The magician
“The practice of magic consists in making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner.”
— Carl Jung, The Red Book
The Magician, at a glance
Ruling planet: Mercury Zodiac sign: Gemini and Virgo Element: Air Yes or no: Yes
The Magician - keywords (upright position)
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Manifestation
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resourcefulness
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power
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inspired action
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willpower
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skill
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ability
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concentration
🟢 Manifestation 🟢 resourcefulness 🟢 power 🟢 inspired action 🟢 willpower 🟢 skill 🟢 ability 🟢 concentration
The Magician - keywords (reversed position)
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Manipulation
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poor planning
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untapped or wasted talents
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cunning
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trickery
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illusion
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deception
🔴 Manipulation 🔴 poor planning 🔴 untapped or wasted talents 🔴 cunning 🔴 trickery 🔴 illusion 🔴 deception
The Magician - number one in the tarot’s major arcana
The wizard. The sage. The shaman. The alchemist. The guide. The prophet. The seer. The innovator. The scientist. The wise old man. It wouldn’t be correct to say they’re all the same person. Instead, put more precisely, they’re all the same archetype - The Magician. One that appears in folklore and mythology since time immemorial that’s more important today, than ever.
“The wise old man appears in dreams in the guise of a magician, doctor, priest, teacher, professor, grandfather, or any person possessing authority.”
– Carl Jung
The Magician is the active masculine principle in us all - the archetype of the ultimate achiever. With The Magician, we see The Fool as number zero in the tarot’s major arcana tick over to number one, going from boundless potentiality to boundless actuality. The Fool sets out on his adventure of individuation knowing anything is possible; The Magician, knowing his ability, sets his tools out on his table and gets to work, not walking away until he’s finished. Just like The Fool is not fearful of a fall, The Magician is not fearful of a failure. Why would he be? He’s The Magician, for god’s sake.
When undertaking the task of understanding The Magician archetype, it would be unfair to not first consider the Jungian idea of archetypes. Carl Jung, arguably the most infamous psychologist to date, coupled only with Sigmund Freud, built upon Freud’s work and theories of the unconscious mind. Jung believed Freud’s theories incomplete, negative and too focused on the idea of repressed sexual instincts. Instead, Jung built out his own view of the unconscious world in a more holistic manner. Believing, first and foremost, that there was indeed a personal unconscious. But, on top of and as well as that, there existed a collective unconscious, consisting of instinctual and universal human behaviours that came to the surface (the conscious mind and material world) through symbols, archetypes, mythologies and rituals that humanity has worked with throughout time. His life-long explorations into the mystical, esoteric and alchemical schools of wisdom no doubt motivated this view at the same time as reinforcing it. Luckily, since Jung’s passing, groups of psychologists have specialised and expanded on Jung’s ideas, who are known as Jungian psychologists. As it turns out, one in particular named Robert Moore unpacked The Magician archetype within us all, at depth.
“Magic is the only honest profession. A magician promises to deceive you, and he does.”
— Karl Germain, American magician and lawyer (1878-1959)
The Magician as one of the core masculine archetypes
Robert Moore, this Jungian psychologist I speak of, and mythologist Douglas Gillette – in their book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine – propose that masculinity is made up of four archetypal energies and, to become complete, a man must develop all four archetypes in order to be wholly mature in his masculinity, as opposed to being wholly or partly immature in his masculinity. All aspects of Moore's masculine and immasculine King, Warrior, Magician and Lover can be seen in the pyramidal structures in this image.
They are pyramidal due to Moore’s belief that each male archetype consists of three parts: the full and highest expression of the archetype (at the top of the pyramid) and two bi-polar dysfunctional shadows of the archetype (the bottom corners). Like Jung, Moore believed that men and women possess both feminine and masculine archetypal patterns, this is the anima (feminine) and animus (masculine).
Moore and many other Jungian psychologists argue that the problems we see with men today, specifically their violence, shiftlessness and aloofness are a result of men not adequately exploring and integrating the primal masculine (animus) and feminine (anima) within them. Moore, and other psychologists, do not believe that the feminisation of men is an inherent problem and that it only becomes a problem when the development and integration of the feminine (anima) comes at the expense of the development and integration of the masculine (animus).
So, if it is the case (which it may be) that the modern western world suppresses the masculine archetype and encourages the feminine archetype, this is only a problem if the suppression is taken with a pinch of salt and encouragement is received; with the awareness that any suppression of masculinity in culture is likely down to the externalisation through the last generations of the immature masculine archetype, not any mature masculine behaviours, which are inherently positive and healthy.
“The Magician archetype in a man is his bullshit detector; it sees through denial and exercises discernment. He sees evil for what and where it is when it masquerades as goodness, as it so often does. In ancient times when a king became possessed by his angry feelings and wanted to punish a village that had refused to pay its taxes, the magician, with measured and reasoned thinking or with the stabbing blows of logic, would reawaken the king’s conscience and good sense by releasing him from his tempestuous mood. The court magician, in effect, was the king’s psychotherapist.”
— Robert L. Moore, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
The Magician must hold knowledge and the capacity to use it, bringing forth its shadow
Now we understand the masculine archetypes from a holistic perspective, we can hone back in on The Magician archetype itself. As an active masculine archetype within us all, it exists as an innate yearning to hold, hand in hand, the understanding of knowledge and the ability to manipulate it to control and create desired outcomes. In Moore’s words, “The Magician is the knower” of “secret and hidden knowledge of all kinds” that is “not immediately apparent or commonsensical”.
“All knowledge that takes special training to acquire is the province of the Magician energy. Whether you are an apprentice training to become a master electrician and unraveling the mysteries of high voltage; or a medical student, grinding away night and day, studying the secrets of the human body and using available technologies to help your patients; or a would-be stockbroker or a student of high finance; or a trainee in one of the psychoanalytic schools, you are in exactly the same position as the apprentice shaman or witch doctor in tribal societies. You are spending large amounts of time, energy, and money in order to be initiated into rarefied realms of secret power. You are undergoing an ordeal testing your capacities to become a master of this power. And, as is true in all initiations, there is no guarantee of success.”
– Robert Moore, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
So, The Magician must not only be the one who holds the wisdom but the one who knows what to do with it, in all circumstances. And, if you understand the law of polarity, this means that The Magician has the capacity to, essentially, create all scenarios - good and bad. Now, in order to truly understand the archetype of The Magician, one must look deeply into the shadow of it.
In Moore’s terms, the shadow of The Magician is a bi-polar shadow. Meaning - a shadow is present that has two sides, an active and a passive one. The active shadow of The Magician is known as the Detached Manipulator. As, with the power to create, comes the power to destroy. But, it’s only when The Magician is detached and indifferent from the reverence that the non-shadow side possesses that he finds himself able to do such things. Think of the difference between Gandalf and Saruman in Tolkien’s Middle Earth trilogies and you are looking at the difference between The Magician matured and The Magician in his shadow.
The passive shadow of The Magician, on the other hand, is known as the Denying Innocent One. While the active side of The Magician’s shadow plays the trickster, out of amusement, the passive side plays the helpless victim, in the same vein. The Denying Innocent One, as The Magician’s passive shadow, keeps us from opening our eyes and seeing reality as clear as it actually is. Parents can, consciously or unconsciously, activate this side in their children by praising them when it is not due; reinforcing a false self image and the child’s lack of ability to see the Truth in their own character and story. It is this Denying Innocent One that is the primary force inside all charlatans and behind all false goodness of spiritual teachers and religious authorities. It is, also, the unconscious driver behind our modern era’s phenomenon of virtue signalling, and it’s precisely the unconsciousness of it that makes it so dangerous and destructive.
“Whenever we are detached, unrelated, and withholding what we know could help others, whenever we use our knowledge as a weapon to belittle and control others or to bolster our status or wealth at others’ expense, we are identified with the Shadow Magician as Manipulator. We are doing black magic, damaging ourselves as well as those who could benefit from our wisdom.”
— Robert L. Moore, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
The Magician is the primeval alchemist
It isn’t ominous that The Magician has a shadow. On the contrary, it’s auspicious. The Magician archetype, at its fullest, is a great alchemist. And, alchemy – esoterically speaking – is the process of transmuting lead (a base material) into gold (a pure material) through illumination; put another way - alchemy is the inner process of purifying your shadow into light through awareness. When the Magician archetype is fully integrated, one looks for ways to turn disappointing external situations into opportunities to learn and grow. Not only this, one looks inwards first before looking outward. Which, you might argue, is the definition of responsibility. Therefore, The Magician, in order to be as competent as he is when he springs into action, must be as thoughtful and contemplative as The Hermit and find strength in their aloneness. After all, as we will learn through understanding The Magician tarot card, The Magician is the conduit between worlds.
The history and origins of The Magician in tarot
Before The Magician tarot card that we know today can be fully understood, we must first unpack it’s history. Although the magician as an archetype is arguably something that has been since time began, it being expressed through a card, on the other hand, is a much more recent event, relatively speaking. To be exact, The Magician tarot card has been evolving and iterating to become the card it is today for almost six hundred years!
The earliest name of The Magician was his original Italian name ‘El Bagatella’ which translates to the noun ‘trifle’, meaning ‘a little thing’ i.e. the relationship with that girl was just a small thing. There’s a utilitarian meaning behind The Magician being called El Bagetella, and that’s because it’s a reference to the game of tarocchi. Tarocchi was the card game that the early tarot cards that first appeared in Ferrara and Milan were used for, of which El Bagatella was the lowest ranking card in the trump series leading him vulnerable to being captured by any other trump card that an opponent might use. Not long after The Magician’s tarot card history is kicked off by El Bagatella, The Magician goes from ‘El Bagatella’ to ‘Il Bagatto’ or ‘Il Bagat’, though the change is likely nothing more than a short hand development. The French occultists later called him ‘Le Bateleur’, which translates to ‘street performer’.
The pictorial representation of The Magician archetype has also gone through phases of being expressed as a juggler, a mountebank, a trickster, and an artisan. We, though, now call him one name - The Magician. So, let’s unpack, chronologically, the full history of The Magician tarot card which we know today as the the number one tarot card in the tarot’s major arcana.
The Magician in the Visconti Sforza tarot commissioned by the Duke of Milan (c. 1430)
The Magician’s tarot history begins with the Visconti Sforza tarot which was commissioned by the Duke of Milan in circa 1430 and is now, fortunately, being conserved in the Morgan Library in New York. The exact year (and even decade) that the Visconti Sforza tarot was created seems to be debated frequently online; providing answers of 1440, 1450, 1454, and more. However, as detailed by the British Museum, the first Visconti Sforza tarot came into existence circa 1430 after being originally commissioned by Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan (reigning 1412-1447). However, his successor, Francesco I Sforza, was also commissioning after the original commission! The original set was painted by Bonifazio Bembo (active 1447-1478) and it wasn’t until circa 1480 that six missing cards were replaced by Antonio Cicognara (active circa 1480-1500). It is the Bonifazio Bembo art work that we’re looking at here in our oldest The Magician card.
Wearing a full red dress edged with ermine, this outfit does not only represent a seemingly high social status but also indicates at a a royal origin. Perhaps that’s why his face is so serious! On the table in front of where he’s perched, we have five total elements that can be split into two descriptions. Firstly, the standard four elemental elements represented by: the two coins (earth) showing the suit of coins, a cup (water) showing the suit of cups, a knife (air) showing the suit of swords and a wand (fire) in his hand showing the suit of batons; now commonly referred to as the suit of wands. The fifth and standout feature on the table is the hat, which is believed to represent trickery and deceit, as if The Magician was prone to hiding things under it to make some cash on the side!
This hat, despite it being merely one object in the tarot card, plays a key role in The Magician’s earliest days, as if you were to remove what this hat represents then, then he would be The Magician that he is today. As, it’s only later in the timeline of The Magician’s history — around the time of the French occultist tarot makers, in fact — that The Magician only has four elements on his table and the archetype of The Magician has his conjuring trickster characteristic removed so that he can become the master of the elements.
The Magician from the Ercole I d'Este tarot deck (c. 1473)
The second earliest (and recovered) tarot deck, made circa 1473 in Italy, features heraldic emblems of Ercole I d'Este and his wife, Leonora of Aragon, and is conserved in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the Yale University in New Haven.
In this tarot of Este deck, The Magician seems to have exchanged his role of being a royal for that of being a performer, doing tricks to entertain the children in front of him. With, importantly, coins scattered on the table with a lifted cup in his hand that may have just been lifted to reveal them hidden underneath.
The Magician from the Budapest Tarocchi tarot deck (late 1400s)
The Budapest tarot is currently being preserved at the Szépmuvészeti Múzeum (The Museum of Fine Arts) in Budapest, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and The Cary Collection of Playing Cards at the Yale University Library in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. In this early version of The Magician, we can see the same event being played out - that of a crowd being entertained by the way objects are being used.
It’s clear that in The Magician’s earliest days his archetype was different to what it is today. In the modern day, The Magician is a well-willed wizard. Back then, he was seen as a conjuring trickster. was seen depicted as a conjurer. A key historical fact then is that the most common ‘magic trick’ that was performed for gambling crowds throughout the middle ages was carried out with nothing more than cups-and-balls and a table, that coincidentally facilitated the spectators funds to be laid down on, for a guess on which cup the ball was hiding under. With the character of the conjurer doing his conjuring, The Magician is creating a world in-between worlds that any onlooking person can participate in where anything is possible. It just so happens that he’s profiting, of course.
The Magician in The Conjurer (late 1400s) by Hieronymus Bosch
Hieronymus Bosch (1453 - 1516), a Dutch painter from Brabant, shows the conjurer (The Magician) creating a scene of spellbinding tension that ultimately tricks the spectators concentration so that their coin can be grabbed.
Using cups and balls on a table, the conjurer (The Magician) is seemingly focusing all his trickster efforts on the man in front of him that is hunched forwards, folding himself over, in a bid to be even more spellbinded, all while unaware that his pocket is being picked.
Bosch brilliantly uses beasts in his painting of the conjurer (The Magician) to symbolise the human traits that are on display. Namely, the frog on the table, in front and below the main spectator’s gaping mouth — seemingly having just jumped out of it — representing the extent to which the victim lost control of rationality and became subdued to his irrational and unconscious impulses. Also, the owl in the basket that hangs from the conjurer’s (The Magician’s) waist that symbolises the intelligence being utilised, even if nefariously. The relationship between the child and the victim encapsulates the Flemish (renaissance Netherlandish) proverb: "He who lets himself be fooled by conjuring tricks loses his money and becomes the laughing stock of children.” Hieronymus Bosch is known to have used other proverbs as motivations and contexts to his paintings; firstly: "No one is so much a fool as a wilful fool.” and secondly: “The world is a haystack, and each man plucks from it what he can”.
The Magician in the Children of the Moon, from the Children of the Planets illustrations (c. 1475) by Master of the Housebook
Astrology permeated all aspects of the medieval (roughly the 5th century - 15th century) and renaissance (roughly the 14th century - 17th century) ages; largely due to the ancient wisdom that was preserved and passed down into Europe through the mystery schools from the Sufis of the middle east and mysticism of the ancient eras that had survived the cancellations from the Christian church/government. The renaissance period was the bridge between the middle ages and the period of modernity we currently live in and it’s the polymaths of those ages that we can thank for the foundations of all science and knowledge that we can live with today. And, when it comes to those polymaths, they simply would not be classified as a polymath by their peers if they did not know and use astrology as a central wisdom point in their work. Today we have a distinction between astronomy and astrology, with astronomy being the study of the universe and astrology being a system of beliefs implying that the universe has an influence on each individual as all things are connected, as the prior belief implies each individual is a separate and isolated thing from everyone and everything. This explains why the word astronomy did not exist yet and is in fact a rather recent word.
So, it wasn’t that long ago that intellectuals and artists alike operated as if the seven known planets (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) had an influence on everything that happened on Earth. And, we can see this burst through into the tarot with the “Children of the Planets” illustrations by Master of the Housebook circa 1475. It is believed that two versions of the Children of the Planets illustrations were created by two different artists, Christoforo di Predis circa 1465 and Meister Hausbuch circa 1480.
It is here, again, that — regardless of the astrological integrations — The Magician is still taking up the role of a mountebank. With The Magician in the Visconti-Sforza deck being the only anomaly, The Magician in the tarot is indeed the trickster street performer until the French occultists came along.
The Magician tarot card (1661) in the Jacques Vieville tarot deck
The Magician made here by Jacques Vieville marks a new era that reigns up to the present day - the conjurer is now alone! Meaning, without any spectators, thus custom and income. So, naturally, we see The Magician get to work. As was common with the tarot makers of the middle ages, Jacques Vieville is not a ‘real’ name and is, in fact, a pseudonym. Jacques, meaning from the countryside tradition and Viéville, meaning the old man who lives in town. Jacques Vieville, then, meaning the old country dweller who lives in the city. Through the name he assumes, Jacques Viéville indicates the tradition he came from and the probability that he was a source of rural-based knowledge.
The Magician tarot card (1701) in the Tarot de Marseille by Jean Dodal in Lyon
Now, we have Le Bateleur in the Tarot de Marseille that was made by Jean Dodal in 1701 in Lyon, a town that was one of the most important printing hubs in Europe. The tarot of Marseille decks were systematically printed in mirror, so in his left hand he is holding a coin downwards and in his right hand a wand upwards. On the table in front of him, Le Bateleur (The Magician) has a cap, a knife, and many other objects. Amongst them a 50/50 circle that’ll stick around symbolically, representing balance, harmony and creation.
The Magician tarot card (late 1700s) in the Tarocco Piemontese, by Giovanni Rossi in Torino
In a tarot deck made in 1701 by the Torino-based printer Giovanni Rossi, we can see an important update for The Magician, that sticks, in the tools that are on the table. Notably, a form shape of a foot that’s used by shoemakers and a hammer. So, we go from Le Bateleur in the Tarot de Marseille shedding away the conjurer to the Bagatto in the Tarocco Piemontese becoming a craftsmen. Another special development is that Rossini was the first printer who made two different language versions (French and Italian) of his decks.
The Magician tarot card (1889) by the French occultist, Oswald Wirth
The French occultist, poet and writer Eliphas Levi (1810 - 1875), in his book The Doctrine of Transcendental Magic, completed The Magician’s evolution from the conjurer into The Fully Fledged Magician. Levi, along with assigning the astrological rulership over this tarot card with Mercury and Apollo, assigned the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph (ℵ), to this card, leading to Wirth modifying the Tarot de Marseille to shape The Magician’s silhouette to the shape of Aleph while he points his rod to the sky and his other hand to the other three suits on the table. The Magician’s hat, also, now resembles the symbol for infinity and eternal life. Wirth himself, in his own writings, declares independently from and on top of Levi’s words that The Magician represents the First Cause and pure spirit.
The Magician in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn tarot (late 19th century /early 20th century)
Did you pick up on the fact that Aleph (1) was assigned to The Magician by the French occultists? If you did, you’re probably now why wasn’t the The Fool assigned a number? You’d be right to think that. So did the guys from the Golden Dawn. So, they changed it. Assigning Aleph to The Fool and gave the second letter, Bet (ב), to The Magician. After The Magician’s liberation from having to look like aleph, he could now form the ‘Magus of Power’ (an aspect of Thoth), pulling energy down from the heavens and grounding it in the physical world. The Magician becomes the master of universal forces who, through an act of will, unites the three worlds: divine, intellectual and physical.
The Magician tarot card (1909) in the Rider Waite Smith deck, by the Rider Company
First published by the Rider Company in 1909, the Rider-Waite Smith tarot deck is the most common tarot deck in the western world having sold over 100 million copies in over 20 countries to date. Originally illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith based on instructions from Arthur Edward Waite; both of whom were initiates into the not-so-secret-society the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. In his book, The Pictorial Key to Tarot, Waite says “The Magician’s arms imitate the gestures of an initiate into the higher grades of a magical lodge. The Magician pulls light from the heavens and grounds it in the material world”.
Other than the abundance of roses and lilies that represent spiritual aspiration, The Magician feels comfortable in the set up that he’s familiar with after oh so many years in the table with the four elements. Which, of course, are symbolised in the four suits of the tarot: cups (water), wands (fire), pentacles (earth) and sword (air). If you look closely at The Magician’s belt, you’ll notice the alchemical symbolism hidden front and centre - the ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. Like the infinity symbol hovering above The Magician’s head, the ouroboros signals at infinity; as well as being a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the shadow.
Since the start of the entire history of The Magician tarot tarot card, The Magician has had one core theme that stands true today: whether it’s cups and balls or the four suits of the tarot on a table, The Magician manipulates reality itself.
“He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he therefore constitutes the secret of the prima materia which […] unquestionably stems from man’s unconscious.”
— Carl Jung
The numerology and meaning behind The Magician tarot card being number one in the tarot’s major arcana
As we know from understanding the history of The Fool tarot card, the numbers that are associated with the tarot’s major arcana cards are not random or for no reason. Instead, it’s the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn who, in the early 20th century, assigned The Fool as the first in a list of major arcana and attached him with his numerological counterpart in (the symbol of) the number zero. Well, it’s this order of events that led to the story of the Fool’s journey, whereby The Fool is the essence that has the journey and the journey is the experience through the tarot’s major arcana cards. And, what tarot card and major arcana number comes immediately after The Fool card and its number zero? That would be The Magician, as number one.
Although breaking down the metaphysics behind the tarot’s Magician card is precisely what we’re doing here, you will not have to do that to appreciate the significance of The Magician being, technically, the first trump card in the tarot. As, there’s 22 major arcana cards in the entirety of the tarot, all signifying each stage of cosmic consciousness along the path of individuation. And, if The Fool is the symbol of the essence inside each of the subsequent 21 major arcana cards, then he is not really the responsible founder behind this process. Nope. that’s The Magician. As the responsible founder, The Magician is the primal force from which all other stages of the tarot’s major arcana come into existence. The Magician, like its number one assigned to its tarot card, is the creator that stands tall before all.
When it comes to understanding the numerological meaning of the number one, we come face to face with the elemental number. In numerology, the number one is a heavily spiritual number as it is the powerful force behind all creation. Like all numbers in numerology, the literal shape of each number hides the secrets of its attributes. The one stands tall with pride and purpose, strong minded with a laser focused goal, in order to push any obstacles aside or merely plough through them, if any stand in the way of creation. Thus, the number one is aggressive, as it is the primal masculine doer energy that does not tolerate limits to its potential. Remember, when reading these numerological interpretations of the number one - keep one eye on The Magician itself.
The number one does not waste its own time as its time is its own; abstract ideas are seldom, if at all, followed. Instead, the one’s ability to discern right from wrong and smart from stupid is unapparelled. It must be, in order to be responsible for creation when complexity runs rife. The number one in numerology is not the philosopher, the spiritual guru (or seeker), explorer or dreamer. No, all of those are idealists with a sexier name. The number one, instead, is pragmatic and sharp. It knows what it wants and what it’s doing, and it’s going to continue doing it until it gets it. You can either learn from it, or not, but there’s rarely any helping needed. The Magician is the number one in the tarot’s major arcana as The Magician is the archetype of creation, ambition, determination, individuality, independence and leading, by example. The Magician is the tarot card that creates all the other tarot cards. If we are without The Magician, we are without a conduit between our world, and the other.
“We are very much afraid of the word magic, it has a bad name, for its meaning has degenerated and it has a purely superstitious sound in our ears. But magical was originally simply psychical, the ancients did not know of the existence of the psyche, so not being able to call anything psychic they used the word magic.”
— Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, February 3rd, 1939
What does The Magician tarot card mean (upright)?
Key meanings of The Magician tarot card in the upright position include:
Manifestation: Bringing dreams and ideas into reality through focused effort.
Skill and resourcefulness: Utilising knowledge and abilities effectively.
Willpower and determination: Taking the initiative and taking control.
Creativity and inspiration: Seeing opportunities and being able to act on them.
Confidence: Believing in oneself and one’s capability to achieve goals.
The Magician has all the tools he needs on the table in front of him and now you find yourself with The Magician tarot card on the table in front of you, cool huh? The Magician is the conduit between worlds, with one hand pointing up to the sky and the other pointing down to the earth. The axiom “As above, so below” is synonymous with The Magician, because of this. The Magician is the primal creator that stands tall before all. So, when you come face to face with The Magician in a tarot reading, you’re being asked to contemplate a lot about your own role as the creator of your own story. The Magician card, when pulled in the upright position, is a generally positive card - which means yes in a yes/no tarot reading. The Magician is associated with the mercurial zodiac signs of Virgo and Gemini and ruled by the planet Mercury, so it’s safe to say that when you’re confronted with The Magician tarot card, there’s something being communicated to you. Mercury is the messenger of the gods, after all. Though, if you or I were the closest planet to the sun and also the fastest, I think we would be, too!
Alas, what is The Magician tarot card communicating to you? The Magician card, in the upright position, represents power, resourcefulness, and the ability to manifest one’s goals. It signifies taking action and harnessing one’s talents and skills to bring desires into reality. The Magician has all the tools he needs – represented by the cup, sword, pentacle, and wand – symbolizing emotional, intellectual, material, and spiritual resources. This card encourages a person to channel their inner potential, focus on their intentions, and actively create their future.
What does The Magician tarot card mean (reversed)?
Key meanings of The Magician tarot card in the reversed position include:
Untapped or misused potential: Skills and talents are either going to waste or being applied in a way that isn’t beneficial.
Missed opportunities: Not seeing or acting on opportunities due to lack of planning or poor timing.
Lack of focus or direction: Struggling to channel energy effectively, leading to frustration or scattered efforts.
Deception or manipulation: Someone might be using their charm or abilities unethically, or there may be dishonesty at play.
Self doubt: A lack of confidence in one’s abilities, which may be hindering progress or causing procrastination.
In a tarot reading, The Magician reversed can serve as a warning to reassess one’s intentions, refocus energy, and ensure that actions are honest and aligned with personal integrity. It suggests taking a pause to reconnect with one’s inner purpose before moving forward. In the reversed position, The Magician tarot card often represents blocked potential, deception, or a misuse of talents. It can indicate that a person may be struggling to focus their energy effectively, feeling uncertain about their abilities, or even misusing their skills in a manipulative way. This tarot card, when pulled in the reverse position in a tarot reading, suggests a need for introspection and a realignment of intentions to ensure one’s actions align with their true goals and values.
“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
— W.B. Yeats
Frequently asked questions about The Magician in tarot
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In the context of love and relationships, The Magician tarot card brings a sense of excitement, potential, and new beginnings. It signifies a relationship that is dynamic, full of possibility, and built on honest communication and genuine connection. When this card appears, it often suggests that individuals have the power to shape their romantic destiny and should actively pursue the kind of relationship they desire. The Magician, especially upright, encourages taking active, intentional steps in love, while the reversed card advises caution and honest reflection to ensure authenticity and alignment in relationships.
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The Magician tarot card, regarding career and finances, symbolizes ambition, initiative, and the ability to manifest goals through focused effort and skill. This tarot card suggests a powerful opportunity to take charge, apply one’s talents, and bring plans to fruition. It’s a reminder that you have the tools, knowledge, and confidence to create success. The Magician tarot card in career and finances (especially when pulled in the upright position in a tarot reading) is a highly empowering tarot card, encouraging active effort and self-belief to shape your future. When in the reversed position, it’s a call to refocus, avoid hasty decisions, and ensure that all actions are rooted in integrity and purpose.
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In the realms of spirituality and personal growth, The Magician tarot card represents awakening, self-discovery, and the alignment of one’s inner power with higher goals. Remember - as above, so below! The Magician tarot card signifies the potential to harness personal energy, connect with one’s spiritual abilities, and consciously create a life aligned with one’s purpose. It encourages tapping into inner resources to deepen spiritual awareness and manifest positive change. The Magician in spirituality and personal growth (upright) is an empowering sign of self-mastery and conscious manifestation. It encourages embracing inner strength and aligning with higher intentions. When reversed, it serves as a reminder to avoid ego-driven actions, reconnect with true purpose, and clear any doubts that might be holding back spiritual progress.
