Back before Twitter was ‘X’ I saw this great tweet by poet Bianca Stone:
5 YO: “When I grow up will it be the starting?”
Me: “….what’s the starting?”
5 YO: “You know, like the starting of the world.”
It gave me very strong Fool vibes, and I just relish that childlike energy. OF COURSE it will be The Starting, when this little one grows up. It will be their very own. Their very own beginning, their very own waking up to the world.
I pulled the Fool once for this quote: “My child was right on the precipice of tumbling into his greatness as an adult human*.”
They were about to START.
The Fool is often numbered Zero, but in many older decks it’s unnumbered. Everywhere it goes, it’s the beginning.
How can we cultivate our own belief in the Starting? How can we trust that there is still greatness for us to tumble into?
As adults, we’ve been journeying for quite a while. Long enough to get a little (or a lot) jaded. Long enough to believe that our potential is dimming with each passing year. The idea of a ‘starting’ can seem absolutely ridiculous when it feels more like The End-our own, edging closer and closer. Or, these days, The End of Everything, of the world.
But the Fool asks us to remember that we carry the energy of beginning within us, always. We can always start fresh, start new, start living, start believing, start something. (Now I need to listen to some Michael Jackson).
Every day is the Starting.
some prompts:
I cultivate belief in my own Starting
I release my fearful assumptions that it is all Ending
I exist healthfully in the tension between beginnings and endings
(I often design my prompts/spreads with statements, but if it makes more sense to you, you can add a “how can I….” and turn these prompts into questions.)
*this quote is from an article on the Ghost Ship fire that deeply affected me. I pulled lots of cards while I was reading it. This pull was especially powerful because the child in question had died in this fire, which was in Oakland. I was using the This Might Hurt Tarot, and in this depiction of the Fool the Golden Gate Bridge and hills of San Francisco are in the background, so it was very poignant. Anyway, if you want to get wrecked, https://archive.ph/0P9HV (this is an archive link to the NYT that I hope works for you! No paywalls!)