Fool as Feelings in Love & Relationships (Upright & Reversed)

Upright, the Fool as feelings means the person likes you and finds you exciting. They are curious, hopeful and happy to see where it goes, but they have not made any commitment or plan. Reversed, the attraction is still there, but fear, avoidance or carelessness is stopping it from turning into steady action.

The card reads differently for a crush, a new partner, a long relationship and an ex. The sections below cover each one, show how neighbouring cards shift the meaning, and end with a next step you can take.

The Fool as Feelings at a Glance

Read upright, the Fool is new, curious feeling with no commitment yet. Reversed, the feeling is the same, but the person either can’t act on it or acts without thinking. This table is the quick version for each situation.

Who you’re asking about	Upright Fool	Reversed Fool
A crush	Sincere interest, a pleasant surprise to them, no pressure to define anything	They like you but freeze, or keep things vague so nothing feels serious
Someone new you’re dating	Giddy, playful infatuation that hasn’t been tested yet	Hot and cold: a great date, then silence
A long-term partner	Renewed curiosity, wants more play and adventure with you	Bored and flat, or restless and close to a rash decision
An ex	Sees you with fresh eyes and can picture a different relationship	Pessimistic about trying again, or tempted by an impulsive message that means little
Your own feelings	You’re falling and enjoying it, maybe ignoring a warning or two	You want to leap but fear is louder, or you’re rushing in blind
Yes or no on love	Lean yes, especially for “can this start?”	Lean “not yet,” especially for “will they commit?”

What Waite, Smith and the Golden Dawn Actually Say About the Fool

Most love meanings for the Fool come from three sources: the picture Pamela Colman Smith painted for the Rider-Waite-Smith deck (Rider, 1909), A. E. Waite’s notes in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’s correspondences. Waite’s own keywords are far harsher than the modern “innocent new beginning” reading. That gap is useful when you read the Fool for feelings.

The image Pamela Colman Smith drew

On the Rider-Waite-Smith card, a young man in a richly decorated tunic stands at the edge of a cliff, looking up and away rather than down. A white rose is in his left hand. Over his right shoulder he carries a staff with a small embroidered bag hanging from it. A small white dog jumps at his heels, a white sun shines in a yellow sky, and snowy mountains sit in the distance.

Each detail matters in a feelings reading:

• The cliff edge. A person ready to commit emotionally before checking whether it’s safe. Upright, the step is coming. Reversed, they’re frozen at the edge or stepping off without looking.
• The white rose. Uncomplicated motives. Fool feelings are rarely strategic, which is why the card reads so differently from the Seven of Swords in the same position.
• The dog. Instinct and the inner voice that says “careful.” Gut-level attraction is doing the steering.
• The light bag. Little baggage, or someone acting as if they had none. They can move fast because nothing slows them down.
• The distant mountains. The hard climbing is far away and not on their mind yet.

Waite’s meanings: folly first, innocence later

In The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Waite lists the Fool’s upright divinatory meanings as “folly, mania, extravagance, intoxication, delirium, frenzy, bewrayment.” Reversed, he gives “negligence, absence, distribution, carelessness, apathy, nullity, vanity.” In the symbolic part of the book, he describes the figure as having “a rose in one hand and in the other a costly wand” and calls the Fool “the spirit in search of experience.”

Two things follow for love readings. First, Waite’s upright list is the language of being swept away: intoxicated, frenzied, a little mad. That fits early infatuation well, and it supports the warning the modern meaning tends to soften. Second, his reversed list is mostly about absence: apathy, nullity, negligence. That is where the “they’ve gone quiet” and “the spark has gone” readings come from.

The book also leaves the Fool’s place oddly unclear. The card is numbered 0, but Waite discusses it between Judgement (XX) and the World (XXI). Modern readers usually put it at the start, so the Major Arcana reads as the “Fool’s Journey” from 0 to XXI. In a feelings position, that means the bond sits at step zero: no history, no lessons learned and no investment yet.

Golden Dawn attributions: Aleph, Air and path 11

The Golden Dawn gave the Fool the Hebrew letter Aleph and the element of Air, and placed it on the eleventh path of the Tree of Life, between Kether and Chokmah. The order’s Book T gives it the title “The Spirit of Aethyr.” Air suits the card in love: feelings that are light, quick, full of ideas and hard to pin down.

The link between the Fool and Uranus, the planet of sudden change and rebellion, came later. It belongs to 20th-century astrological tarot, not the original Golden Dawn system. It still helps in feelings readings. Uranian attraction comes out of nowhere, often surprising the person who feels it, and ignores the usual timeline.

Upright Fool: How They Feel About You

Upright, the Fool says the person is drawn to you and excited about it, with no plan attached. The attraction is real. The commitment isn’t there yet. That’s not because they’re hiding it: they simply haven’t thought that far ahead.

A crush

A crush who feels the Fool about you is interested and hasn’t overthought it. Being around you makes them feel lighter or younger, and there’s often a sense of “I didn’t expect this.”

What they are not feeling: urgency, jealousy or long-term planning. If you’re waiting for “so what are we?”, it isn’t coming soon, and that isn’t a sign they’re losing interest. If they recently left a heavy relationship, you may stand for a fresh start. That’s flattering but fragile, because “fresh start” is a role, not a relationship.

Next step: suggest something spontaneous and low-stakes, like a walk, a gig or a last-minute coffee. Fool energy responds to fun, not agendas.

Someone new you’re dating

Your new partner feels giddy. They tell friends about you, want to try things with you and don’t mind looking a bit silly in front of you. The infatuation is sincere.

The caveat comes straight from Waite’s “intoxication”: these feelings haven’t been tested. They haven’t seen you stressed, ill or at your worst, and they haven’t had to choose you over something else they wanted. Watch for big promises, too. “I’ve never felt like this” in week three is true in the moment. Whether it still holds in six months depends on who they are under the Fool.

What helps:

1. Enjoy it. Treating early joy with suspicion kills relationships that would have worked.
2. Add one piece of ordinary life a month: a boring errand, meeting a friend, a disagreement handled calmly. This moves the relationship off the cliff edge and onto solid ground.
3. Hold off on irreversible decisions, like moving in or big shared purchases, while the Fool is the main feeling. Wait until the Emperor, the Hierophant or the Ten of Cups shows up in their feelings before you build anything structural.

A long-term partner

In an established relationship, the Fool is one of the better feelings cards you can get. Your partner is rediscovering you and approaching you with curiosity instead of habit. This often follows a change, such as a move, a child starting school, a health scare or a new shared project.

It can also mean they want the relationship to feel less like logistics and more like play. The less comfortable reading is restlessness that hasn’t found a direction yet. Ideally that newness happens with you. Check the neighbouring card: Fool plus Two of Cups is rekindling, while Fool plus Seven of Swords or Three of Swords calls for a direct conversation.

Next step: suggest something neither of you has done before. If the restless reading fits, name it kindly: “You seem to want something new. What is it?” Fool energy that gets acknowledged usually stays home.

An ex

Upright, an ex who feels the Fool about you is thinking of you with fresh eyes. The resentment has faded enough for curiosity to creep in, and they’re wondering what a different version of the two of you might look like.

That word matters. The Fool doesn’t mean they want the old relationship back, and the old one ended for reasons. The weakness is the usual one: no plan. Plenty of people feel the Fool about an ex for months and never send the message.

Next step: if you want to reconnect, expect to make the first move, and frame it as new rather than nostalgic. “I’d like to know who you are now” works. “Remember when…” doesn’t.

When it’s your own feelings

If you drew the Fool for your own heart, you’re falling for someone, or for the idea of them, and you’re enjoying the fall. You feel braver than usual. The little dog is barking and you’re walking on anyway.

That’s a good place to be as long as you know it’s where you are. The Fool only hurts people who mistake step zero for step twenty-one. Keep one eye on whether the other person is leaping too.

Reversed Fool as Feelings

The reversed Fool has two distinct meanings, and context tells you which one applies. Either the person is frozen at the cliff: they feel the pull, but fear is stronger than desire. Or they are jumping blind: careless with feelings, theirs or yours. Waite’s reversed keywords, “negligence, absence, carelessness, apathy,” cover both.

Clue in the reading	Points to “frozen”	Points to “jumping blind”
Stage of the relationship	New, undefined	Established, or right after a breakup
Nearby cards	Four of Cups, Four of Swords, the Hanged Man, Eight of Swords	The Tower, Five of Swords or Knight of Wands
What you notice	Silence after closeness, vague plans	Impulsive messages, sudden big announcements

Someone new: hot-and-cold behaviour

When you ask how someone new feels and get the reversed Fool, your side of it usually feels like whiplash. A great date, then four days of silence. Warm texts, awkward in person. Plans made, then softened into “maybe.”

On their side, they like you, and that scares them. Attachment research describes this pattern well. It grew out of John Bowlby’s work with children and was applied to adult romance by Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver in 1987. Avoidant attachment describes people who value independence, feel uneasy with closeness and pull back as things get more intense. The reversed Fool is close to a portrait of that pattern: not indifferent, but overwhelmed, and dealing with it through distance.

There is a less sympathetic version too: someone keeping you as an option because it’s convenient, not because they’re afraid. The reversed Fool next to the Seven of Swords, the Devil or the Knight of Cups reversed points that way.

What helps:

1. Stop chasing. An avoidant person reads pursuit as pressure. Give them space and see whether they use it to come closer or to disappear. Either answer tells you something.
2. Say what you want once, without an ultimatum: “I like you and I’d want this to go somewhere. No need to answer now.”
3. Decide what you can live with. Hot and cold rarely turns warm because you waited patiently. It turns warm when the other person does their own work.

A long-term partner: stagnation or rash moves

With a long-term partner, the reversed Fool usually means one of two things.

• Stagnation. The adventure has gone and they feel it. They’ve stopped suggesting things because earlier ideas were shot down or scheduled out of existence. This is Waite’s “apathy” and “nullity.”
• Recklessness. Less often, it’s a partner about to make a big move without thinking it through: quitting a job on impulse, overspending, flirting with a boundary, or suddenly wanting to move across the country.

What helps: for stagnation, break one routine this week. Try a new restaurant, a different walk, or a question you’ve never asked them. For recklessness, don’t fight the impulse head-on. Ask them to walk you through the plan in detail, because reckless energy often falls apart once it meets specifics. Either way, say out loud that you’ve noticed a change. People feeling the reversed Fool often believe nobody has.

An ex: pessimism or a late-night message

Reversed, the Fool is a cold card for an ex. Where the upright card imagines a fresh start, the reversed one can’t. They may still feel a pull now and then, but they follow it straight away with “that would be a mistake.” Sometimes it’s regret over lost potential, which is sad but rarely gets anyone to pick up the phone.

The reckless version is an ex who might message on impulse, late at night, with no real intention of rebuilding anything. If the reversed Fool sits beside the Moon or the Seven of Cups, treat that kind of contact with caution.

Next step: take the pessimism at face value. If an impulsive message arrives, wait a day and reply in daylight. You’re checking whether the impulse survives sleep and sobriety.

The Fool as Intentions, Actions and How They See You

Feelings, intentions and actions are separate questions, and the Fool answers each one differently. Many readers ask all three in one spread, so it helps to keep them apart.

Position	Upright	Reversed
How they see you	Refreshing, fun, a new chapter, someone who brings out their playful side	Appealing but risky, or “too much, too soon”
Their intentions	Explore and enjoy, no fixed goal	Keep it loose to avoid getting hurt, or no clear intention at all
Their next action	A spontaneous invitation, a sudden text, a trip idea	Delay, silence, or one impulsive move that isn’t followed up
As a person in the reading	Young at heart, adventurous, unconventional, wary of routine	Flaky, careless with promises, or stuck in endless “maybe”

The pattern that confuses most readers is upright feelings with reversed actions. Someone can feel the Fool about you and still do nothing. Feeling comes first, and action needs a different card, often a Knight or the Chariot, before it shows up.

Infatuation or Something Deeper? How Fool Feelings Mature

Fool feelings can grow into lasting love, but only if closeness and commitment catch up with the excitement. Robert Sternberg’s triangular theory of love (1986) gives a clear way to check.

Sternberg describes love as three parts: intimacy (closeness and trust), passion (attraction and excitement) and commitment (the decision to stay). Passion alone is infatuation. Intimacy plus passion is romantic love. All three together is what he calls consummate love.

The upright Fool is high on passion, low on intimacy (they don’t really know you yet) and close to zero on commitment, fittingly for card 0. That’s a starting point, not a verdict.

Signs Fool feelings are maturing:

• Intimacy is catching up. In readings, the Fool is followed by the Two of Cups, the Six of Cups or the Queen of Cups.
• A decision is forming. Watch for the Lovers (a conscious choice), the Four of Wands or the Ten of Cups in later pulls.

Signs it will stay infatuation:

• The Fool keeps repeating in pulls over several weeks with no Cups or steadying Majors joining it.
• The Fool appears next to the Knight of Wands, the Seven of Cups or the Page of Cups reversed.
• In real life, they’re thrilled by you in bursts, absent in between, and talk about “someday” without ever setting dates.

A practical rule of thumb: give Fool feelings about three months to grow a second component. If closeness or commitment hasn’t started by then, the feeling usually fades rather than deepens.

Fool Card Combinations in Feelings Readings

The Fool depends on its neighbours more than most Major Arcana cards because it’s so open-ended. Read a pair as a sentence: the Fool is the mood, and the second card is the direction.

Combination	How the person feels about you
Fool + The Star	Hopeful and inspired. They see you as a real new beginning after a hard stretch. One of the best early-love pairings.
Fool + Lovers (VI)	Attraction turning into a conscious choice. Fool feelings maturing in real time.
Fool + Two of Cups	Mutual, warm and fresh. Innocence meeting real connection.
Fool + Ace of Cups	A new emotional opening. They feel something they didn’t expect to feel.
Fool + The Hanged Man	Wants to leap but is on hold, often still tangled up elsewhere or recovering from a loss.
Fool + The Tower	Feelings that arrived suddenly and are shaking up their life. Thrilling and destabilising.
Fool + The Devil	Infatuation with an obsessive edge. They feel hooked rather than free.
Fool + Knight of Wands	Passion with no brakes. Exciting, and probably short unless steadying cards follow.
Fool + Four of Cups	Interested in theory, apathetic in practice. They like the idea of you more than they act on it.
Fool reversed + The Moon	Confusion and self-deception. They don’t know what they feel, and their story may change.
Fool reversed + Ten of Pentacles	Wants long-term security but is terrified of the leap needed to get there.

Using the Fool for a Love Decision

As a yes-or-no card, the upright Fool leans yes for questions about starting something, and the reversed Fool leans “not yet” for questions about commitment. For a real decision, such as asking someone out, giving an ex another chance or making a relationship official, match your question to what the card can actually answer.

1. “Should I make a move?” Upright: yes, keep it light and spontaneous. Reversed: wait, or make one low-pressure gesture and then step back.
2. “Will they commit?” The Fool can’t answer this on its own because it sits before commitment. Draw a second card for the three-month outlook.
3. “Should I go back to my ex?” Upright: only if both of you are building something new. Reversed: the timing or the motive is off.
4. “Should we move in / get engaged?” The Fool, either way up, says the foundation isn’t proven yet. Revisit when steadier cards turn up.

A four-card Fool feelings spread

This layout works for “how does this person feel about me?” when the Fool has already appeared:

1. Where they are now. Their current feelings toward you.
2. What holds them at the cliff edge. The fear, distraction or practical obstacle. Reversed cards here say a lot.
3. What would make them leap. The condition that would turn feeling into action. Court cards here often describe a quality they need to see.
4. Where this lands in three months. Compare it with Sternberg’s triangle: is a second component appearing?

Read positions one and four together first. The gap between them is the story.

Your Next Step After Drawing the Fool

The Fool doesn’t ask you to decide the whole future. It asks you to decide the next step and how far you’re willing to walk without a map. Match their pace for now, but set yourself a private check-in about three months out. If the feeling has grown closeness or a concrete choice by then, you’re on solid ground. If it hasn’t, you have your answer, and the Fool’s other lesson is that there are other cliffs and other open roads.

FAQ

Does the Fool mean someone likes you?

Upright, yes. It’s one of the clearer “they’re interested” cards, with a new, curious and slightly nervous feel to it. Reversed, they usually still like you, but right now fear or carelessness is stronger than the liking. Watch what they do, not just what they say.

What does the Fool reversed mean as feelings?

It means one of two things. The person may want to move toward you but be frozen by fear of commitment or getting hurt, which often shows up as hot-and-cold behaviour. Or they may be emotionally careless and not thinking about consequences. In long relationships, it more often means boredom or an impulsive decision brewing, which matches Waite’s reversed keywords of “apathy” and “negligence.”

Is the Fool a yes or no in love?

Upright, lean yes, especially for whether something can begin. Reversed, lean no or “not yet,” especially for whether someone will commit. For long-term outcomes, the Fool is too early in the journey to answer on its own, so pair it with a second card.

What does the Fool mean as feelings for an ex?

Upright, your ex is thinking about you with renewed curiosity and can picture a different relationship with you, though they’re unlikely to make the first move. Reversed, they’re pessimistic about getting back together, may feel regret without acting on it, or may send an impulsive message that doesn’t mean much.

Can Fool feelings turn into real love?

Yes, if closeness and commitment develop alongside the first spark. Within about three months, the person should know you better and have made at least a small choice to prioritise you. If it stays pure excitement, it tends to fade.

What did A. E. Waite say the Fool means?

In The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Waite gives the upright meanings as folly, mania, extravagance, intoxication, delirium, frenzy and bewrayment, and the reversed meanings as negligence, absence, distribution, carelessness, apathy, nullity and vanity. He described the figure as “the spirit in search of experience.” The gentler “innocent new beginning” reading is a later development built on Pamela Colman Smith’s image.

Why is the Fool linked to Uranus and to Air?

The Golden Dawn gave the Fool the Hebrew letter Aleph and the element of Air, and placed it on the path between Kether and Chokmah. Uranus is a later, 20th-century astrological link. Both fit the card in love: feelings that are airy and quick, and attraction that arrives suddenly and ignores the usual timeline.