I Am a Great Fool, A Sleepy Man, A Forgetful Spark

 I recently read in the book ,"The Fool's Pilgrimage: Kabbalistic Meditations on the Tarot," that I was looking at the Fool's journey backwards and I had a "WOW" moment.

I KNOW I don't know all there is and may get some ,if not most, of this wrong but this is where I am right now so bear with me.

For those who don't know the Tarot is broken up in to two groups and is 78 cards.

The first group is the Major Arcana and includes the famous cards like the Fool,Death,the devil,Judgement,The Lovers,The Magician,e.t.c. and is 22 cards.

The other is the 56 card lower arcana and depending on the deck may not contain much rich symbolism but thankfully my Radiant Rider-Waite Deck does.

Ok so each card of the Major Arcana is numbered 1 through 22 with the Fool being 0.

The Journey is the fool going "DOWN" the path towards enlightenment and the 22 cards are levels basically ,of course I'm no expert and could be slightly wrong about certain things as you'll soon learn first hand, so I thought the levels started from 0 and went down chronologically to 1,2,3,4,e.t.c. but what I read made me realize that they start with the fool at 0 and go !!UP!! from 22 to 1 then to 0 only the blind fool at that point becomes the HOLY FOOL.

It all makes so much more sense now because Gnosticism teaches that we are creations of a lower emanation of the Unknown Father named Jehovah but the Unknown Father gave a piece of himself to each of us called the Divine Spark that is within. Later he sent Jesus Christ to show us the way and reveal as much as is possible for our finite minds to comprehend of the Unknown Father through His Life and Teachings.

With this in mind we have the ability to move up the Kabbalistic tree of life to the Crown,Up the Fool's journey to get back to the Source because we are many steps away from the Source. We are ,according to the tarot, 22 emanations down from the Source more or less meaning we are many states of consciousness removed from Him.

To sum up I saw the fools journey as beginning at 0 and going to 1 which is the Magician but actually it starts at 0 and goes to 22 which is the World and as you go up each level makes more sense tell you've reached the Magician and then go past it to become the Holy Fool in union with the Divine Oneness which is enlightenment and at death liberation.

If your compassionate ,much as the bodhisattvas who vow to use their enlightenment to help others rather than wait to die so they may take their place within the oneness, you come back down and assume the role of the magician but your still the Holy Fool.

How blind I have been, how asleep, how forgetful but I am beginning to see, I am slowly waking up, I am starting to remember.

I see a great and sublime symbolism in the concept of "0" being both at the beginning and end of the Fool's journey because the symbol for infinity in mathematics going all the way back to 1655 is ∞.

I should remember that the greatest religious truths are often paradoxes.

A mystic who has attained a high level of union with the Divine often speaks in paradoxes and wears the title of Holy Fool with joy.

My greatest goal is to become nothing more or less than a Holy Fool.

*Update*
A great,sleepy forgetful fool indeed.
I've looked at the cards before but how could I have forgotten that The Magician card has the infinity symbol above his head?
The blind fool becomes the Holy Fool!