Pilgrim archetypal image (Tarot)

The encounter of the psyche with a representation of a pilgrim or wayfarer is an archetypal image. Variations are the minstrel, the itinerant fool and the roving player or actor. This emblem is one of the profoundest of the archetypes of awareness. In the Kabbalah, the fool has been associated with one of the two highest paths of wisdom on the sephirothic tree, between wisdom (the first emanation) and the crown (an aspect of revealed divinity). In the Tarot, he is a young wanderer represented as walking on the high-road with his kit bag of possessions and a staff. Before him lie many paths and his multicoloured garments reflect the spectrum of possibilities. This is why, as the modern playing card the [joker]

, he is free to assume different values; and one of the reasons why, in the Tarot, his card is numbered zero (by being unnumbered but placed in order before the first card). Within the Tarot system itself, the fool precipitates the cosmic process; his energies will descend to the chasm at the bottom of the tree of life, and what was previously manifest will come into being. There may be an indication that the psychic encounter with the pilgrim may be associated with the encounter with the chariot (or royal charioteer).

A path from the Crown (Kether) to the worlds below; that for the pilgrim is by means of Chokmah, wisdom, according to Tarot correspondences.