The Fool is often placed at the beginning of the Major Arcana. He is the protagonist of a journey that will take us through all the cards. But originally, much like the modern-day Joker card, the Fool's position was not fixed. Indeed, he wasn't considered part of the Major Arcana at all. Of the historical decks, only the Piemontese deck gives the Fool the designation ‘0', tentatively placing him before 1, the Magician.

 

Just starting his journey, the Fool is said to be filled with unlimited possibilities. He carries a knapsack with the four suits of the Minor Arcana – wands, cups, swords, coins - and with the elementary constituents of life they represent, he may go in any direction. But this is a story already told by the first and second card of the Major Arcana. The Magician will reveal the contents of the knapsack and the High Priestess will remind us that choices have to be made. So what makes the Fool’s story different? Zero may be the number of unlimited potential, but it's not about potential in itself. Zero is nothing, emptiness. When we go all the way back to who we really are, deep down in the core, what do we find? When we keep peeling layers off the onion, what is left when we finish? In the end, nothing at all. And it may be that very emptiness which provides the necessary space for all those possibilities to develop.

 

Not to know is not to be limited. The Fool asks us to consider the value not of answers, but of questions. The unanswered question can be the first step towards knowledge, towards finding the next answer. As the Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell noted, “Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.” But we might just as well envision the process the other way around: an ever greater amount of knowledge is invariably followed by an ever greater realization of ignorance. The more you know, the more you’ll find you know nothing. Humility may be the only fitting answer here. Astronomer Carl Sagan was always one to underscore the beauty and courage of being humble:

 

I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed. I think this search does not lead to a complacent satisfaction that we know the answer, not an arrogant sense that the answer is before us and we need do only one more experiment to find it out. It goes with a courageous intent to greet the universe as it really is, not to foist our emotional predispositions on it but to courageously accept what our explorations tell us.

 

If certainty is failure, then true success in terms of human consciousness may be to fully realize and internalize the idea that we only know an infinitesimal fraction of everything there is to know. Tim Urban of the blog Wait But Why thinks so:

 

The fact is, let’s remember that we don’t know what the universe is. Is it everything? Is it one tiny bubble in a multiverse frothing with bubbles? Is it not a bubble at all but an optical illusion hologram? And we know about the Big Bang, but was that the beginning of everything? Did something arise from nothing, or was it just the latest in a long series of expansion/collapse cycles? (…) And the thing is, everything I just mentioned is still within the realm of our understanding. As we established earlier, compared to a more evolved level of consciousness, we might be like a three-year-old, a monkey, or an ant—so why would we assume that we’re even capable of understanding everything in that purple blob [everything we do not know] ? A monkey can’t understand that the Earth is a round planet, let alone that the solar system, galaxy, or universe exists. You could try to explain it to a monkey for years and it wouldn’t be possible. So what are we completely incapable of grasping even if a more intelligent species tried its hardest to explain it to us? Probably almost everything.

 

There are really two options when thinking about the big, big picture: be humble or be absurd.

 

(…) Certainty is primitive, leads to “us versus them” tribalism, and starts wars. We should be united in our uncertainty, not divided over fabricated certainty. And the more humans turn around and look at that big purple blob, the better off we’ll be.

 

So the Fool seems to ask us; ‘How much do you think you know?’ and also, ‘How certain are you of the things you think you do know?’  Where do you end up when you keep digging down in what you thought were solid truths?

 

We look further and further. We ask: 'Why is this so? Why is there spirituality? Why is there awakening? Why is there this moment of relief? Why is there such a thing as discovering the pleasure of spirituality? Why, why, why?' We go on deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, until we reach the point where there is no answer. (...) At that point we tend to give up hope of an answer, or of anything whatsoever, for that matter. (...) This hopelessness is the essence of crazy wisdom. It is hopeless, utterly hopeless.

 

- Tibetan Buddhistic scholar Chögyam Trungpa

 

Ah, yes, crazy wisdom – it is this apparent contradiction that suits the Fool well. The holy fool. The court jester who does not bear the yoke of custom and convention and thus has the freedom to challenge anything. He turns your deepest beliefs and all the rules on their head, questioning everything, and gets away with it. Is any knowledge safe from his jests? Is there such a thing as an unalterable truth which does not rest on yet another assumption? Either way, “not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.” And ultimately, we even have to relinquish this apparent truth of knowing that we know nothing.

 

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

 

- Bertrand Russell

 

The dog nipping at the Fool's heels is often interpreted as trying to stop him falling off the cliff (into nothingness, as it were). Sometimes the dog is taken as symbolizing the distractions of the ‘real world’. And this seems to fit with our idea of the Fool as experiencing the ultimate ignorance and emptiness within ourselves. Monks may study meditation for decades and still hear that little pooch barking in the back of their minds, “But surely... you know! You are!”