The Fool
The innocent who knows nothing and finds the way.
The Fool: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The fool stands close to the trickster, but where the trickster is cunning the fool is simple: the one without knowledge or standing, laughed at, who blunders into what the wise cannot reach. Jungian writers read him as the beginning of every transformation, and as the part of the psyche that is not yet adapted and so is not yet corrupted.
The Fool: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
The Fool of the Tarot, stepping off the cliff; Parsifal, the “pure fool, made wise by pity”; the holy fools of the Orthodox church; Dostoevsky’s Idiot; the court jester who alone may tell the king the truth.
In the Press’s Books
In the prologue of Thus Spake Zarathustra a buffoon leaps over the rope-dancer, who falls to his death in the market place.
From the Sources
In the Grimms' tale, when Dummling brings out his cinder-cake it has become a fine sweet cake, and his sour beer good wine, and the little man promises him good luck because he has a good heart and is willing to divide what he has.
“So they sat down, and when Dummling pulled out his cinder-cake, it was a fine sweet cake, and the sour beer had become good wine. So they ate and drank, and after that the little man said: ‘Since you have a good heart, and are willing to divide what you have, I will give you good luck.”
Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, Grimms' Fairy Tales, 'The Golden Goose'. Text based on translations from the Grimms' Kinder und Hausmärchen by Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes. The text, read in part
Paul writes that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things to confound the mighty.
“But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty”
The King James Version of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 1:27. King James Version, Project Gutenberg eBook #10. The text, read in part
Each passage is quoted from the text named, which the press fetched and read, and was checked word for word against a fresh copy of it; the link opens that copy. Passages are given as printed, without the editors’ footnote numbers, and with words broken across lines joined.
Where to Read
- “On the Psychology of the Trickster-Figure,” CW 9i
- Enid Welsford, The Fool: His Social and Literary History (1935)
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
Also among Children and the Young
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Fool.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/fool.
Nearby in the alphabet: The Flood: The waters that end one world and begin another. The Flower: The centre unfolding. The Foot: Standing on the earth; the point of contact and of wounding. The Forest: Where the known way ends.