The Magician

The Magician: one hand up

The Magician stands behind a table. One arm is raised, and in that hand is a white wand. His other hand points at the ground. On the table lie a cup, a sword, a coin with a star and a plain wooden wand, the signs of the four suits. Over his head Pamela Colman Smith drew a figure eight lying on its side, and red roses and white lilies grow around him.

He comes straight after the Fool, as trump I. Walk through the Major Arcana in order, as one road, and he is the first person the traveller meets. You could look at this card as the moment someone picks up a tool for the first time.

The image

Start with his arms. Arthur Edward Waite described the pose in his guide to the deck. The wand is "raised towards heaven, while the left hand is pointing to the earth". Waite said the gesture brings light down "from things above" to "things below". So the Magician stands like a lightning rod. You could trace the line with your eyes, from the tip of the wand, down through his body, to the pointing finger.

Over his head floats the eight on its side. Waite called it "the sign of life, like an endless cord". He also said the Magician's belt is a snake eating its own tail. Both shapes loop back on themselves and never end.

Now look at the table. Waite wrote that the four signs lie "like counters before the adept", and that "he adapts them as he wills". Counters are the pieces you push around a board in a game. That word keeps the scene light. The Magician may be playing.

The flowers have a story too. Waite named them after a line in the Bible's Song of Songs: the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys. On this card they are "changed into garden flowers". Someone has planted them.

Older cards drew a rougher man at this table. Waite listed the old names: "the Magus, Magician, or Juggler, the caster of the dice and mountebank". A mountebank was a showman who sold cures in the market square. Old French cards called him Le Bateleur, a juggler. Painters knew him well.

In The Conjurer, painted in the early 1500s by a follower of Hieronymus Bosch, he does the cups-and-balls trick at a small table. One man in the crowd bends so far forward to watch that he misses another man lifting his purse. Waite wanted to lift the Magician far above tricks like these. Smith kept the table, though. You could let both men stand behind it: the one who draws light down, and the one who fools the eye.

The inner journey

The psychologist Carl Jung thought most of the mind is unknown to itself. The small lit part that says "I" he called the ego. It notices things and makes choices. Many readers see the Magician as this "I" waking up. The Fool was pure possibility. Now someone says, "I can." The four suits lie on the table, and so the whole deck is within reach.

Jung also wrote about the trickster, a figure who turns up in myths all over the world. The trickster is clever and shameless, and he breaks the rules. Jung called figures like this archetypes, patterns that shape images in every mind. He linked the trickster to Mercurius, the quick, slippery spirit of the old alchemists. The Magician has some of that in him. The same hands can make a thing and fake it.

So the first power the Fool meets comes with a question. What happens once you can make things happen?

You could hurry on to the next card. You could also stay a while at this table, where everything is still being tried out. Try treating your own day as a set of tools laid out in front of you: a cup, a blade, a coin and a stick. Which one do your hands reach for first? Let the picture grow richer before you put it to use.

Across traditions

The Golden Dawn gave the Magician Beth, the second of the Hebrew letters, and the planet Mercury. In Book T, the order's own handbook of the cards, his secret title is "The Magus of Power".

Mercury is the Roman name for Hermes, the messenger of the Greek gods. An old Greek poem, the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, tells how he was born at dawn. By midday he had made the first lyre, out of a tortoise shell. By evening he had stolen fifty of his brother Apollo's cows. When Apollo caught him, Hermes played the lyre. Apollo loved the music so much that he made peace. The brothers swapped gifts. Hermes gave Apollo the lyre. Apollo gave Hermes his shining whip, and later promised him a golden staff.

Now look back at the Magician's face. Waite gave him "the countenance of divine Apollo". The Golden Dawn gave him the planet of Hermes. So the two brothers of the story meet in one figure: the bright god and the clever thief. He has Apollo's calm face and Hermes' quick hands. See which one you notice first.

Try this

Clear a small table, or a corner of one. Put four things on it: something to drink from, something that cuts, a coin and a pen or a stick. Stand behind them for a minute, one hand up and one hand pointing down, the way he does. Notice how your body feels in that pose. Then look back at the card. Which of the four would you pick up first, and which would you leave lying there, waiting for a hand?

Questions to sit with

• What is the Magician about to do with the things on his table?
• Where in your life are you the one who makes things happen?
• When did you last fool yourself, and what gave it away?
• If the Fool walked up to this table, what would the Magician hand him?
• Which is closer to you today: Apollo's calm or Hermes' quick hands?

The film

No film for this card yet.