How do you feel about the Clown archetype as The Fool? I do think it's a great match! I love how the black cat is calm and aware of the potential vs. the traditional yapping dog from behind The Fool. What other Halloween archetype could you imagine?

I hope y'all have a safe and plentiful Halloween and Samhain 🎃✨🍂

Stay tuned next #foolfriday for Week 3 🙌 If you live in the States, please make sure you vote in mind of your most Fool neighbors 💞

How will you embrace the clown and/or the black cat, this week? Who can you warn and how so they may hear you? What gifts can you share to bring joy to others? How can you notice the boundaries around you and others?

Usually, The Fool is the querent and the animal is a warning. In this deck, we can see ourselves in both roles: the clown naive of what's to come due to the immense joy and focus/distraction they have and the animal familiar, giving a warning call to the clown.

In this deck, we are supposed to imagine ourselves as the black cat (which appears in every card) and to view them as a touchstone throughout the tarot, again using the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition. This puts a whole other layer onto each card.

I want to acknowledge the Romani origins of tarot and the valid way of making money from card reading, which is still discriminated against and illegal in many areas, since this White Book uses a slur and the story of tarot being a card game. I recommend Lane Smith's book, "78 Acts of Liberation"

I look forward to seeing new decks and versions of The Fool ✨ how do you feel about this interpretation of a Black Bear as The Fool? I see the bear more in the role of strength or judgement in the Majors. What about you? Stay tuned next Friday for another edition of #FoolFriday!

Do you listen to the Fools and seek their way of being? How do they survive on the outskirts? Have you been surviving on the outside as others take incomprehensible risks?

The Black Bear continues to live seasonally, as the urban environments continue to encroach. What does your intuition call of you? Is it your voice or the voice of production?

A Black Bear looks at the reader as it's fur and dark create a cave with foot prints wandering below. Berries hang above and are scattered below, along with honey and salmon. Seeking rest in the frost, gaining strength in spring, thriving in summer, and feasting in fall.

Not everyone can take risks therefore, just as a black bear wanders golf courses for fields of berries how do you determine if this risk is worth taking? Who is punished for following natural instincts instead of capitalism?

I want to add a counter to this traditional interpretation - tarot as a sphere, not a linear journey. The Fool being outside the sphere shows folks outside of societal protection such as children, disabled folks, and other communities in the global majorities.

They use the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith definitions for Fool, as well as The Fool's Journey. Saying, "we identify with the fool. [They] are the best and the worst of us... The wanderer is a truth teller. We want to welcome the Fool, but we cannot sustain [them]."

Humans and bears have had a close relationship in numerous communities and histories. In "The Sacred Paw", Shepherd and Sanders note, "... Even whose obligations and commitments to the hunt, to hole up, and to dominate the space [they] live in are familiar."

Black Bear researcher Ben Kilham, talks of bear's being and to recognize their reflections in mirrors and engage in recursive thinking, reciprocating, altruism, and pantomiming!

🐻 We start off learning of the bear lifecycle of moving on from their mother, how Pennsylvania's black bear population has increased, with males traveling up to 200 sqm a year and females maintaining their own territories.