The zero card (usually called “The Fool”) appears in two positions in the tarot deck; as zero, it signifies the choice to “fall” out of time/space and to incarnate into a third-density body for an Earthly experience. In position 22, it represents the (possibly difficult) decision to graduate from it…because who knows how many loved ones you might have to leave behind if you are ready to graduate, but they are not?
I wrote a short piece about this on Quora: https://www.quora.com/What-is-The-Fool-card-in-a-tarot-deck/answer/Rick-Dawson-9
But I also experience some cognitive dissonance comparing Ra’s straightforward description of the card in session 67.30, where Ra calls the card “The Fool” and describes it conventionally as the Novice, with Ra’s completely over-the-top declaration that the card is “The Choice” and is some sort of “culmination” of the other cards. See 72.12.
In session 88.16, Ra made this bold (and to my eyes, unsupported) statement:
“The one great breakthrough which was made after our work in third density was done was the proper emphasis given to the Arcanum Number Twenty-Two which we have called The Choice. In our own experience we were aware that such an unifying archetype existed but did not give that archetype the proper complex of concepts in order to most efficaciously use that archetype in order to promote our evolution.”
Good lord! How does Ra go from describing the Fool card as “the novice” in one session, but then later calling it a “unifying archetype,” which was so important that they had “a breakthrough” in their understanding of it, only after they had already graduated third density?
Are they even talking about the same card?
Or is there another mystery card with an unknown image that’s supposed to be card 22?
But after another read-through of the books, I think I found something that might explain what Ra was talking about.
While the Fool often represents a novice, that is not its main meaning. The card also shows a soul entering the Earth Life School (ELS) for the first time.
However, this is not how the evolutionary process is supposed to work. According to Ra, the transition of souls from second density to third density is usually the responsibility of the local planetary Logi, where its own resident second-density creatures are given new third-density bodies to take them to the next level of experience.
But the ELS is not ordinary. Souls here are, apparently, all transplants from elsewhere: from the destruction of Maldek (6.10), the slow death of Mars (9.6), and other places. Indeed, it was the Mars transplants that apparently “interrupted” the usual evolutionary process (14.3). As Ra explained:
“The population of your planet contains many various groups harvested from other second-dimension and cycled third-dimension spheres. You are not all one race or background of beginning. The experience you share is unique to this time/space continuum.” (6.13)
Holy Moly!
So perhaps the Fool Card has an underlying meaning that Don never got to explore. The idea of the Fool or novice still appears in the card, but maybe it is also supposed to represent this “unique experience” that all the people incarnated in the ELS are all transplants from other systems.
If that is the case, then there is a special “choice” represented in the card that is not the same as the “choice” of polarity. Under the law of free will, it must be assumed that each and every soul who has been incarnating here over the last 75,000 years, each of us chose to come here. Not as “wanderers” per se, but as refugees? Tourists? Grand adventurers?
It sounds like a really tough choice to leave your own people and dive into a melting pot of strangers, mixing with souls from across the galaxy, all with different backgrounds.
In this context, the fool card holds much more significance. “The Choice,” here, is not the simple decision of a novice to experience 3D “incarnation,” but the serious choice of a partially experienced soul to leave their original race or species and continue evolving here on Earth among strangers.
I posit that Ra intended the primary meaning of the Fool card to be that Earth was a “melting pot” for souls from everywhere. Other Logi would not need this card in their archetypal spreads because their second-density souls would advance into third density naturally after reaching the requisite level of self-awareness. There is no “choice” to progress; it just happens.
But Earth is special. All of its resident third-density residents are voluntary transplants from other Logi. That characteristic seems worthy of having a special add-on card to the otherwise symmetrical 3x7 grid.
So, what was Ra’s “breakthrough” in understanding about this “Choice” card?
Perhaps the complete surprise that comes when exactly zero of the non-homogeneous denizens of Earth were able to graduate after the first 25,000 year cycle. Ra’s own graduation seems to have happened easily, uniformly, and early. Imagine how surprised these gardeners must have been to have a completely failed harvest here on Earth.
And what about the handful of graduates at the end of the second 25,000-year cycle? These souls all refused to graduate! They decided to stay, to go back to third density to help their loved ones (who were, remember, all originally strangers to each other). We are all “found family” here.
To Ra, this unanimous refusal (also a “choice”) at the end of the second harvest must have been nearly incomprehensible.
Ra were all homegrown Venusians, of the same race and origin. Their experience of “harvest” was utterly different from all our (so-far failed) harvests. Perhaps, this was their “breakthrough” understanding?
The Confederation chose to transplant people from Maldek and Mars to Earth and to interrupt the natural cycle of progression here on Earth.
The Confederation then chose to open the doors to other galactic citizens. And we all came here of our own free will.
That’s a lot of “choice,” don’t you think?
I believe the Fool card would not even be part of the deck, but for the galactic/non-Earth origins of all of us. But because the immigration doors were opened, and because so many of us came here, that decision warranted its own card.
The two “Choices” represented in the Fool appear to be: (1) the one we all made to leave our homies behind and to come from all over the cosmos to experience third-density Earth together (“found family”), and (2) the one our few graduates are making at major harvest time, to refuse graduation and to stay behind. (No one is left behind! Either we all graduate together, or none of us will.)
Aren’t both these decisions “foolish”?