Meditation on the Twenty -First Major Arcanum of the Tarot Let No One Deceive Himself
Meditation on the Twenty -First Major Arcanum of the Tarot Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly before God. (I Corinthians iii, 18-19) Folly is a condition which prevents that which is true from being grasped. (Plato, Definitions)* . .consciousness succumbs all too easily to unconscious influences, and these are often truer and wiser than our conscious thinking. Personality need not imply consciousness. It can just as easily be dormant or sleeping. (C. G. Jung, Conscious, Unconscious and Individuation)** LETTER XXI THE FOOL Dear Unknown Friend, I owe you, in the first place, an explanation of the fact of having changed — apparently arbitrarily—the order of the Cards of the Major Arcana of the Tarot, by making the Arcanum "The Fool" follow the twentieth Arcanum "The Judge- ment". The Arcanum "The Fool" does not bear any number and therefore cor- *Cf. Plato, Dialogues apocryphes in Oeuvres completes, vol. xiii, French trsl. by J. Souilhé, Paris, 1930. p 173 **Tran. R. F. C. Hull, The Collected Works of C.G.Jung, vol.9, part vi,London,1959.pp 282-283. 589 590 MEDITATIONS ON THE TAROT responds to zero, whilst the Card of the Arcanum "The World" bears the number XXI in the Marseille Tarot pack. Thus, here is the reason —not for changing the number of the Card, but rather for why we have made the meditation on the Ar- canum "The Fool" follow that on the twentieth Arcanum "The judgement" and before the meditation on the twenty-first Arcanum "The World": The principal reason is that the meditation on the Arcanum "The Fool" can- not conclude the series of meditations on the Major Arcana of the Tarot, which series is a "school" of spiritual training, i.e.
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