Chapter 2: Fool
The character of the Fool does not appear in the Commedia. The most likely reason is that he does not belong to the realm of philosophy and theology that Dante is portraying. According to Thomas Aquinas, the Fool has no power of reason and therefore, like a baby, can commit no moral fault nor gain merit for good deeds (Davidson 1996).
The word 'fool' does appear. However, it is used in the context of criticizing foolish people. An interesting example is in Paradisio 18:101-102 where Dante speaks of the fools who read omens in the stars. As we will see below (Bagatto), Dante was no respecter of diviners and the theory that the Tarot was designed for magical purposes will receive no reinforcement from our analysis of Dante.
We may speculate that the Tarot Fool represents Dante himself on his journey from ignorance to wisdom (Luke 1975). This hypothesis is suggested by the overall structure of the Commedia. The work is composed of three major sections (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradisio), each composed of 33 poems called cantos. There is, however, an extra canto – the initial one. This initial canto describes Dante finding himself in a dark wood, confused and lost. This resembles the structure of the Tarot majors where the Fool is an extra card that lies outside the 3 X 7 structure of the rest of the cards. In a similar manner, the first canto introducing Dante lies outside the 3 X 9 structure of the Commedia. A second suggestive factor is the frequent insertion of lines, such as Inferno 23:1-2 where Dante describes himself as walking along silent and solitary. And like the Tarot Fool, Dante's place in the symbolic system is nowhere and yet everywhere, since he appears in every Canto of the Commedia. But such evidence is weak and the identification of the Fool with Dante himself must be relegated to the speculative.
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