The Magician Tarot Card
From Association of Independent Readers and Rootworkers
The Magician is the first of the numbered tarot trumps. In the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot shown here, it is number 1. It is one of the numbered trumps devised long before the use of the tarot for fortune telling, when they were part of a European card deck used for various trick-taking games, such as tarocchi, tarock, tarot, and königsrufen. In the French Tarot of Marseilles, the card is called Le Bateleur ("The Juggler" or "The Mountebank"). In Italian tarocchi decks his name is Il Bagatto or Il Bagatello ("The Little Thing," referring to the card's status as the lowest ranked of the trumps in the game). The image of The Magician was originally that of a busker or street entertainer who performs sleight of hand out doors at a fair or market. Dressed in a multi-coloured houppelande tunic with dagged sleeves, tight leggings, and a floppy, wide brimmed hat, he works close-up magic at a small table, with the tools of his craft set before him as he faces his audience. In these older decks, he holds a wand or baton in one hand and has arrayed before him the implements for his performance, including a cup-and-balls routine and some small knives for juggling or a cut-and-restored act.
In 1889 Oswald Wirth published "Les 22 Arcanes du Tarot Kabbalistique" (The 22 Arcana of the Kabbalistic Tarot"), which was the first esoteric or occult tarot deck. Wirth retained Le Bateleur's name, his houppelande, leggings, floppy hat, and wand, but he reorganized the items on his table so that the cup-and-balls became a chalice and coins, and the knives became a single sword, thus cleverly presenting a recursive concept of the four suits being present in card number 1, which he designated as Aleph ("A") the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Being an artist, he also transformed the small, random, yoni-shaped plant growing at Le Bateleur's feet into a neatly drawn blooming red tulip. Meanwhile, also in 1889, the French author Papus (Gerard Encaussse ) published his own esoteric tarot trumps in "Le Tarot des Bohémiens" ("The Tarot of the Bohemians"), in which he identified The Juggler as a significator card that represented the male querent or "inquirer."
When the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck was devised by Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith in 1909, Le Bateleur's image was somewhat sacralized and he was portrayed as a dedicated occultist-priest rather than a mountebank. To this end his street performer's houplande and leggings were replaced with a white robe and red mantle, and his floppy hat was transformed into an infinity symbol. His robe is belted by a living serpent which appears to be devouring its own tail. He was outfitted with a table on which the signs of the zodiac are carved around the edges, to show that he has a link to the art of astrology, and spread before him on the table are the emblems of the four card suits of the tarot, Wands, Pentacle Coins, Swords, and Cups, which stand for the four elements, Fire, Earth, Air, and Water. Because his original wand is now on the table, he is given a secondary, smaller magician's wand, with flame-shaped tips, painted white, to hold in his hand, an artistic choice that has confused many tarot card learners ever since. He was renamed The Magician, and among members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and in tarot decks that derive from their teachings, his card may also be titled The Magus. Waite and Smith replaced Oswald Wirth's artistic little red tulip at his feet with an entire blooming garden in the English Edwardian style, consisting of an arbor of climbing red Roses above and a mixed bed or red Roses and white Lilies below. This combination of Roses and Lilies became an important symbolic design element of the Ride-Waite-Smith tarot and appear in many cards and were used as a back-of-card design on several editions of the deck.
In "The Pictorial Key to the Tarot," written in 1910, Arthur Edward Waite interpreted The Magician as "having the countenance of divine Apollo" but in some other occult tarot decks, The Magician is identified with the astrological planet Mercury, the Roman god Mercury, or the Greek god Hermes. Waite interpreted the infinity symbol with which he replaced Le Bateleur's hat as "the mysterious sign of the Holy Spirit, the sign of life, like an endless cord, forming the figure 8 in a horizontal position," while also bring in concepts by noting that "according to Martinism, 8 is the number of Christ." The red of the thorny Roses, which echo the Magician's red mantle, stand for passion (both religious and sexual) and the mundane world, while the white Lilies, also repeated in his white robe, represent chastity and innocence (again, both religious and sexual) and the world of spirit. Further, the white may be seen as male (the colour of semen) and the red as female (the colour of menses), and the serpent cincture is another call-out to both sexuality and infinite possibilities.
In the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, the Magician holds his hands in a formal gesture which Waite calls "the descent of grace, virtue and light, drawn from things above and derived to things below," but less mystical tarot card fortune tellers interpret it as the magical principle of "as above, so below," meaning that small acts of magic, performed at an altar, on a kitchen table, or outdoors at a crossroads, can create change in the wider world. In modern tarot divination, the Magician is sometimes called "the green light for spell casting," and indicates that the sitter -- or the reader-rootworker as a proxy for the client -- is empowered to take up the tools of magic in order to bring about that which is desired, using such prescriptions as the wand of Fire of hoodoo candles, lamps, and incense; the coin of Earth as the crafting and wearing of amulets and talismans and mojo hands and working with botanical curios, sachet powders, or stones and minerals; the sword of Air as the writing of petitions, the recitation of Psalms or other prayer work; and the cup of Water as the use of hoodoo spiritual baths, floor washes, perfumes, anointing oils or bottle and jar spells.
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- Author:catherine yronwode
- Contributors: Papa Newt, nagasiva yronwode
- Images: Pamela Colman Smith, courtesy of Hoodoo Psychics; Oswald Wirth, courtesy of Thom Rose via Facebook
