The Fool: A Musical Journey through the Major Arcana of the Tarot

Several years ago I wrote 22 days of blogs following the Major Arcana of the tarot. I expanded on the meaning of each tarot card for me, and used musical references that I thought were associated with each card. I sent the first two blogs which featured The Fool and the Magician to Smashing Pumpkins musician Billy Corgan since he asked people for ideas regarding his own blog. At the time, he was also recording music reflecting the tarot, so I thought my 22 days might interest him. Never heard a peep from him, but he said he would read each email personally, so I know he saw those two blogs.

I never published the 22 days of tarot blogs, but was re-reading some of them the other day, and thought I'd share them about once a week. I need to work on some of the higher numbers as I got a bit long winded and they should be edited, but the first few were pretty good. Much of what I wrote was when I was in a different place regarding Cheap Trick and my spiritual journey with them. I think I'll change what needs updating, but leave the essence of the blogs intact.

Here's the Fool, #0 in the tarot.

Number:  0

Tarot Card: The Fool

Symbol: The void

Sound: Silence/Rest note

 
Quote:

         “The rest of the band will follow me down any dark alley. Sometimes there’s a light at the end of the alley, and sometimes there’s a black hole. The point is, you don’t get an adventure in music unless you’re willing to take chances.” – Jerry Garcia

“I believe in the collective unconscious. I believe writing is tapping into that…The good days are really spiritual.” Don Henley

“Silence is the altar of God”- Paramahansa Yogananda
 

Songs:  "What a Fool Believes" - Doobie Brothers

            "Into the Void" - Nine Inch Nails

            "The Sounds of Silence" -  Simon and Garfunkel

In the beginning:

Many scientists postulate that before the creation of our universe, there was the void. Zero, or 0, represents nothing, but simultaneously contains everything. This apparent paradox is at the core of many spiritual teachings, so I ask you to contemplate the void, and see what it means to you. 

Not long after my January, 2002 spiritual awakening with a famous rock band, I discovered Tarot cards. The MajorArcana* cards represent 22 archetypal steps all human beings go through at various points in their lives. Archetypes are like blueprints in our psyches, patterns that we unconsciously follow. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung believed archetypes to be the building blocks not only of the unconscious mind, but of a collective unconscious. He concluded that everyone in the world is born with the same basic subconscious model of what a "hero,”  "mother," or "trickster" etc…is, and that's why people from all cultures create similar stories and myths. A movie such as Star Wars draws heavily upon archetypes and depicts the mythic hero’s journey. 

We are all just a bunch of Fools on a bus:

The first card of the Major Arcana, (#0, the Fool) represents the hero at the start of a new adventure, not knowing where it will lead but having complete faith that the path will bring a deeper understanding of ourselves. The Fool is often seen by society as ugly, crazy or insane because they do not share the same values as everyone else. Marching to the beat of her own drum, The Fool must muster an inner resolve and not give-in to societal pressure to conform as she travels down the road to enlightenment. Trusting our soul's guidance is a challenging yet essential part of the Fool's journey.  

When a friend shared a wise old Tibetan saying which very loosely translated means; "We are all just a bunch of silly Fools on a bus," I couldn’t help but laugh at the parallel since rock stars spend mucho time in tour buses. But rock stars aren’t the only bus traveling Fools. It seemed a perfect metaphor for me as well, for I was a complete Fool during the entire course of my rock 'n' roll journey. I hadn’t a clue I was driving down Self-Actualization Avenue on a metaphorical coach sans a steering wheel. Since I didn’t know where the path would lead me, it was like being in the void all things were possible. When we leave ourselves open to all potential outcomes, life can unfold in surprising and delightful ways. I’ve discovered when I try to control everything, I leave no room for the Universe to do its magic, no room to hear where the music is guiding me. That’s a Fool for ya. 

Sound/Musical reference of the Day: Silence

The rest note represents the void. Silence. Silence is perhaps one of the most important elements in music, for without it, there would be nothing but sound. As the spaces between words are necessary, so too is silence in both music and our lives. If we are so busy racing from one item on our to-do list to the next, we can’t stop the internal chatter of the mind and appreciate what the moment has to offer.

Today, take a moment to appreciate the stillness. You could turn off your radio/CD/iPod on your way to work and just listen. Listen to the silence, for within it, mystics and sages throughout the ages have experienced a divine connection with all that is or what is referred to as **The Sacred Sound Current.  Silence and emptiness has much to teach us Fools.  

TERMS:

*Major Arcana- 22 primary cards in the Tarot. Whereas the Major Arcana of the Tarot deals with archetypal and universal ideas, the Minor Arcana ("Lesser Secrets") embodies more everyday situations, problems and people. There are 56 Minor cards divided into four suits of 14 cards each. The four suits correspond to the four elements, the four Worlds of the Kabbalah and any other four-fold attribution, such as the four directions, winds, or Jungian personality functions.

**Sacred Sound Current- It stems from the word Shabd or Shabda which literally means “sound” or “word” in Sanskrit. Esoterically, Shabd is the “Sound Current vibrating in all creation. It can be heard by the inner ears.”   In some traditions, the reason for human form is to meditate on the Sound Current, and in so doing merge with it until one’s own divinity is ultimately realized.

Numbers and Music

This blog I’m exploring a few numbers in Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, my book, I Found All the Parts, and another fascinating novel I devoured several years ago, The EzekielCode. 

Numbers became a big deal for me on my journey with rock music. Shortly after my awakening, the number “four” camped out in my brain with a lawn chair. The words “archetype” and “everyone” also did the cha cha in my skull for many months, but I had no idea at the time why I was hearing this stuff. Since they were like annoying neighbors who frequently visited me on a daily basis to borrow some sugar, I knew the words were important clues on my journey. But why would a number be significant?

Numerology, the system, tradition or belief in a mystical or esoteric relationship between numbers and physical objects or living things, goes way back. Pythagoras, the dude who gave us the Pythagorean Theorem, was into the spirituality of numbers big time. Every number resonates at a unique frequency. Kind of like music. Just as the note middle “C” vibrates at the frequency of 256 cycles per second, the numbers 1-9 are also believed to resonate to different energies and therefore offer insight into ourselves and our world.

In The Davinci Code, smart and handsome Professor Langdon illustrates how the five sided pentagram, or pentacle symbol, is considered both divine and magical by many cultures. That’s because if you draw a pentagram, the lines divide themselves into segments according to the Divine Proportion. PHI =  1.618.

 

Phi is s a symbol of beauty and perfection and connected with nature, the goddess, and the sacred feminine.

 

My journey as a woman with rock music helped me get in touch with the sacred feminine through various avenues, but especially via numbers. I began to see the correlations between music, numbers and sacred geometry in spectacular ways. The Divine Proportion, or 1.618, is everywhere in nature and even in different proportions of the human body.  

The black and white keys on a piano represent the ratios of musical proportion as well. (from  http://www.miqel.com/jazz_music_heart/vibrational-truth.html)





Phi is closely related to the Fibonacci series. In the 12th century, Leonardo Fibonacci discovered a simple numerical series that is the foundation for an incredible mathematical relationship behind phi. Starting with 0 and 1, each new number in the series is simply the sum of the two before it.

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, . . .

The ratio of each successive pair of numbers in the series approximates phi (1.618. . .) , as 5 divided by 3 is 1.666..., and 8 divided by 5 is 1.60. After the 40th number in the series, the ratio is accurate to 15 decimal places. 1.618033988749895 . . . 

Since my book delves into alchemy, codes, symbols and the Rosicrucian Dr. Robert Fludd, I wondered if 1.618 might be a code for me. Think, think, think. Aha!  Take the decimal away from 1.618 and you get the year 1618. In 1618 Fludd wrote De Musica Mundana (Mundane Music) which described his theories of music, including his mundane (also known as "divine" or "celestial") monochord.  And look. God is tuning the chord so it sounds nice for us. 

What’s interesting is that Fludd’s image is all about proportion and illustrates the mathematical properties of musical pitch. In music, the 5^th note of a scale (for example G in a C scale, also called a fifth) creates 2:3 ratio or .666. Therefore, as noted above, if you play a fifth, such as C and G together, it is considered the musical representation of Phi and sounds very harmonious sound to our ears.

Gary Val Tenuta explores Phi and the Divine Proportion in The Ezekiel Code as well.  Tenuta calls his form of numerology, whereby each letter represents a number; 1 = A, 2 =B, so on up to Z=26, cryptonumerology. On his website, he writes that the term "crypto" relates to the idea of secret writing, ciphers, and codes. Therefore, any word or group of words has a numerical value (by tallying the numbers associated with the letters in the word or group of words). This is important since some consider that numbers not only have quantitative values, but qualitative values as well. “In this sense” say Tenuta, “one might think of numbers as being resonant symbols reflecting archetypal concepts residing in what the Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, called the collective unconscious.”

Aha! Numbers are archetypal! That must be why I kept hearing “archetype” and the number “four” after my awakening.  Getting back to PHI and the Divine Proportion, The Ezekiel Code offers numbers and musical references up the yin/yang. For instance, THE GOLDEN MEAN SPIRAL = 198 = THE MUSICAL SCALE OF GOD and PHI SPIRAL = 108 = GEOMETRY.  THE MUSICAL PHI = 144. THE DIVINE PROPORTION = 252 = CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS = ALCHEMICAL TRANSMUTATION. In case you didn’t notice, all of these numbers add up to 18 or 9 (18 or 1+8=9). Many of the hidden messages in The Ezekiel Code total 9. Tenuta believes 9 represents “synchronicity.”  

Reading The Ezekiel Code was a blast because there were numerous synchronicities between the numbers and my own journey. Synchronicity to me indicates that everything is connected, and my thoughts attract situations/people/information to me when I’m in a place of allowing. The synchronicities I encountered on my spiritual journey with a famous rock band are so prolific, so freaking mind-blowing, that it left no doubt that our consciousness expands beyond our physical mind.