Why Is The Fool Tarot Card Called "The Fool"?

The Fool is often misunderstood at first glance. The name sounds insulting, but in tarot it points to openness, risk, and the courage to begin before everything is certain.

If you have ever drawn The Fool, the question makes sense immediately: why would the first card in tarot carry that name?

The answer has less to do with stupidity than with freedom.

1. Before it was symbolic, it was social

In the earliest tarot decks of fifteenth-century Italy, tarot was still a card game rather than a spiritual system.

The Fool appeared as Il Matto, often translated as "The Madman." He was shown as a wandering outsider:

• dressed in ragged clothes
• carrying a stick over his shoulder
• sometimes chased or bitten

He represented someone outside the rules of ordinary society, unpredictable and uncontained. That image of rulelessness is part of why the card later became so powerful.

2. Rider-Waite changed the feeling of the card

When the Rider-Waite deck appeared in 1909, The Fool was no longer framed primarily as broken or mad.

Instead, he stood at the edge of a cliff with a white rose, a small dog, and his eyes lifted upward. The card started to feel like the beginning of a quest rather than a warning about social exile.

From that point on, The Fool came to represent:

• the beginner
• the dreamer
• the one who trusts the journey

Not foolishness as failure, but innocence and potential before experience has fully formed.

3. Why the number is 0

The Fool is numbered 0, not 1.

That matters, because 0 suggests:

• nothing
• everything
• infinite possibility

The card exists before the journey has fully taken shape. In tarot storytelling, The Fool moves through all 21 remaining Major Arcana cards, encountering lessons, tests, collapse, growth, and completion.

The Fool is the point before identity hardens. It is the first step into the unknown.

4. So why keep the name "Fool"?

Because every real beginning contains risk.

To fall in love.
To change careers.
To trust intuition.
To begin again.

From the outside, that leap can always look a little foolish.

And that is precisely the meaning of the card: to start anyway.

#Tarot#Tarot Explained#Spirituality#Self Reflection#Symbolism#Tarot History

[

Orelune

Orelune is an AI-powered tarot experience with daily tarot, one-card & three-card spreads, and intuitive guidance for love, emotions, and life direction.

](/blog?author=orelune)

---

Source: https://orelune.co/blog/why-is-the-fool-called-the-fool