Learning to Read the Magician
This series on the major arcana presents some ways that I like to think about each of the majors with the hope that it helps you learn more about or think differently about these cards. In each of these posts, I provide an overview of how I read the relevant major arcanum through a few different lenses: with keywords; in the context of other majors; and through visuals. You can read more about the premise behind this structure in the introductory post on the “Learning to Read the Major Arcana” series.
These may represent just a small sample of what I might consider when I see a major arcanum, but they are still quite deep takes, so they can be a lot to take in all at once. Don’t be afraid to skip around and come back to it paragraph by paragraph as needed.
Keywords
As a reminder, these keywords are examples and not exhaustive of all possible meanings of the Magician. Remember to take what works for you and question what doesn’t. I’ve tried to arrange these keywords by broad concept to help organize them and make them easier to learn.
Initiation, Manifestation, Will, Intention
Skill, Craft, Hand crafts, Dexterity
Individualism, Identity, Status, Entrepreneur
Intelligence, Trickery, Intellect, Cleverness
Communication, Writing, Composition, Words
Mercury, Air
In Context
The two most immediate candidates for comparison are the Fool and the High Priestess, but it’s worth comparing the Magician to his other identities first—the Magician is the card of individualism and identity after all. While the major arcanum labeled “I” is the Magician in the Rider/Waite-Smith tradition, he is the Magus in the Thoth tradition, a magical alchemist, and the Juggler (le Bateleur) in the Marseille tradition, recalling dexterous street magicians and clever charlatans rather than practitioners of magical craft. These variations of the Magician provide nuance that adds depth to the archetype, but they also remind you that the Magician chooses how to use his power. Will he be selfish or work toward the higher good? Are his magical implements (wand, cup, sword, and pentacle) for enacting his will, or are they just flim-flam for a gullible audience?
Now for greater contrast, consider the Fool and the High Priestess. As discussed in the previous post in the series, the Fool holds the potential to do anything, but there’s no obvious starting point. The energy to move, as found in the Fool, is enacted in the Magician. The Magician then is the real starting place where a decision is made to act. For this reason, we can see the Magician as a card of initiation and manifestation. Manifestation requires willpower, as well as words (or some coherent intention), to bring chaotic energy into some realized and purposeful form.
The High Priestess is a wise woman holding onto secret power, much as the Magician is a clever man expressing power. Because of this, the two are often used as significators depending on certain aspects of the querent, again recalling the card’s ties to identity. The most superficial attribute is gender with the Magician as man, and the High Priestess as woman. Relatedly, they can also be thought of as complementary energies, with the Magician as an active “yang” energy and the High Priestess as a passive “yin” energy. This is a simplification of yin and yang, but it goes beyond gender binaries. Instead, this can be thought of as an expression of each archetype’s magical knowledge. The Magician uses his learned knowledge to enact power. The High Priestess uses her learned (or intuited) wisdom to accumulate power. That slight variation between knowledge and wisdom or knowledge and intuition may be controversial because the High Priestess is often shown holding written words (learnable knowledge). But the High Priestess is often associated with secret and internal magic (intuitive or psychic gifts) in a way that the Magician rarely, if ever, is. He speaks in words, while the High Priestess listens in silence, highlighting the importance of communication and expression. Consider also how the Magician learns and how he enacts his will. Is it only through book learning and ritualistic implements that he can create magic? The Magician has willpower to manifest his desires, but there may be specific requirements and limitations that set him apart from the High Priestess. And given the High Priestess’s religious title (even as the Priestess or Popess in the other deck families), consider what role, if any, religion and spirituality play in the Magician’s work and his access to magic.
That’s probably plenty for new tarot readers to chew on, but if you want to think about other majors, you can go further by comparing the Magician to the other majors by its number and by its element or astrological correspondence. Of course, we could compare the Magician to all majors, but that’s probably not that helpful unless you’re an advanced reader who isn’t reading this anyway.
The Magician is numbered 1, so it’s associated with the Wheel of Fortune (10) and the Sun (19), which both reduce to 1.
With the Magician as a card of manifestation, it’s useful to contrast the Magician’s power to the Wheel of Fortune’s control over all natural forces. The Wheel seems inevitable, but magic is meant to affect the course of events. Consider the limits of personal willpower and what the Magician can accomplish within the context of natural or universal law. The Wheel of Fortune’s numerological correspondence to the Magician reminds us to think about fate and natural law, whether it’s mutable and what, if any, consequences there are to affecting (or interfering with) the Wheel’s turning. And if the Magician can’t affect the Wheel of Fortune, is he just a charlatan making shit up?
The Sun is slightly more removed from the Magician, but it’s a card of power and of pure outward expression. As I discussed in Learning to Read the Fool, the Sun is the powerhouse of the solar system and the source of all life, of all energy on the planet. If the Magician is doing magic, then the Magician needs to tap into energy. Is it the Sun’s energy? Many magical practitioners believe that their magic is associated with the Moon and its energy. But it’s worth considering whether the Magician’s power better fits the active, expressive power of the Sun than the secretive and ambiguous power of the Moon. The Sun is what is seen, no surface and no redirection. That certainly doesn’t describe the charlatan’s source of power, but it might align with the Magician.
And continuing on with numerology, we could also consider Justice or Lust/La Force because those are the arcana numbered 11, with two 1s (forget for a moment that majors’ numbers are typically expressed in Roman numerals). As the balanced arbiter of the deck, Justice is a card of rational thinking and decision-making. The Magician’s intellect finds a perfect partner in thoughtful Justice, and the Magician’s need to decide how and when to use his skill is reinforced. When working with magic, there is no room for ambiguity with the Magician’s intentions. We can see the need for the Magician to make intentional decisions about using his magic in Lust and La Force because these are cards of working with (or resisting) power. As with the Sun, these two cards remind us to think about how the Magician accesses power. Consider the Magician’s power source—is it external or internal?—and what danger there is in using it.
With these cards numbered 11, you might even consider them as the energies that come after the Wheel of Fortune. What are the effects of messing with fate or manipulating universal energy? How does the Magician, the person who messes with fate or manipulates universal energy (the cause), relate to these cards (the effect)?
Finally, let’s look at the elemental or astrological correspondences. The Magician is associated with Mercury, an airy planet (how I treat it), so we should look to the airy signs represented by the Lovers (Gemini), Justice/Adjustment (Libra), and the Star (Aquarius). We don’t need to consider the only other airy planet, Uranus, because it's represented by the Fool, and we already discussed that connection. As it was with the Fool, the air cards are a lot to parse, and there isn’t much obvious overlap despite them vaguely sharing the qualities of air, such as communication and intellect. Instead, we can see them as complementary and working alongside each other rather than as clear matches, so I think of these cards as raising questions for the reader to consider.
I’ve already discussed the importance of decision-making and rational thinking for the Magician, and that’s reflected in both Justice/Adjustment and the Lovers. But the Lovers is also a card of individuation, of identifying oneself apart from another (one person can’t be paired with oneself). That parallels the individualism and identity formation of the Magician. But the Magician is alone, unlike the Lovers. The Magician’s form of identity needs no reference to another person. It allows for selfishness as well as freeing mutability, much like the energy of a shapeshifting trickster god.
The Star’s associations with Aquarius bring to mind the Magician’s intelligence and innovation. Both cards show intelligence and ideation, but the Star is more abstract and experimental. The Magician may be experimenting, but it’s probably part of the learning process, whereas the Aquarian Star is experimenting on behalf of others. The Star’s purity and humanitarian concern for others, as described in the previous post in the series, is a reminder of the need for pure intentions. Like Justice, the Star is a card of ensuring what is best for all parties, not just oneself. The Magician holds enormous power (whether it’s magical or mundane), so it’s important to consider how the Magician intends to use that power. Will he be the trickster, the selfish mage, or an altruistic worker of willpower?
Astrologically, Mercury rules Gemini and Virgo, so we should also look to the Hermit, which is associated with Virgo. (Gemini is associated with the already discussed Lovers.) Consider the Magician’s relationship to the Hermit much like we considered the High Priestess’s relationship. The Hermit is a knowledgeable or at least wise figure, but the Hermit is much less expressive and outward-oriented than the Magician. The Hermit can be a teacher, whereas the Magician is more often seen as a student (an initiate). Is the Magician wise? The Hermit thinks and observes, but he doesn’t do much, whereas the Magician enacts his thoughts and brings them into reality. Is the Hermit magical? What can he access that the Magician cannot? The Hermit presumably lives an austere life, so he has none of the Magician’s implements. Hermits may also take vows of silence or eschew communication. Is the Hermit’s power limited by a lack of implements or a lack of communication? Or is the Magician’s power limited by the need for ritual or the need to express intention? Although the Magician is alone and forming identity, the Hermit is much more alone and, without anyone else, identity no longer matters.
Looking for these kinds of distinctions between similar cards (and it would be easy to bring in others) often raises more questions than it answers, but it can open up new ways of thinking about the Magician.
Visuals
For interpreting the visuals, I chose one of my favorite images of the Magician, the Mage from Robin Scott’s Urban Tarot. (You can read my interview with that deck here.)
Here we have a composer, deep in thought, with one hand hovering over a keyboard. Behind him, a computer with a lemniscate (♾) awaits the input of his ideas. He must choose how and when to express himself. But when he does, he will be communicating his thoughts and creativity. True artists—whether writers, composers, or whatever else—put their soul into their work, infusing it with their personality as well as their skill. Identity, ideas, and intent (not to mention actual dexterity and craft in some arts) are part of the artist’s output.
The four magical implements of the tarot cover the top of the keyboard, and a musical score (a text) rests at his elbow. While they’re there, the Mage’s real power comes from within. You can see that in his left hand, which radiates power. Is he channeling the ritual expression of someone else (the musical score) or is it his own work in progress? The Mage works through implementation, actions taken by his own mind and body, but his implements have helped to prepare him. In the ritual act of creation and in the cultivation of skill and power, such external tools serve as useful foci.
In this particular image, the Mage is surrounded by floating candles. While these are not the Mage’s wand, they are wand-like symbols of fire and, suspended in midair, they are clearly signs of magical power. Candles are also frequently tools in magical craft, but the Mage’s creative expression as a musician reinforces the Wand’s ties to fiery passion and creative potential. There are four candles, which suggests the balance of the four elements, but this is an active Mage expressing himself creatively, letting fire dominate. There is less balance here than in other depictions of the Mage, and that carries through with the Mage’s use of his left hand to play the keyboard while his right hand is at his mouth. Magically, the dominant hand is usually the active hand, while the non-dominant hand receives. This overlaps with the concept of the ascendant Right-Hand Path and the descendant Left-Hand Path. Is this a left-handed Magician, or is he choosing the left-handed path, working to bring about his own magical transformation rather than ascending for the explicit benefit of others?
Did you learn something?
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