The Twelve Days of Christmas, Fourth Day, Festival of Fools
Day four of the Twelve Days of Christmas is the Feast of Fools. It is derived from the Saturn days in Roman times. During these days the social order was reversed. The masters served the slaves. This was to show that the normal order was the best in the end, but it also relieved the slaves from the tension of their roles for a few days.
These last days of the year are ambivalent. They are solemn and profound, but there is glitter and glamour in them as well. There are parties and beautiful dresses, may be to forget the dull order, to escape that.
The spread of today (well of yesterday, I am running behind) is called “Spread of the Fool”. It invites you to look at your problems in a new, different, fresh, unexpected, foolish way.
The spread has three cards, and they are obtained in a foolish way. I tell how:
1.Find the Fool in your deck (when you do that the Fool in you gets your attention).
2.Put it back somewhere.
3.Shuffle the cards.
4.Look through the card and search the Fool, but be careful, do not lift the card out of the deck.
Well (now it is going to get complicated, and I cannot show it here), the card that is on the back of the Fool is the origin of the problem and is card 2. Card 1 is the card on the front of the Fool. That is the card the Fool is heading for, he is walking towards that card, so to say. This card shows the problem that the fool invites you to solve in an to solves in a foolish way. The Fool is card 3 (but it is in the middle).
So, there are three cards in the following order:
Card 1, on the left, is the problem the Fool is heading for, the problem that must be solved in a foolish way, card 3 in the middle is the Fool himself and card 2, on the right, is the origin of the problem.
I you want to, you can draw an extra card, number 4, to show you what is a foolish way to solve your problem.
The following are the cards that I have pulled.
I have used Tarot of the Secret Forest for this reading today. I have received The Star as my problem, as card 1. A little butterfly-person is pouring water out of a jar. My problem, card 1, is again (sigh) wanting to give and help others, doing good, so to say.
The origin of the problem is 10 of Wands, which in this deck is a turtle on which plants are growing. Interesting is that I received this card last year as the card that represented the divine child (Christ-child) within me. There is much hope invested in a divine child, so the turtle has an enormous burden to carry, all the growing plants on its back. That is the origin of my problem: I expect ‘divine’ things of myself, but I can not live up to it.
Card three in the middle is the Fool. In this version of the Fool he is kicking the right, in the direction of the origin of the problem. So I must stop having these high expectations of myself.
Seen in another way, the Star on the left calls for rest and regeneration. The wings of the butterfly are damaged. In that case the Fool in the middle kicks away a few of my tasks on the card at the right side of him, which is quite necessary, because I do have too much on my plate at the moment.