Feet, The Fool and the Zodiac

In the medieval mind, and probably much earlier in antiquity, the zodiac signs were thought to influence or rule over certain aspects of the body, which can be seen from the accompanying plates:

In the Zodical Man, Aries, the beginning of the Zodiac rules the head, whilst Pisces the fish at the end of the Zodiac rules the feet. For those not so acquainted with the zodiac these sigils can be reviewed along with this charming rhyme:

The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins,

And next the Crab the Lion shines,

The Virgin and the Scales,

The Scorpion, Archer, and Sea-Goat,

The Man that bears the Watering-Pot,

The Fish with glittering tails

The rhyme rightly describes Capricorn as the Fishtailed Goat,

as it was in Ancient Babylon. Capricorn is symbolic of man in his dual aspects of hard (earthy) matter and his spiritual (watery) nature, often in esoteric art the Initiate is shown to have a fish tail showing that the Initiate also journeys in the spiritual world.

The zodiac sigil for the Sea Goat Capricorn

appears to contain the sacred tools of the ancient architects – the engineers square and the measuring rope, which links the sacred buildings of antiquity such as the Pyramids at Giza to the medieval masons and the Gothic Cathedrals.

There is also a link between the Zodiac sign of Capricorn who has a fish tail for its hind quarters and Pisces the Fish who rules the feet of man; the symbolism directly relates to mans spiritual journey - the spiritual is often depicted as "watery" and hence an initiate would be depicted with a fish tail; the fish (pisces) was associated with the Knights Templar, a Chivalric Order established for esoteric purposes, and; furthermore the fish is of particular significance in the Christian faith (echoed in the Grail romances with the Fisher King).

Fish appear in number of the biblical stories, Christ walks on water to a fishing vessel, is the fisher of men, he breaks bread and fish to feed the five thousand; furthermore his ministry is within the Age of Pisces, the Christ fish becomes an symbol of the early Christians. Christ himself is anointed on his head (Aries) and he initiates his disciples by washing their feet (Pisces), that this action is both symbolic and important is stressed in Christ’s reply to a reluctant Simon Peter. The doors of the San Zeno Church in Verona show Salome dancing for Herod, contorted like a fish with her head touching her feet (completing the zodiac) after which John the Baptist is decapitated - embalmed heads become a point of interest in the Grail stories.

Moving then into medieval literature and the Grail story Perlesvaus which was almost certainly written by a Knights Templar again brings us this idea of the Fisher King and Keeper of the Grail and the interest in recovering Christian relics as well as embalmed heads – the Grail quest is both a temporal and spiritual journey. We can see in the Gothic Cathedrals, which are books made of stone, a continuation of this Grail Quest. At Chartres we see an image of a Knights Templar, or actually two Knights Templar (their famous seal depicts two knights on one horse) thus supposedly linking to the Zodiac sign of Gemini or twins but with, beneath their feet, a fish. In this way the feet, fish and Christ are somehow linked with the dual nature of man who stands upon Pisces who rules the secrets of initiation. 

It is worth noting at this point that the origin of Pisces, as seen in the sigil, is not one fish but two side by side. 

Like Gemini, Pisces is also a twin, two fish for two feet.

As the zodiac moves from Pisces to Aries, from the foot back to the head, we find ourselves at the beginning of April and April Fool’s day -  a tradition taken from the French in the 17th Century (called the April Fish in France), a day where many of us act the Fool and play jokes on one another. This use of Tomfoolery, or silliness, links almost certainly to the medieval practice of the Feast of Fools or Feast of the Donkey (or Ass) when all manner of tomfoolery was implemented within the auspices of the Church by the local populace it was a type of social pressure relief valve, in which medieval peasants would 'act the goat' and for one day only to turn the church led hierarchy on it's head. Incorporated by the church into the Medieval Feast of Fools where the true meaning became forgotten - it is mentioned at length in Fulcanelli's Mystere des Cathedrales, reminding us that the way of the Fool is in fact an esoteric spiritual path of initiation - the restless, traveling Initiate, perhaps also bringing to mind the expression 'we are all fools for God's sake'.

Such purposeful and exacting foolishness finally takes us to The Fool, or zero in the Tarot deck. The Fool in the tarot deck analogous perhaps to the joker or court jester but more specifically to the Troubadours of the South of France's (Cathar Country), begins a journey on a spiritual path of initiation armed only with a sack (containing his Karma) on a stick carried behind his shoulder and a dog (indicating the Astral body of emotions) running at his heels a  little like the leopard from Dante's Inferno (Dante begins his journey meeting the Astral as an independent entity manifested in a leopard - sometimes translated as panther - ‘una lonza leggiera e presta molto’. ): The Fool stands at the beginning of a physical and spiritual journey. 

This Tarot card in whose earliest rendering shows the Fool barefoot reminds us that it is our feet, linked to the secrets of initiation, and the twin-fish, that take us on both a temporal and spiritual journey, and that it is the bringing of the feet to the head in a circle (zero) which completes the Zodiac.