The spirit of these two cards is very similar, isn’t it? Both figures have a happy-go-lucky air about them, each with the right foot solidly on the ground and the left off the ground or at least not holding full body weight. Unbalanced but cheerful about it. And yet the Two of Pentacles juggler is keeping his two pentacles in balance. In the background we can see two ships, one big and one little–symmetry but not total symmetry. It is full day in both pictures.
And yet The Fool is upside down. So how do we interpret this?
I view these cards as not so much a prediction as a message. We are all juggling many priorities which are constantly shifting. How do we keep those priorities in balance? Not so much by keeping our noses to the grindstone — though in fact we may be constantly busy and working hard, it shouldn’t FEEL like we have our noses to the grindstone. Instead, we have to keep a sense of humor about the situation, approaching it with a feeling of playfulness. That’s the only way we can make it, actually. If we approach the situation in a serious way, full of heaviness and worry, all that anxiety will sap so much energy out of us that we won’t have any energy left to do what we need to do. Whereas a playful spirit and a little levity will lift our spirits and feed us energy so we can make it through the day. That’s why depressed people, who have no energy at all, so often have such sharp wits and keen senses of humor — because they intuitively know this simple secret to efficiency and they don’t have the energy to choose an inefficient energy-sapping approach.
Yet we can’t be so playful that we forget to focus on the priorities that need our attention.
Don’t be a fool, be a Fool. To turn The Fool right side up again, trust your instincts, and let playful joyful energy run through you even as you deal with matters that may be quite serious — you will need that joyful energy to fuel your decisionmaking process and to help you to steam through what may be a very heavy work load. A sense of humor is the best GTD (Getting Things Done) tool of all.
Quiet Mystic 