In a re-interpretation of the hero’s journey, the true hero is the fool who longs for home. It’s about the journey not the destination…
A Soup of Myth and Legend…
Not the title of my next cozy fantasy novel, perhaps it should be? It begins with E.A. Deverell’s comments on the Major Arcana of the Tarot by Eden Gray. One Joseph Campbell also has his own take on the Major Arcana; Tarot Revelations. Combine those with Banzhaf’s Fool’s Journey and Nichol’s Jung and the Tarot, and you get a rich soup of myth, symbolism and psycho-drama.
Counter to Campbell’s hero’s journey, Gray and Banzhaf propose the fool’s journey. The fool in the Tarot deck becomes an everyman character who goes on a journey and returns a changed person. Banzhaf even drew a diagram; a spiral reminiscent of Dante’s journey through hell. More seasoning for the soup.
Why the fool?
The fool is NOT the epic hero, superhero, superman, superwoman or demi-god. The fool is you and me: fallible, naive, guileless. The innocent abroad. The seeker after truth. The empty mind who knows nothing but is open to everything.
The fool is the underdog, the willfully gullible protagonist rushing in where wiser heads hold back. And where does the fool go? Tolstoy nailed two versions of the essential story: the stranger who comes to town, or the everyman who leaves on a journey. Both result in an arc of change.
What’s Home got to do with it?
Deverell’s detailed examination of the Tarot deck is not an academic study, but a set of prompts for creative writing. Here’s the first:
1. How is your hero a wise fool?
2. What is a symbol of their home?
3. How will this symbol gain new meaning when the hero returns home after their long journey?
That made me think of the current YA novel in the edit.
1. How is your hero a wise fool?
Yari Tamm is a teenager, between childhood and adulthood. She has a talent, truth-sayer, that comes with no filter. She is both ignorant and wise, powerless and fearless. Yari concocts idiotic, teenage plans regardless of opposition or danger. She speaks truth to power when anyone else would keep their mouth shut.
Yari has one job, one mission, one goal. And no clue how to achieve it.
2. What is a symbol of their home?
Yari goes through three actual homes. There’s her foster-family, the Seecomb’s. She doesn’t fit. There’s her own family home, now violated and abandoned. And there’s a shabby, run-down inn, the ‘Teaspoon. A spiky inn-keeper’s daughter and a Corsair gambler, thief and all-round rogue live there. It’s not her home. Not yet.
3. How will this symbol gain new meaning when the hero returns home after their long journey?
The ‘Teaspoon is the one place Yari is accepted for who she is. It’s a found-home, shared with found-family. Everyone important ends up there. It’s not Yari’s final destination, but a vital way-point along her journey.
Where wise men fear to tread
For all the surface similarities, Gray, Banzhaf and Campbell don’t align. The Fool’s Journey is steeped in old archetypes. And maybe it’s more applicable to the types of characters we identify with today?