What is a fool?
Words associated with being 'foolish' like 'silly' has its etymological roots in 'seely' or 'holy' or 'sacred'. Though fool apparently derives from 'follis' Latin for a wind-bag! Other words connected with the fool like 'jest' as in a 'jester' come from the meaning of 'a story or deeds' or 'doings'. The image of the fool is often of a ragtaggle figure wandering astray from the crowd, or a harlequin clad jester type, masked and with a stick. The fool seems to behave in a way that brings great hilarity, often because he has just shown his audience what is not allowed or suppressed among the collective populous. The way he has shown this is exaggerated and 'over the top'; the fool is releasing to the surface what is unconscious to most people in society, he is unblocking as it were the stopper in the collective mind that has been put there to stop people really seeing the kind of society they are existing within. The people though unblock it with their laughter as the fool is just acting as the valve switching on their consciousness, which has become stilted up with what society has impressed upon them through education, mass media, clothes and food. Society has people inhabiting what it is imprinted on our minds as to how we should be, act and show ourselves to others as that it is up to the fool to be their light-bulb to show them the shadows behind the scenes. He is deliberately acting out his seeming madness to reflect back to people what they are doing. The fool finds it unbearably hilarious to see all these people unaware of their behaviour so he has no choice but to act it out to them, to show them their foolishness. He is often the single figure in society who can also mock its rulers and how they rule; they will tolerate it to a degree because the fool comes forth from an order of existence they have no power over. I talk of where the fool walks. He has gone astray from the path and wandered over the borders of accepted reality/the status quo/the mundane and into the realms of imagination/the Other/ the fantastic kingdom. It is a symbolic reality he has been visitor to and become citizen of. This place is a bit like having a walk in the woods: you are still in the world but its façade has been hidden and you are forced to think differently with nothing familiar around you anymore. From the symbolic reality the fool comes back to ours and he brings special powers to change what he perceives in the world with his wit, imagination and humour.
As well as this the fool will have learnt humility. Humility is another wisdom the rulers see the fool possesses and they fear him because of it though they will not show this. He has learnt humbleness through experiencing there are actual limits to all human endeavours; that we cannot know everything, that we cannot win every battle, that we may lose the one we love, that we will ultimately go back to the soil. Through learning humbleness, the fool breaks down into laughter when he returns home to see all these men and women frantically milling about attempting to stop and control the inevitable majesty of being alive. Innocence comes in the bundle with the fool figure as well. It is the innocence of carrying your own child with its wide open mind that does not judge or presume, into adulthood; it is the innocence of allowing mistakes to be made, of being not over cautious, and permitting the great learning of life to seep ever deeper into ones core. When we think of innocence as this simplified concept of a person being rather daft, unworldly, and suggestible this is to be blind to its true power and meaning. The fool takes innocence with him in his bundle and goes walking on...straight over the cliff! That's another thing, the fool doesn't fear and innocence has a lot to do with being not controlled by fear and steered instead by joy and playfulness.
Can we see now behind the words 'holy fool'? it say's the 'sacred one who carries innocence' perhaps, but then the fool would probably laugh now at my attempt to define his gift and proceed to shake up, take apart, juggle and play about with the words into a silly soup.