What it means
A young traveller steps toward the edge of a cliff with a white rose in one hand and a small bundle on a stick over his shoulder, a dog at his heels. He is looking at the sky, not at the drop. As a birth card the Fool points to a life of fresh starts, travel and experiments, lived with an innocence that survives a lot. Fool people often walk away from safe paths and land on their feet. The Golden Dawn links the card with the element of Air. The lesson is to keep the faith and also to look down now and then.
Strengths
Openness, courage, spontaneity, a sense of humour and the freedom to start over.
Challenges
Recklessness, avoiding commitment, naivety about people, and leaving others to deal with the details.
With its partner cards
The Fool comes with the Emperor as its Soul card, since 2 and 2 make 4. On paper they are opposites, the wanderer and the ruler. Readers see the pair as freedom that has to learn some structure, and structure that needs a leap now and then. People with these cards often build something unusual out of a series of risks.
When it is your birth card
Greer's method adds the month, day and full year, then adds the digits until the total is 22 or less. In her terms the higher card of a pair is the Personality card and the lower one the Soul card. Between 1900 and 2030, the Fool is a birth card for 5.3 percent of birthdays. It always comes as the Personality card over the Emperor, 22 and 4. How often it turns up depends heavily on birth year, since the year makes up almost all of the total: 8.7 percent of birthdays from 1900 to 1959, 4.4 percent of birthdays from 1960 to 1999 and no birthdays from 2000 to 2030. The last birthday in that span to produce the Fool is January 1, 1991. Nobody born after that, through 2030, has it, and the next birthday that does is December 31, 2256. For example, someone born on January 5, 1987 adds 1 + 5 + 1987 = 1993, then 1 + 9 + 9 + 3 = 22, then 2 + 2 = 4. That gives the Fool and the Emperor (22 and 4).
How Cosmic Array reads it
Cosmic Array works out your birth cards from your date of birth alone with Greer's method, so no birth time is needed. The Architect blueprint lists them by name in the same panel as your Life Path, and the two always line up. A set with the Fool always ends in the Emperor, which goes with a Life Path of 4 or 22, because both reduce the same birthday digits.