rainbow contrasted against their white stripes, and they have webbing that runs all along their arms that’s still got patterns but is semi-transparent.
A mimic octopus. Photo by Francesco Ricciardi
Reflections on the Fool
I really enjoy reflecting on with the metaphor presented here with the rainbow as a prism. Every day is a new beginning, and no one knows what the future holds. And the fool doesn’t have their own agenda, they’re not trying to focus the light into a particular direction, they’re just a clear vessel through which is shines.
It’s your engagement with the world that gives your journey its unique colors. Only by having the humility to acknowledge our own ignorance, embrace our identity as the fool, can our minds be open to the infinite rainbow that is life.