The Magician
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The Marseilles card
The Waite-Smith card
Stage VII - Self-Realization
If one can integrate the wavering energies and the uncertainties of emergence, a new “being” is created within oneself and becomes permanently crystallized. This being is depicted as the Magician, one who unites the Above with the Below - the inner with the outer. The Fool completes his transformation into the Magician and transcends the dualities of existence which have been aspects of all the prior cards.
It is hard to say where the Magician is. He/she is in the world only lightly, and may choose to be in other realms at will. The Magician may emerge from the Eye into the spheres of the greater Universe or may return to the mundane world, but now is immune to its illusions and influences. He is indeed Mercury or Hermes, both a god and a man, or a goddess and a woman, transcending this duality also at will. The Magician is the true messenger, both in his dealings with others and by the inner clarity he radiates. Rather than being the messenger of the gods, as Mercury is often called, he is both the messenger and the god. In other words, he is all points of the spectrum from the divine, which we call god-like, to the mundane, which we call human.
The Fool has become the resurrected Lucifer, not only able to project his awareness into other realms, but also his body. He has transcended physical death, and has been born into new realms in addition to the human, three-dimensional realm. He has achieved the Philosopher’s Stone and been reborn as a new being. He has rightfully claimed the Grail, and has drunken from it fully.
The Magician
At last we arrive at the culmination of the Fool’s Journey. From this point, he or she has integrated all of the transformational steps of the prior fifteen cards; we could imagine all of the cards lit up, as he or she inhabits them all simultaneously. The doorway into the next world is available, as is the mundane world where the Journey began. It is difficult to convey the essential fact that the Magician is no longer an individual as we think of ourselves as individuals. The illusion of our individuality arises only because our waking awareness of ourselves stops at the boundary of our physical body. The Fool has come to realize, however, that all along he was much more than this. By allowing his sense of self to die, he began to perceive the full extension of his being. No longer is there a divide between inner and outer, above and below; he is a living embodiment of the Hermetic axiom, “as above, so below.” He is both Many and One, Self and Other, eidolon and Daemon, and we have coined the term Collective Self to express this idea.
All dualities are resolved in the Magician, not because they have somehow been united, but because he successfully contains them all. He has recapitulated the hidden dualities of the Sun, which he now reflects; the journey map depicts this idea as the Magician and the Sun occupy each of the endpoints of the Eye, and reflect each other. The difference is, the Sun expressed the dualities externally, out into the world; the Magician expresses them internally and actively, at will, from within.
The Image
At last we arrive at the culmination of the Fool’s Journey. All of the transformational steps of the prior fifteen cards have been integrated; we could imagine all of the cards lit up, as we inhabit them all simultaneously. The doorway into the next world is available. It is difficult to convey the essential fact that the Magician is no longer an individual, as we think of ourselves as individuals. The illusion of our individuality arises only because our waking awareness of ourselves stops at the boundary of our physical body. The Fool has come to realize, however, that all along he was much more than this. By allowing his sense of self to die, he begins to perceive the full extension of being. No longer is there a divide between inner and outer, above and below; he is a living embodiment of the Hermetic axiom, “as above, so below. . .” He is both Many and One, Self and Other, eidolon and Daemon. I have coined the term Collective Self to express this idea.
All dualities are resolved in the Magician, not because they have somehow been united, but because he successfully contains them all. He has recapitulated the hidden dualities of the Sun, which he now reflects. The journey map depicts this idea as the Magician and the Sun occupy each of the endpoints of the Eye and reflect each other. The difference is, the Sun expressed the dualities externally, out into the world; the Magician expresses them internally and actively, at will, from within.
Aside from the Fool card itself, for the first time in all of the preceding cards, the Fool is depicted as the main figure. Waite’s card is the most explicit, and we may now easily understand the symbols it presents. The figure is standing with one arm raised and the other lowered. He has united within himself the Above and the Below. This is graphically confirmed by his very position in the layout of the Eye, where the upper and lower paths unite at the right side of the oval. And if we need any more confirmation, he holds a rod in his right hand which has the same cap on the top and the bottom. It is interesting to note that the Fool also holds a staff up in his right hand. On the Fool card the staff is unbalanced; his treasures are hidden in the wallet that hangs from the staff behind him. The Magician grasps his rod firmly and upright – he now knows exactly what he is. Significantly, his staff no longer separates head from shoulder as the Fool’s did. The Magician is now whole.
The astrological sign that corresponds to the Magician is Sagittarius, the Archer or the Centaur. He is half horse and half man, and is immortal. The Magician is also immortal, because his being has fully united with others in the trans-mundane realms which have always existed; he is no longer limited within one human body or life. Yet something of his humanness remains, too; he is a dual being, living in our world and others simultaneously. The centaur has the body of a horse and the torso, head and arms of a human. This conveys the idea that the animal nature of man is now subservient to the will of the initiated human. Still, they are one being, which is the mystery of the Magician. The will or intent of the Magician, which is distinct from the ordinary desires of the personality which the Fool has sacrificed to become the Magician, is his ability to link to and merge with the will of his Collective Self and of Universal Spirit. In terms of the Parable of the Coach, the Fool has been transformed into the Magician/Master. It is now his will that drives the coach via perfect communication with the coachman and the horses.
Finally, we remember that the Centaur’s arrow points to the center of our Milky Way galaxy, symbolic of the spiritual center of existence. It is to this center, far beyond the human realms, that the Magician now has the option to travel.