The Mountain and The Fool
Molly Hankins March 12, 2026
On the very first card of the Tarot Major Arcana we find The Fool. Attributed to the number 0 and the Hebrew letter Aleph (א), he is pictured with a mountain range behind them. Ready to step into the valley of experience, The Fool looks up blissfully, certain of their safety as they’re about to drop off a cliff. And so it is as we leave Source consciousness and step into the valley of separate individuation. Our souls long to know what we’re getting into, but once we take that step into physical incarnation we are stepping off a metaphorical cliff into the great unknown.
At this early stage in the journey, The Fool is still knowingly connected to superconsciousness or source-consciousness, which we forget as we get further into our incarnations. It is exactly this connection that allows The Fool to remain so calm. The number zero represents superconsciousness and harkens to the zero point where consciousness begins; our collective point of origin also known as The Cosmic Egg. Occult author and founder of ‘Builders of the Adytum Mystery School’ Paul Foster Case attributed Aleph to this card because it is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It’s also known as the father, or the ox as it’s expressed in pictograph, a symbol of the motive, life-giving force from which all things derive.
The Fool is accompanied by a small dog: an evolved, domesticated descendent of a wild animal symbolizing how our consciousness evolves. As Case wrote, “The little white dog is a descendent of wolves and jackals. Thus he is a human adaptation, whereby something given in a wild and dangerous state by the modified processes of nature has been changed into a friend, helper and companion of man. He also indicates the truth that all subhuman forms of the Life-power are elevated and improved by the advance of human consciousness.” The dog embodies the same evolution our souls experience while in human form as well - from lower, animalistic tendencies of dominance and submission towards a wider range of conscious expression of creative capacity.
According to Case, the iced-covered mountains in the background of the card refer to the cold, still nature of the Absolute, the Source from which consciousness originates. The human brain and matter itself have been described as ‘warm, wet and noisy,’ most notably by physicist Max Tegmark, the exact opposite expression of cold stillness illustrated by the mountain range. The archetype of The Fool symbolizes the state of Life-power prior to self-expression in the valley of experience. The image of the mountain appears in many of the Tarot Major Arcana cards, including The Emperor, The Lovers, Strength, Temperance, The Star, The Moon and Judgement. The Hermit waits on top of the mountain holding a light for other seekers to make their way back to Source.
“All of us embody the archetype of The Fool as we leave the safety of unexpressed potential and venture into the warm, wet and noisy world of form.”
The image of the mountain is making its way through the pop-culture social media sphere this month, following the release of the new Gorillaz album, The Mountain. Easily the band’s most overtly spiritual record, it was inspired by two trips to India taken by co-founders Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett after their fathers passed away within ten days of one another.
The Mountain album cover illustrates what feels like a perfect completion of the cycle of incarnations, the antithesis to The Fool’s depiction. The album art finds the Gorillaz characters all together at the very top of the mountain facing the sun. It feels like consciousness itself split into all these different characters, found each other in the valley of experience, had a great adventure playing and creating in the world of form, and then returned back up the mountain. Scientist and author Itzhak Bentov described the realm of the Creator as ‘the fertile void;’ cold and still at rest but alive with potential for expression. It’s akin to what Paul Foster Case described as the icy peaks of the mountains from which The Fool descends.
The album’s cover art feels like the last stop before these different expressions of consciousness are absorbed back into the fertile void. Three of the band members seem to be looking back down to the valley, but Murdoc (the fictional founder of the band) is looking towards Aleph, expressed as sunlight. Even on hiss phone, he’s still clearly caught up in the experience of form. The Fool is also looking up, confident in his undertaking even though it might seem quite foolish to come into a realm of duality where inevitably everything and everyone we love in this realm we’ll eventually lose.
According to Bentov, life is the ultimate game of hide-and-seek. Not only do all the different expressions of consciousness ultimately find each other on the proverbial mountain, Bentov also believed that mystical experiences are actually the Creator peaking into the world of form to tell our souls, “Boo! I’m you.” All of us embody the archetype of The Fool as we leave the safety of unexpressed potential and venture into the warm, wet and noisy world of form. Much of The Mountain‘s lyrical content deals with the challenge of saying goodbye to those we love when souls leave their physical bodies. But as the album cover and generally uplifting musical choices in the songs promise, we all ultimately find each other in the end, and again and again throughout the valley of human experience.
Molly Hankins is an Initiate + Reality Hacker serving the Ministry of Quantum Existentialism and Builders of the Adytum.
