Abracadabra

For whatever reason I’ve been drawn towards Tarot cards recently. Nothing in particular sparked my interest in them, I just sort of half consciously began reading up on them, floating through various sources and materials as I stumbled across them. I’ve read enough stuff by now to have gathered some basic information I’d like to share, not so much because I now think I’m an authority on them or anything like that, but simply because I think they’re neat, and perhaps others might think they're neat as well. 

Everyone seems to have ‘their’ card that speaks to them more so than any of the others. Typically these are going to be cards that make up the 22 cards of the  ‘Major Arcana’, ‘arcana’ coming from the Latin ‘acarnus’ meaning ‘secret’ and ‘Major’ being juxtaposed with the 56 ‘Minor Arcana’, which, for all intents and purposes, are comparable to the standard deck of 52 cards most are familiar with, only with addition of a ‘Knight’ to the four suits, joining the King, Queen, and Jack. I haven’t studied Tarot long enough to say confidently which card is ‘mine’, or in other words, which card holds a particular fascination and affinity for me, but I’d still like to write about one of them, so it only makes sense to start at number 1, which is The Magician. 

Now, before we go any further, I would like to state plainly that the stereotypical use of Tarot cards, which is traditionally divination, or attempting to predict the future through some sort of magical means, is, from what I can tell, complete nonsense. These cards can’t tell you anything about the future any more than Pokemon or Yugioh cards can. There is nothing so fundamentally human as anxiety over what will happen in the future, so it’s perhaps only natural that something as seemingly vague and esoteric as Tarot cards would be hijacked and proclaimed as tools by which the future could be told. This is nothing new however, in the past it’s been the guts of animals, the flight of birds and of course, the motion and position of the stars and planets, which is still in vogue with some for whatever reason in the modern fascination with astrology. 

What they represent then is not so much concerned with how things are going to be, more so they represent how things are, in other words, they are best viewed as symbols representing and characterizing what they claim are ‘eternal truths’. What, then, does the Magician symbolize? Well, according to the official Rider-Waite Tarot Handbook, which is the most famous deck and the one from which the image of the Magician at the beginning of the post was taken, says;

‘THE MAGICIAN—Skill, diplomacy, address, sickness, pain, loss, disaster, self-confidence, will, the Querent himself (if male). Reversed: Physician, Magus, mental illness, disgrace, disquiet.’

From my perspective, at least, those words are absolutely meaningless. ‘Skill’ in what? ‘Diplomacy’ for who? Who/what is being ‘addressed’? These words are meaningless because they are not grounded in anything concrete, they are just a cloud of unrelated notions with no central idea by which they’re oriented. I’d like to provide something of a framework for understanding the Magician better that’s a little more concrete than just vague words and notions. 

First off, the Magician is typically considered the first card in the deck, from this we can say it’s fair to consider it as representing ‘beginnings’, or said another way, he can represent the ‘call to adventure’. This can be seen in the image posted above, his robes are both white and red, white symbolizing the novice, think of white belts in karate and such things, and red symbolizing passion, red will almost always mean passion as it’s the color of blood and heat, in other words, excitement for the journey ahead. Generally speaking, all adventures will start with a ‘call’, a tug or a push of some sort, take Gandalf arriving at Bilbo’s door, for instance, or Merlin taking a young boy by the name of Arthur under his wing. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that those two characters are magicians themselves. These magicians are wise, yet they are not so wise as to forfeit all involvement and participation with the world at large, said another way, they are not the Hermit, another Tarot card, they have one foot in the world of ordinary reality and another in the world of the supernatural. 

This principle is borne out clearly in the image of the Magician posted above. Look at his two hands, one pointed up, one pointed down. This represents at least two very important things. The first is related to the idea already elucidated, he stands as a conduit for supernatural power, yet stays grounded to some degree in the real world. Think of it sort of like a lightning rod, a lightning rod has the potential of attracting and capturing an immense amount of energy, yet unless it’s planted and driven firmly in the ground, in other words unless there is some sort of fruitful work to expended this energy into, then it accomplishes nothing, or, even worse, may end up damaging itself. The Magician, then, is a sort of lighting rod, standing on the threshold of two worlds, drawing and expending energy into them both. But the two hands also represent a much more interesting concept that is found throughout almost all the ancient philosophies and religions, this concept can be stated simply as, ‘As above, So below’.

We can see this idea in many, many places throughout the ancient world, thus, and this is perhaps the most famous enunciation, in the Emerald Tablet of the mythological Hermes Trismegistus, it states;

‘Quod superius est sicut quod inferius, et quod inferius est sicut

quod est superius, ad perpetranda miracula ret unius. That which is

above is like to that which is below and that which is below is like

to that which is above, to accomplish the miracles of (the) one

thing.’

Here is this notion echoed again in the Katha Upanishad, this time in the mouth of the god of death Yama;

‘Those who see all creatures in themselves

And themselves in all creatures know no fear.

Those who see all creatures in themselves

And themselves in all creatures know no grief.

How can the multiplicity of life

Delude the one who sees its unity?’

That last one more relates to the idea of ‘unity in multiplicity’ or ‘interconnectedness’ which famously colors most Eastern thought, the underlying point of unity expressed in the phrase ‘As above, So below’ is the same though.

There is perhaps something analogous here with the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ concept expressed in Chinese philosophy. The ‘Mandate of Heaven’ is essentially the idea that there is a cosmic, overarching order to things, and that a ruler can be judged based on his adherence to this order, if he violated the order, famine and other disasters would befall the state, if no such calamities befell the state, it’d be said that he still had the favor of heaven. In the Analects; 

Confucius said: "The Superior Man stands in awe of three things:

(1) He is in awe of the decree of Heaven.

(2) He is in awe of great men.

(3) He is in awe of the words of the sages.

The inferior man does not know the decree of Heaven; takes great men lightly and laughs at the words of the sages."

Then there is, of course, the Tao te Ching, and it expresses in it’s very first lines this notion of unity;

‘The Way that can be told of is not an Unvarying Way;

The names that can be named are not unvarying names.

It was from the Nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang;

The named is but the mother that rears the ten thousand creatures, each after its kind.’

The way I see it, if all these revered texts and sources are essentially saying the same thing, then there might be something to it, that’s more or less what the Magician is getting at. This unity is also expressed in the infinity symbol above his head, this simply represents the range of things he can stand for, both natural and supernatural things. The wand in his hand represents the supernatural, the flowers around him the natural, this duality exemplified in the items on the table, ‘... with all the two-edged weapons given to the created being to accomplish his or her destiny'. 

In short, the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols says it best, The Magician represents the, ‘...the divided nature of a being who is the product of opposing principles, and the balance and supremacy of the spirit which dominated his duality.’ 

Now, one may rightly ask, what is the purpose of all this if I don’t believe in the supernatural, in other words, don’t believe in anything ‘above’? I believe the importance lies in the notion I talked about in my last blog post about the difference between ‘specialization’ and ‘generalization’ and how a specialist society, which is what we live in, necessarily leads to some form of fragmentation and unease. The Magician is a generalist, he does not fragment himself off from any of the spheres of the world, in fact it’s quite the opposite, he willingly journeys into them. Ultimately the Magician, and the Tarot as a whole, represent a kind of journey, a journey which has at its end the Fool, the unnumbered card, which without getting too deep into things, represents, ‘...an individual's consciousness becoming that of the world and of its totality in human and physical terms.’

The Fool is one who, ‘...having gained all that the world can offer, realizes that this possession is worthless and consequently returns to the unknown and unknowable which both precedes and follows our lives'. The Fool and the Magician are related, both Merlin and Gandalf are known to play tricks from time to time, yet the difference is that the Fool seeks that which is unknowable and is only experienced, something like Zen buddhism perhaps, while the Magician seeks that which is knowable and applicable. And this is perhaps the best many of us can hope for, not to transcend the world like the Fool, but to become aware and considerate of it like the Magician. 

There is much, much more to be said here, but for now that seems like a fine stopping point. The next card would be number two, the High Priestess, who, naturally, carries with her just as many symbological meanings and connotations. At some point in the future I’ll write about her as well.