Tag: zero

We’re still on The Fool here, but first I want to draw attention to a few typical opposites:

Male – Female
Up – Down
Happy – Sad
Wet – Dry
Day – Night
Odd – Even
Light – Dark
Old – Young
Old – New
Right – Left
Right – Wrong
Good – Evil

Some of these we might think of as opposite poles on a sliding scale: Happy/Sad, for instance, and Light/Dark, and Old/Young. Others seem to be mutually exclusive: Old/New, for instance, and Odd/Even, and Right/Left.

Some are difficult to categorise in this way because, although they are not really opposite poles, there is an in-between state:  dusk between Day and Night, damp between Wet and Dry.

And what about Male and Female? That’s an interesting one! And it brings us to Yin and Yang. Let’s see what someone else lists as opposites under the Yin and Yang headings.

These are all mixed up and many of them a bit too definite for me. And notice that the Yin-Yang symbol above has been straightened out, emphasising and symbolising this definiteness. The one below is more to my taste.

And so we come to the point of all this: what about nought/zero as opposed to a number – any number? Nothing as opposed to something? And is that any different from nothing and everything?

I am a practical person. To me, numbers are not abstract – one means one thing, two means two things, three means three things – you get the idea. And so, to me, just as nill means no goals scored in football and love means no points scored in tennis, so nought/zero means no things – nothing. To a child, when I open my hand, it holds one sweet (one thing) or two sweets (two things) or no sweets (nothing).

Let’s have another look at that sliding scale. Add happiness, you decrease sadness, and vice-versa. Likewise with light and dark, heat and cold, easy and difficult, wet and dry, fast and slow. But this certainly doesn’t apply to odd and even, or left and right or old and new. Does it apply to nought/zero and a number – to nothing and something/anything? Of course not.

Zero/nothing is not part of the something/everything. It is empty space. Nothing there. Something is finite. Everything is finite. Nothing is infinite.

“Nothing is infinite” – the title of this post.

At first glance, that statement seems to be ambiguous, can be understood in two – or three? – ways. Either “There is no such thing as (the) infinite – infinity does not exist” or “No thing is infinite” or “Empty space, the void, is infinite.”

But in fact, if you think about it carefully, you will see that what it really means is any thing which exists is by definition finite. But the nothingness within which things exist is infinite. That ONLY nothing can be infinite.

Getting in a bit deep here. But I am particularly interested in the numerology of the Tarot, and The Fool is clearly the odd one out, the one with no number.

In effect, all the cards except The Fool depict or reflect various aspects of finitude. The Fool alone reflects or depicts an aspect of the infinite.

I will return to The Fool and the infinite, but in my next few posts I shall be saying more about numerology and its application to the Tarot in general.