The Magician

This article is excerpted from Tarot for Life, now available from Quest Books.

As your desire is, so is your will. As your will, so is your deed. As your deed, so is your destiny. -- Brihadaramyaka Upanishad

At the gateway to the Major Arcana stands the Magician. He is the bright, enduring presence on this journey of awakening that we, by virtue of our birth, have chosen to undertake. The Magician pulls the chain on the cosmic lamp switch, beaming the light of pure awareness onto life. As our guide through the Tarot path, he brings conscious understanding to each of the archetypal encounters that follow. He is the essence of the conscious mind, the “home office” through which we register every thought and sensation.

The Magician represents the ego (Latin for I), our basic awareness that we exist, that we have a unique personality that may hate opera or love horse racing. As many occult writers have pointed out, the word I and the Roman numeral I are not only identical, they both represent what is primary and singular. In the continuity of life, our I is unchanging. We experience everything in relationship to ourselves. Yet despite the unity implied in the number One, the symbols on the card point to an apparent duality in the Magician, and therefore in us. One hand acknowledges Heaven, the divine Mind; the other gestures to the physical plane. The Magician is our awareness that, though we are not the Allness of God, that which is God is withinus. Trump One is our deepest knowing that spiritual power is the only true power, and spiritual reality the ultimate reality. In accepting our responsibility as Magicians, we are called consciously to create the inner conditions that allow divine energies to express through us.

Such an alignment produces extraordinary potential. The
Magician’s mastery is dramatized by the white rod through which the currents of divine energy are carried earthward. We see the result, the harmony of roses both above and below the Magician. What God desires (desire, “from the Father”), so does the Magician, who acts as agent of divine will. The red roses connote the desire at the root of all creation, here manifested. White lilies symbolize the purity of
intention. When our desires are in sync with spirit, we create beauty on earth. The Waite-Smith cards illustrate the timelessness of this truth in the infinity symbol above the Magician.

The Trump’s above-and-below orientation has another, equally important coordinate. It represents our potential for bringing not only the spiritual and the physical into alignment, but also the conscious and the unconscious, the masculine and the feminine. The ultimate joining of Trump One and Two, Magician and High Priestess, is the central theme of the Tarot. These two archetypes, and their capacities for union, are the prototypes for the masculine and the feminine energies depicted in the successive Trumps. In each Trump we see how these forces combine in different ways to offer us new opportunities for growth.

As masculine prototype, the Magician is our basic sense of
power -- the ability to make things happen. At the most primitive level we experience ourselves as Magicians when, as infants, we first make the connection that our actions have impact: tears bring food and comfort; kicks jingle the chimes above the crib. The degree to which we are able to turn intentions into results determines our overall sense of competence and esteem. But our true magic is in not merely manipulating the environment to fit our desires; it is in operating from the higher knowledge that as we change our consciousness, we change our reality. Our thoughts, when reinforced with feeling, create our experience.

I first learned this key Magician principle by accident. In my mid-twenties I co-founded a theater troupe that performed, in local schools, original comedy sketches about self-esteem and personal development. One morning in my hometown of Chicago, I spotted Oprah Winfrey on her morning jog. Having nothing to risk (except possible stalking charges), I trotted alongside her and asked her how my theater troupe might get on her show. Without breaking her stride she gave me the name of the producer to whom we should send our information. I thanked her and sent a promotional packet that afternoon. From that point on, we began all our school shows with the audaciously bogus announcement, “Watch for us soon on Oprah’s show!” We justified the lie because, well, we all knew in our hearts that it could and should happen some day. After two years of making the announcement, we got a phone call. A few weeks later, we were performing on a TV special starring Oprah and basketball legend Michael Jordan. The promotional materials -- energetically assisted by the power of our intention and the intensity of our desire -- had made the dream a reality. “The thing always happens that you really believe in,” said Frank Lloyd Wright,“and the belief in a thing makes it happen.”

The Magician points up the value of controlling our thoughts, not just so that we may manifest our desires, but so that we may upgrade our consciousness. Unless we are in control of our thoughts, we’re controlled by them. Without a discerning gatekeeper, the mind will run its programs as randomly as a TV viewer clicking away at the remote control. Inadvertently we give our focus and power to every impulse, obsession, judgment, or diversion that happens to appear.
But the Magician points his wand carefully, for he knows that that which plays on his inner screen becomes his outer reality.

The Magician challenges us to remain conscious of our thoughts, words, and feelings -- in the “magic” of being able to observe ourselvesobserving. Staying awake to this power is a full-time job; without it, life becomes a crapshoot. The Magician’s table displays the elemental tools with which we create the very substance of our lives. The Wand, instrument
of Fire, in flames our passion, drive, and inspiration; the Cup, receptacle of Water, contains our imagination and the deepest pools of psychic and spiritual potential; the Sword, implement of Air, cuts clean through to the truth, sharpens our perceptions, and crystallizes our intentions; the Pentacle, emblem of Earth, grounds us in bodily awareness, physical reality, and taking care of business.

With such powers at our disposal, the Magician within each of us asks, “Where will you direct this potential? In whose service? Toward what end?” We are asked to choose wisely, because that upon which we fix our attention determines what grows in our garden—within and without.

A Magician Story

Marta was very close to Don, a man she met at Alcoholics Anonymous. Don credited Marta with helping him stay sober during his rocky recovery. And when he started drinking again, Marta was there for him. Though she tried everything she could to help, he continued to drink. Frustrated and saddened, she began to view Don’s decline as her personal failure.

Advice arrived in the form of the Magician, reversed.
“Upright, the Magician has the power to achieve anything,”
I began, “but the card is reversed here. What is that saying to you?” Marta closed her eyes. “That I don’t have the power to work miracles,”she said. “I know this, but obviously I need to hear it again.” Though she would not cease to offer Don support, his transformation to sobriety would require him to reclaim the Magician within himself.

Magician Attributes, Questions for Reflection

What was your greatest inspiration?
What would you like to attract and manifest?
What specific skills or abilities would you like to develop?
When have you deliberately redirected your thoughts
and achieved new results?
In what areas are your powers of focus and concentration strongest?
When have you expressed the shadow aspect of the Magician
and overestimated your ability to control or influence a situation?

Key words: Vision, Decision, Action.

Being: Confident, focused, inspired, visionary, inventive,
quick-minded, clever, resourceful, skillful.

Doing: Pioneering, initiating change, communicating
persuasively, demonstrating a mastery of skills or
talents, consciously creating your reality, manifesting
desires, fixing things, working wonders.

Shadow: Opportunism; overestimating the limits of your power; irresponsible use of knowledge, skill, or willpower.

Reversed: Ineffective communication; hidden motives; non-action; low self-esteem; inability to manifest desires;
randomness; procrastination; lack of ideas, focus, or
initiative.

Possible Advice
Reversed: “Point your wand (attention) in another direction.”
“Accept the limitations of your power.”