The Fool

What the card means

Upright

Zero is the number before counting starts: nothing has been staked and nothing promised. The card is about the step taken before the certainty arrives - not because everything has been worked out, but because waiting longer has stopped being useful. The Fool is not stupid; he simply does not know what he is supposed to be afraid of, and that is the only thing letting him walk.

Reversed

Two opposite failures under one number. Either the jump with no preparation at all - no money, no plan, no way back. Or the reverse: preparing has become the way of not starting, and it can be kept up for years.

Love and relationships

Upright

A beginning in which nothing is settled and everything is possible. Meeting somebody without calculation, falling for them without a five-year plan. For a long relationship, an invitation to stop running on habit.

Reversed

Lightness that somebody else is taking seriously. Or fear of the first move, dressed up as the timing being wrong.

Work and business

Upright

Something new, a change of trade, an offer you are not ready for on paper and ready for in fact. There is no experience - and this time that is not the deciding thing.

Reversed

Quit without thinking, or have been about to for three years. Sometimes a project begun on enthusiasm and dropped once it became work.

Money

Upright

There is little money and it is not yet in the way. A stake taken at your own risk, spending with no guarantee of return. A bad time for large commitments and a good one for a small bet.

Reversed

Spent what was not there. Or sitting on money because every decision looks like a risk.

The card's advice

Take the step without waiting to feel calm: calm is not coming. Carry exactly as much as you can carry - the rest will turn up on the way or turn out not to be needed.

As the card of the day

A day to say yes to what is offered. Plans will probably move, and holding on to them will not help. A poor day for signing and a good one for talking.

What is depicted

A young man steps off a cliff looking up rather than down; a bundle over his shoulder, a white rose in his hand, a dog barking at his heels. The dog is not stopping him - it is coming too. The cliff is in the picture and the fall is not: the card stops the moment before anybody finds out how it ended.

Zodiac sign and correspondences

Uranus - what does not ask permission.

With other cards

• The Fool + The Magician — the idea and the means have met: a rare moment when there is no reason to wait.
• The Fool + The Tower — a step with no way back from it; sometimes that is a choice and sometimes the absence of one.
• The Fool + The World — the end of one circle and the start of the next in a single spread.