The Fool is one of the 78 cards in a tarot deck. Traditionally, it is the lowest of the 22 trump cards, in tarot card reading called the 22 Major Arcana. However, in tarot card games it developed to be not one of the (then 21) trump cards but a special card, serving a unique purpose by itself. In later Central European tarot card games, it re-developed to now become the highest trump. As a consequence and with respect to his unique history, The Fool is usually an unnumbered card with a unique design; but sometimes it is numbered as 0 (the first) or more rarely XXII (the last). Design and numbering-or-not to not clearly indicate its role as a trump or special card in the specific game.

The Fool is titled Le Mat in the Tarot of Marseilles, and Il Matto in most Italian language tarot decks. These archaic words mean “the madman” or “the beggar”.

Iconography

In the earliest tarot decks, the Fool is usually depicted as a beggar or a vagabond. In the Visconti-Sforza tarot deck, the Fool wears ragged clothes and stockings without shoes, and carries a stick on his back. He has what appear to be feathers in his hair. His unruly beard and feathers may relate to the tradition of the woodwose or wild man. Another early Italian image that relates to the tradition is the first (and lowest) of the series of the so-called Tarocchi of Mantegna. This series of prints containing images of social roles, allegorical figures, and classical deities begins with Misero, a depiction of a beggar leaning on a staff. A similar image is contained in the German Hofämterspiel; there the fool (German: Narr) is depicted as a barefoot man in robes, apparently with bells on his hood, playing a bagpipe. 

The Tarot of Marseilles and related decks similarly depict a bearded person wearing what may be a jester’s hat; he always carries a bundle of his belongings on a stick (called a bindle) slung over his back. He appears to be getting chased away by an animal, either a dog or a cat. The animal has torn his pants.

In the Rider–Waite deck and other esoteric decks made for cartomancy, the Fool is shown as a young man, walking unknowingly toward the brink of a precipice. In the Rider–Waite Tarot deck, he is also portrayed as having with him a small dog. The Fool holds a white rose (a symbol of freedom from baser desires) in one hand, and in the other a small bundle of possessions, representing untapped collective knowledge.

In French suited tarot decks that do not use the traditional emblematic images of Italian suited decks for the suit of trumps, the Fool is typically made up as a jester or bard, reminiscent of the Joker often included with the standard 52-card deck.

History

In the decks before Waite–Smith, the Fool is almost always unnumbered. There are a few exceptions: some old decks (including the 15th-century Sola Busca) labelled the card with a 0, and the 18th-century Belgian decks labelled the Fool as XXII. The Fool is almost always completely apart from the sequence of trumps in the historic decks. Still, there is historic precedent for regarding it as the lowest trump and as the highest trump.

Traditionally, the Major Arcana in tarot cards are numbered with Roman numerals. The Fool is numbered with the zero, one of the Arabic numerals.

The fool may be the precursor of The Joker. However, the Joker more likely evolved independently in the 1850s as a permanent trump specifically for the game of Euchre.

Interpetation

In many esoteric systems of tarot card interpretation, the Fool is interpreted as the protagonist of a story, and the Major Arcana are the path the Fool takes through the great mysteries of life. This path is known traditionally in cartomancy as the “Fool’s Journey”, and is frequently used to introduce the meaning of Major Arcana cards to beginners.

According to A. E. Waite’s 1910 book The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, the Fool card is associated with:

Folly, mania, extravagance, intoxication, delirium, frenzy, bewrayment.

Reversed: Negligence, absence, distribution, carelessness, apathy, nullity, vanity.