April Fools’ Day

It is recorded that, once upon a time the new year actually started on the 1^st April.

This was before the setting of January 1 as the beginning of the new year, back in1582 by Pope Gregory X111 ordering a new Gregorian calendar to replace the old Julian Calendar. The new calendar called for the celebration of New Year’s Day to be moved from 1^st April to 1^st January.

As the story goes, in the day, many people either refused to accept the new date, or simply did not learn about it, and continued to celebrate New Year’s Day on the 1^st of April. It is thought by some, according to a popular explanation, people began to make fun of these traditionalists, sending them on ‘fool’s errands’ or trying to trick them or playing pranks on them. Eventually, as the practice spread the day become April Fools day.

My thought is that it may have a connection with the mystical Tarot. The Tarot is a powerful tool of divination. The church strenuously tried to stop access to this practice.

The fool in tarot is numbered 0 and actually is at the beginning of the Tarot deck. The Fool is shown as the beginning of a journey with unlimited potential. It symbolized new beginnings and a fresh start. As the first day of a year, a new project, relationship, a path or journey.

I was once told how the fool carries a bag on a staff that has all that he needs, yet he doesn’t realise it. The Fool is pure and innocent unmoulded potential, neither positive nor negative yet containing the possibility of both. The Fool represents brand new beginnings, new experiences and new choices; the first steps along a new path and the first words written onto a blank page.

We all have unlimited potential. It is through the first steps that we learn how to walk, and begin our journey, and then step forth into the unknown, move ahead and beyond the boundaries and limitations of the past to transform.

Today we are entering a new era. As we step forward, we become aware that the world we saw in the past was merely an illusion. We need to let-go of the old restrictive paradigm, limiting belief systems and step into the new adventure. We carry the potential to walk the new path if we can let go of the old and use the tools and tricks we have learned to embrace an expanded perspective.

“Remember how electrical currents and ‘unseen waves’ were laughed at? The knowledge about man is still in its infancy.” – Albert Einstein.

Allow yourself to let go of what seemed to mattered so much in the past, and step ahead and ask in this new moment what greater reality you choose.

After all, what is reality anyway?

Remember to enjoy each step along the way of your spiritual adventure.