Imagery: A carefree figure steps toward a cliff with a small bundle, accompanied by a white dog under a bright sky.

General Themes: New beginnings, spontaneity, innocence, trust in the journey, leap of faith.

The Fool Upright

Ahhhh…this is an exuberant card! The Fool, as the zero card in the Major Arcana, welcomes a fresh start, a new adventure, and the open, carefree perspective of youth. Embrace the unknown. Don’t think, overplan, or otherwise try to control the outcome. Just get moving! It’s time to trust the journey and take a leap of faith.

This card can also invite you to rediscover what brings you joy. Take pleasure in the little things and delight in the unexpected. Seek out new experiences and allow yourself to explore parts of yourself that haven’t gotten a lot of attention.

Welcome playfulness into your daily life. Be spontaneous and throw away that schedule. See what adventures wait when you walk out your door. The Fool might not have a lot of experience or knowledge, but he makes up for it with enthusiasm and openness.

The Fool Reversed

Loosen up! Get playful and get curious. Remember what it looks like to see the world as a child. What fills you with awe? What moments of ordinary wonder can you find? When was the last time you danced in the rain or had a long conversation with the moon? How often do you stop and smell the roses or try something new? If the answer to most of these questions is never or not for a long time…well, you’ve got some catching up to do.

Let go of the fear of failure. Make mistakes. Be curious. Have fun. Perfection is overrated. The Fool Reversed wants you to enjoy the possibilities of being an amateur. There is a special magic in not knowing what you’re doing—and doing it anyway. It is an act of pure faith that generates a lot of good energy and new opportunities.

The Bruja’s Guide to Tarot is the divination sister to the scholarly The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, and Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday…and good conversations with the tarot, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram and Facebook. Here’s to a magical life!

The traditional tarot deck is made up of 78 cards, which are broken into the Major Arcana (22 cards) and the Minor Arcana (56 cards). The Major Arcana is typically what people think of when they think of the tarot. They’re the big picture cards, the ones like Death or The Devil that get drawn at the start of a scary movie. It makes a certain amount of sense that these cards are used in stories this way, given that the focus is on the big archetypal energies at play in our lives, though I will say Death and The Devil are hardly the terrifying cards pop culture makes them out to be. (The award for the scariest card in Major Arcana goes to The Tower, by the way. But that, too, has its gift: burning anything that doesn’t serve us to the ground.

The Major Arcana likewise represents the Fool’s Journey, which I often consider a contrast to Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey. The traditional hero’s journey tends to be more masculine-focused and rather too linear, with its emphasis on leaving home and later returning to it (I’m essentializing a lot here). What I love about the Fool’s Journey, in comparison, is that it honors the fact that we are always both at the end of one journey and starting another. Life is a series of beginnings and endings, not a linear thing.

Like writers, we are always wrapping up one story and always starting a new one, always searching for new horizons and always returning home. The Fool’s Journey likewise emphasizes the metaphysical journeys we all go on—we might not leave our literal homes, but we can journey into the unconscious, the creative realm, and the dreamworld and be transformed.

The Cards in the Major Arcana

Each card in the Major Arcana represents an archetypal figure that helps The Fool learn something about himself or the universe as he continues his journey. It’s significant that this set starts at zero, with The Fool, and ends with 21, The World, signifying that the ultimate journey for The Fool is to be at home in The World.

The Fool is zero, or starting with nothing. He represents a blank slate, childlike in his innocence. Each figure he meets along his journey is essential to his transformation into a man of the world. Below are the cards that make up the Major Arcana and the archetypal energy they represent (links to each card coming soon).

Card Archetypal Energy

0. The Fool Beginnings

The Magician Manifestation
The High Priestess Intuition
The Empress Abundance
The Emperor Security
The Hierophant The Sacred
The Lovers Union
The Chariot Determination
Strength Confidence
The Hermit Interiority
The Wheel of Fortune Luck
Justice Accountability
The Hanged Man Surrender
Death Endings
Temperance Balance
The Devil The Shadow Self
The Tower Necessary Destruction
The Star Nourishment
The Moon Lunacy
The Sun Happiness
Judgment Awakening
The World Wholeness

Themes of the Major Arcana

The Major Arcana also focuses on the larger story arcs in our lives, the archetypal and ancestral forces, the big-picture events, and the things we are fated to live out. We have free will, sure, but lately, I’ve begun to explore the idea that some things in our lives are fated. These ideas on fate have come to me specifically because of my work with the tarot and how it has helped me better understand things in my life that seem more fixed or, in some cases, destined to be.

Think of fate as the stories written in our DNA, the stories written in our natal charts, if you are astrologically inclined, or things that get passed down to us blood memory, ancestry, and our own personal mythology. Often, we think of fate in negative ways—the terrible things that were doomed to happen—as a way to make sense of difficult situations. But I think there’s another side to fate. It’s our story, and the tarot can help us understand our individual path and love and appreciate it.

So when Major Arcana cards appear in our readings, they give us a big-picture perspective of our lives, helping us better understand who we are, what our stories are, and how to lean into our fate. They represent our unique Fool’s Journey, inviting us to journey deeper into self and flow with the universe.

The Bruja’s Guide to Tarot is the divination sister to the scholarly The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, and Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday…and good conversations with the tarot, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram and Facebook. Here’s to a magical life!

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