Typically taking power through one’s own tools.

Recognizing that the tools are within us.

This is the number 1 of the Major Arcana.

Number 1, in my free association this strikes me as an ‘ego’ issue.

In the journey of my creative imagination, the Magician is a politician.

He has secrets and lives up to that saying ‘he has all the cards.’

I see him as Machiavelli’s Prince. Strategic, sometimes underhanded,

Always attempting to gain and hold onto power.

The Magician card is associated with the planet Mercury and the signs Gemini and Virgo.

The Magician archetype is the creator of worlds.

His shadow is the trickster and the innocent.

The Tiger Tarot Magician

The magician bursts forth from the petals of a flower, fully clothed. The magician’s hand is held above the tiger woman’s open hand as though about to drop something into her palm. The tiger woman is accompanied by another woman with a headpiece that looks like a waning crescent moon. Something new is about to begin. The tiger woman and her companion with a decorated face are nude and vulnerable.

In this card the viewer is not necessarily in the role of magician. We are being viewed by the magician and are the audience to the magic that takes place. We may be amazed by the magician’s abilities, the way he surprises us and redirects our attention. Words, speech and the stare of the magician discourage us from looking at the nimbleness of fingers about to ask us to deny what we see.

It’s typical of a tarot reading to ask a question first. Sometimes the querent ask directly of the tarot reader and sometimes the question reverberates only in the querent’s mind.

Synchronisstically, as I write this I receive an email about inspiring women to enter and engage in non traditional careers. Perhaps this is the message here. Believe in magic and let it lead you.

The Motherpeace Magician

The Motherpeace follows the tradition of the tarot in that all the elements are present: air earth fire and water. However, the magician here is more a shaman dressed in the skin of a wild animal, perhaps a leopard judging from the spots.

Each element emanates from a limb. The magician’s right hand holds the sword, his left the fire stick. From his right foot there is a waterfall and his left touches the earth. He gazes at a being with a human face and animal body. Using the Jungian technique of active imagination, I see the magician in a cave gazing at a cave painting and trying to become that being, both animal instincts and human rationality. The magician attempts to embody all that power of both an animal and a human.

Tiger Tarot and Motherpeace

All of the Tiger Tarot have been done with collage. The Magician, in that deck is within a three dimensional scene. There is light in the background and figures in the foreground. The Motherpeace, on the other hand has a very two dimensional quality. The Motherpeace deck is a deck I’ve known for years. When it came out, it was innovatively round, as well as feminist and multi-cultural. I’ve had many more years to consider the images in the Motherpeace and tie them together. The Tiger Tarot is brand new to me and as I write about it I am getting to know it.

If there were sounds within the scenario’s of these two cards, I imagine hearing them very differently. The Tiger Tarot has the quietness of a forest in winter before there are buds and bugs and the sounds of baby animals. There are birds in the picture, yet I don’t hear them singing. The Magician in the Motherpeace has legs that are dancing. He is in ceremony. Dancing and stamping. There is only one figure and yet perhaps outside the boundaries of the circle of this card, there could be drummers.

One last note, the Magician in the Motherpeace in my mind and to my eye is associated with the Ace of Discs

A baby lies on a rug. Her arm cuddles a leopard, with fur markings similar to the Magician’s costume. Discs are the suit of our material world. The Magician uses magic that is inherently part of a human’s ability to manipulate reality, sleight of hand, distraction. The baby in the Ace is learning to interact with the reality of the world. Playing and connecting with the wild animal as a pet, the child uses everything as a means to explore her own reality.

This brings us full circle to the Magician as a Machiavellian figure. In two areas in which I have credentials, psychology and education, Machiavelli is a model. As a master’s student in psychology, I was given the information that most psychologists score high on the Machiavellian scale of a particular personality test. Then, in the project based program that I completed to get a provisional principal’s license that I would need to hold that position in education, the first book recommended on our reading list was Machiavelli’s book The Prince. Psychotherapists work to support their client’s transformation and educational administrators have that responsibility as well, in their role of providing the best possible setting in which a student can grow, learn and transform through education. Both professionals look to be magicians in the minds and institutions in which others can develop. They must, not only be able to manipulate in some way the individuals with whom they work but also the institutions that are the reality that they and their clients/students grow within.

By Martha Rand on February 2, 2023.

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