The Fool (Again)
Name: The Fool
Number: 0
Astrology: Air
Qabalah: Aleph
Chris Gabriel September 13, 2025
As we have reached the end of our 78 week exploration of the Tarot, I thought it fitting to explore my own journey of discovery with this perfect tool. From Fool to learned Fool.
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Rider
I remember buying my first pack of Tarot cards. I was in high school and I went to Earth Spirit after class and bought a Rider-Waite deck. We went back to my room, and immediately splayed them out face down on the floor, and shuffled the cards around. We pushed them back in place, and I set about reading.
We did not study the booklet, instead we intuited the meaning from the images before us. I brought it to school the next day and set up shop in the library, reading for friends and fellow students. I felt I had found the perfect niche. Understanding philosophy or occultism was never enough, I had to communicate what I learned in an effective way, tarot was the perfect bridge between the esoteric and the mundane.
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Thoth
I was given the Thoth tarot deck, and the accompanying Book of Thoth as a birthday gift from my mother. It was in fact the last gift I would receive from her. At this point I had grown far more interested in the Occult tradition behind the tarot, and desperately hungered for the wisdom in that text, and so I devoured it.
I was able to grasp the basic symbols, having worked with them at length, but the astrological and Qabalistic elements were beyond my understanding at the time, so I read the book again and again, and I played with the cards constantly.
I had my first breakthrough as I taught my friend Jana, the astrological significance of the cards. It was sudden, the system had at last become a toy with which I could play, and play I did! My abilities in divination exponentially increased.
I joked often in the years that followed that the Qabalah played no part in my Occult work. Like astrology, I had rote memorization of the component sephiroth and alphabet, but it meant nothing to me.
It wasn’t until 2022, when I met my mentor Tessa DiPietro, that I began to grasp at the divine that existed within the tarot. She quizzed me regularly on the subject, and took time to show me how it functioned. Through her teaching, I was at last able to read the Book of Thoth and 777 fully, and apply this fantastic, expansive set of information to my readings.
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Marseille
I am embarrassed to say I didn’t own a Marseille deck until I was given this project by Tetragrammaton. I had played with the deck at shops, and studied the imagery in books, but I desired the Jodorowsky version, and foolishly went without. I purchased the deck, just like my first, at Earth Spirit.
I played with them, read with them, and recalled my studies of these cards. I intentionally used the method utilized by Aleister Crowley, the creator of the Thoth deck, to teach a student, record the lecture, and write it out. As I moved city to city throughout the year, I would engage in these dialogs with my friends. In this way I was able to get through the deck in an entirely randomized, meaningful way.
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Upon completing every piece, I would anxiously send the work to my girlfriend, await her response, and then send it to my editor, who would fix my sloppy punctuation, and occasionally remove my references to internet memes (which is of course what got me into this work to begin with! The Three of Cups is “Girls Night”) and then send it into the would by way of the wonderful Tetragrammaton.com.
I am forever grateful to all involved in my esoteric development, and for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime, to share what I have learned from a decade of Tarot reading and study with all of you. I hope my writing has helped you form a greater understanding of the cards, and that you’ll stick with me as I begin to explore the I Ching with you!
With love and light, Christian Gabriel
