"To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. ” The Magician is the most mysterious and fascinating of all archetypes. That the Magician has fascinated human consciousness since ancient times is evident by taking a cursory glance at all the myths, legends, literature, movies, and video games in which he appears.
In literature he often appears as a Wise Old Man, a seer, a hermit, or a madman living far away from civilisation and in contact with nature, animals, and the numinous. The Magician is a person who has gained access to esoteric or occult (hidden) knowledge, bringing the spiritual to the material. He has what the English visionary artist William Blake calls fourfold vision.
It is a glimpse of eternity, whereby the smallest things in the world holds a cosmic significance. Thus, the Magician has a deep relationship with the unseen realm which coexists with us; but on a different level of reality or consciousness. The Magician is the mentor or guide to his people, and even to the king.
In older times, when a king became possessed by his anger and wanted to punish others unjustly, the Magician, with measured and reasoned thinking, 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. Those rulers who failed to take the counsel of the Magician were more likely to become tyrannical dictators, leading to the fall of their empire.
The Magician has become ever-present in our collective consciousness: Professor Dumbledore in Harry Potter; Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings; the Jedi-masters Yoda and Obi-wan Kenobi in Star Wars, etc. Early in the Hero’s Journey, the young hero receives assistance from his mentors who have magical powers, so that he may gain knowledge and practical skills to overcome his dragon and gather the gold and share it with his people; allowing the hero to mature into manhood. “The Magician is an initiate of secret and hidden knowledge of all kinds… All knowledge that takes special training to acquire is the province of the Magician energy.
” The most popular Magician archetype is Merlin of the Arthurian legend (which inspired our modern popular fiction). He is a Sage with gifts of clairvoyance, prophecy, and magic powers. He forms part of the literary genre of chivalric romance, which evokes magic, heroic knights, dragons, and distressed damsels.
Merlin is the advisor of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table who embark on a quest in search of the Holy Grail. Though Merlin remains for the most part hidden in the background, his presence is felt. The archetype of the Magician stands out as an uncanny, mysterious, distant, and sometimes even a disturbing figure.
Merlin was begotten by an incubus and born of an innocent virgin. He is a child prodigy, a product of the terrestrial and the supernatural. Merlin is a prophet sent from hell, the Antichrist, whose birth is intended to reverse the effect of Christ’s Harrowing of Hell.
The light side of his mother, however, ultimately triumphs, and Merlin becomes the embodiment of the whole man (the Self), a figure that holds the union of opposites (light and dark) in one being. This struggle of opposites also arises when Merlin tells the king that there is a red dragon and a white dragon fighting underneath the kingdom, which is the reason the walls of his tower kept collapsing. This is something that people were unconscious of, but which they felt nonetheless.
Merlin possesses the ability to see into the depths and to diagnose the roots of a problem that cannot or will not be seen on the surface. Before the Arthurian legend, however, Merlin had roots in Welsh mythology as the bard Myrddin the Wild, who had gone mad after being involved in a war and fled civilisation to become a wild man of the woods—a reference, perhaps, to the Roman invasion of the druids in ancient Celtic cultures. After Merlin vanished from the world into the forest, people still hear his cries, so the legend runs, but they cannot understand or interpret them.
The figure of Merlin arises from the tension between paganism and Christianity. The Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung writes: “The magician has preserved in himself a trace of primitive paganism; he possesses a nature that is still unaffected by the Christian dichotomy and is in touch with the still pagan unconscious, where the opposites lie side by side in their original naïve state, beyond the reach of “sinfulness” but liable, if assimilated into conscious life, to beget evil as well as good with the same daemonic energy… Therefore, he is a destroyer as well as a saviour. This figure is therefore pre-eminently suited to become the symbol carrier for an attempt at unification.
” Along with Merlin, the other great archetype of the magician is Thoth, the ancient Egyptian god of wisdom, magic and writing—who later became syncretised with Hermes, the Greek messenger of the gods and psychopomp, resulting in Hermes Trismegistus, the Sage and Magician to whom all truth-seekers dedicated the discoveries of their wisdom, including the Emerald Tablet, and various works known as the Hermetica, related on the one hand, to astrology, medicine, botany, alchemy and magic, and on the other, to religious, spiritual, or mystical teachings. Hermetic writings contain a great deal of magic, as is seen in the Greek Magical Papyri, which shows a collection of hundreds of spells, formulae, rituals, and hymns that span nearly every situation imaginable, and the Cyranides, which illustrates the secret forces of nature and how they can be learned and magically used to ensure success, protection, and healing. While classical scholars have denigrated these magical texts as merely superstitious, others see them as a collection of great religious literature.
Practitioners of magic have had a long history of persecution, for magic was considered heresy, an unwelcome and improper expression of religion—the religion of the “other”. This brought about an intensive period of witch-hunts, especially in early modern Europe. Magic is, in fact, the shadow of religion, representing its unknown, repressed and hidden qualities.
Astrology became astronomy, and alchemy became not only chemistry, but also, according to Jung, the forerunner of our modern psychology of the unconscious. In this sense, magic is also called the “mother of science. ” Despite the persecution of the Magicians, they could not, of course, be cast out; none of the archetypes of the collective unconscious can be.
Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz writes: “Magic is probably one of the oldest of man’s spiritual activities. Whenever a new conscious attitude arises, the old knowledge, the previous attitude, sinks onto the level of magic. Magic is therefore the older form of spiritual and religious knowledge and activity which has been superseded by a new spiritual religious attitude, and therefore has sunk back into a more unconscious condition.
” One of the most ancient forms of magic were fertility rituals—used to propitiate the gods in order to ensure plentiful crops and fertile women. This works through sympathetic magic, which is based on the principle of correspondence. It proposes that one can influence something based on its resemblance to another thing (“like affects like”), such that forces of nature are to be influenced by the act carried out in the ritual.
For example, Paleolithic cave paintings were associated with the magic of the hunt. Perhaps these paintings were made to act out a hunt before it began, or to consecrate the animal to be killed. Humans have had magico-religious impulses through all of recorded history and presumably before.
The Sorcerer is the name for an enigmatic painting found in a French cavern known as “The Sanctuary”, it was made around 13,000 BC, and seems to be some kind of great spirit or master of animals. In ancient Mesopotamia, magical incantations were inscribed on cuneiform clay tablets. Rituals were performed by the ašipu, who were well-versed in the magical arts, but also likely in medicine, priesthood, and scholarship.
Magicians used to serve as advisors to kings and great leaders, and apotropaic magic was used as a defence against evil sorcerers and for banishing the effect of evil influences, such as a curse or evil eye, with the help of good luck charms, amulets, talismans, certain gestures, etc. Today we still knock on wood to ward off bad luck. Apotropaic magic became widespread in ancient Greece.
The Sumerian god Enki was associated with magic, and regarded as the ultimate source of all arcane knowledge. For the ancient Mesopotamians and ancient Egyptians, magic was a way of life. They did not distinguish between rational science and magic.
The Egyptians deified magic in the form of the god Heka. The main principle centred on the power of words to bring things into being. We may compare this idea with the magical word “abracadabra” which appeared in late Greek writings and was used as an amulet inscription, primarily to vanquish illness, and is possibly related to the Gnostic god Abraxas.
Though the meaning of the word is uncertain, some have translated it as “I will create as I speak”. This also runs parallel to the creation of the world in Genesis, “And God said, let there be light: and there was light. ” Another popular magical word of today is “hocus pocus”, which may derive from the words “hoc est corpus” in the Latin mass “this is the body” (of Christ).
For the Egyptians, magic was present in one’s birth, life, death and afterlife. In the afterlife, each individual would undergo a weighing of the heart, where one’s heart would be weighed on a scale against a feather. Those who had pure hearts and led a life of virtue would balance the scales, and begin their long and arduous journey to Aaru or the Field of Reeds (paradise in Egyptian mythology).
The deceased would face various challenges and obstacles, and magical spells were believed to provide protection and guidance. These can be found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and are intended to assist a dead person’s journey through the underworld. Magicians often have ancient tomes called grimoires or “book of spells”.
The Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm (translated as “the Aim of the Sage”), also known as the Picatrix, is a 400-page book written around the 10th or 11th century, that summarises older works on magic and astrology, and draws on Hermetic and Neoplatonic philosophical ideas. In biblical canon, King Solomon is a figure known for his wisdom and piety. However, in the apocryphal works he is not just associated with wisdom, but also with magic and the occult.
In the Testament of Solomon, he has conversations with demons. By means of a magical ring, the Seal of Solomon, he learns to control and command demons to speed up the construction of his temple. The Key of Solomon is a grimoire that describes the necessary preparations for certain magical operations.
It provides instructions for the creation and consecration of magical tools for invoking spirits, often to gain knowledge, power, or assistance in various endeavours, as well as the appropriate materials, astrological time, and magical symbols. Before the invocation, however, one must purify oneself, create a magic circle and pray for God’s protection. Perhaps the most famous fictional grimoire is the Necronomicon written by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, which appears in the works of horror writer H.
P. Lovecraft. The title appeared to him in a dream.
Not much is known of its contents, other than a rhyming couplet, “That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die. ” Alhazred worshipped cosmic entities known as the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods, before his mysterious death.
Lovecraftian characters are entranced by the pursuit of forbidden knowledge, and end up descending into madness or death by the revelation of it. Lovecraft reveals a deep human desire, that we would risk our lives for gaining access to occult knowledge. However, one must beware of unearned wisdom.
There are no shortcuts to enlightenment. One of the leading archetypes of our time is the sorcerer’s apprentice. This archetype is depicted by Goethe.
As a sorcerer departs his workshop, he leaves his apprentice to work on chores. The apprentice gets tired and enchants a broom to do the work for him by infusing it with summoned spirits. Things start to get out of control, and the apprentice does not know how to undo his spell.
The sorcerer returns and quickly breaks the spell, dispelling the spirits before they could do more damage. The story concludes with the old sorcerer’s statement that only a master should invoke powerful spirits. As Goethe famously states: “The spirits that I summoned I now cannot rid myself of again.
” This is Pandora’s box, a source of great and unexpected trouble. Once opened, there’s no turning back. The archetype of the sorcerer’s apprentice portrays the zeitgeist of the 21st century: nuclear energy, genetic engineering, cloning, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, etc.
We are entering a posthuman era, posing new existential challenges to the human condition. We have built a system which we cannot live without, and yet the individual within the system can be done away with. As time moves on, technological inventions may become extensions and replacements of our muscles, our nervous system, our brain, our eyes and ears, and even our reproductive organs, to such an extent that the boundaries between biology and mechanical contraptions have all but disappeared.
Materialistic science, in its effort to gain knowledge about the world of matter and to control it, has engendered a monster that threatens the very survival of human existence. Moreover, the stress and excessive demands of modern life, alienation, and loss of meaning in life and of spiritual values has engendered in many people a consuming need to escape and seek pleasure and oblivion. People are slowly being alienated from their bodies, from each other, and from nature.
As we’ll see later, the integration of the Magician archetype is essential for us to tackle these problems. In his work on English literature in the 16th century, British writer C. S.
Lewis highlights how in medieval stories magic had a fantastical and fairy-like quality, while in the Renaissance, it became tied to the idea of hidden knowledge that could be explored through books and rituals. Scholars immersed themselves in mysterious books, pronouncing terrible words, and souls were endangered. Magic became a potentially dangerous pursuit.
The German magician, alchemist and astrologer Johann Georg Faust appears as the archetypal adept of Renaissance Magic in the 15th and 16th centuries, becoming the subject of folk legend after his death. In works of fiction, Dr Faust appears as a man who grows weary of human knowledge and concludes that only magic is worth learning. He signs a blood pact and sells his soul to the Devil, in exchange for magical powers for a number of set years.
At the end of the contract, however, he is carried off to hell. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s views on magic were revolutionary in this period, and in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy, he explores the powers of magic and its relationship with religion, rejecting forbidden forms of sorcery. His work is inspired by the Cabalistic and Hermetic magic of Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, where the Magician’s task is to explore the secrets of nature to reveal the wonder of God’s work and to inspire a more ardent love of the Creator.
The Swiss alchemist and physician Paracelsus combined medicine with magic, and led a medical revolution. He introduced elemental beings and viewed the cosmos as interconnected, assigning spiritual significance to natural elements. John Dee was an English mathematician, astronomer and magician who served as advisor to Queen Elizabeth I.
He amassed one of England’s biggest libraries, which attracted many scholars. Together with Sir Edward Kelley, an occultist and scryer or crystal-gazer, they created the Angelical or Enochian language, supposed to have been revealed to them by angels during their mystical interactions. Alchemy found a resurgence in this period as well.
According to legend, Nicholas Flamel, a French scribe, had discovered the philosophers’ stone and attained immortality. A notable work is The Twelve Keys, attributed to Basil Valentine, likely a pseudonym used by one or more German authors, and published by Johann Thölde in 1599. It presents an allegorical description of twelve steps by which the philosophers’ stone may be created, allowing one to turn base metals into gold.
Mercury, the Roman counterpart of Hermes, is another figure of wholeness who is crucial in alchemy, as he represents the philosophers’ stone. Jung writes: “Mercurius stands at the beginning and end of the work… He is metallic yet liquid, matter yet spirit, cold yet fiery, poison and yet healing draught—a symbol uniting all the opposites. ” Historians have distinguished between low magic and high magic.
Low magic is folk magic, often associated with simple spells, charms, and witchcraft. It is also called Goetia, and was seen as fraudulent or deceptive magic, as opposed to high magic or theurgy, which was regarded as divine magic. We may also distinguish between white magic and black magic.
White magic is the use of the powers of nature and of the mind for the service of good. It is selfless and virtuous. All white magic must be backed by a strong moral character which results in greater interior enlightenment, a prerequisite for performing heroic services for mankind.
The white magician does not identify himself as the holder of magical power, but rather as a conduit for the divine power which makes this service possible. The end of all wisdom is to understand the deep relationship between the human being and his Creator, and this relationship is agape, the highest form of love, which is selfless and sacrificial, committed to the well-being of others. As soon as one enters into moral decay, and uses magic for egotistical purposes, it becomes black magic, a source of fear and dread.
The black magician abuses his power for his own selfish gain, in order to control others or inflict harm on others. Thus, when a thing is done to help someone, it is white magic, when it is done for harmful purposes, it is black magic. Jung writes: “Magic exercises a compulsion that prevails over the conscious mind and will of the victim: an alien will rises up in the bewitched and proves stronger than his ego.
The only comparable effect capable of psychological verification is that exerted by unconscious contents, which by their compelling power demonstrate their affinity with or dependence on man’s totality. ” Magician, wizard, and sorcerer are often used as synonyms, though there are subtle differences between them. Generally speaking, a magician refers to anyone who practices magic.
A wizard is typically a Wise Old Man that has studied the magical arts over a long period of time, and a sorcerer either has an innate gift with magic, or has gained magical power through making pacts with supernatural entities, which is usually associated with witchcraft and voodoo. Enchanters are known for their ability to cast spells, often involving magical objects, charms, and talismans, while necromancers use magic for communicating with the dead and summoning their spirits for the purpose of foretelling future events or discovering hidden knowledge. The mysterious druids in ancient Celtic cultures left no written accounts, though the earliest known reference to them date to the 4th century BC.
The 1st century BC Greek scholar Alexander Polyhistor referred to the druids as philosophers who were inspired by Pythagoras, the immortality of the soul, and metempsychosis, the transmigration of the soul, especially its reincarnation after death. Mystics and gnostics engaged in meditation, prayer and rituals in order to attain gnosis (personal knowledge or direct experience of the divine), to reach oneness with the centre that lies deep within, by uniting their will with the will of God (“thy will be done”). The shaman is widely present in certain Siberian and native American tribes.
He owes his powers to mystical communion with the world of spirits, making him, as Mircea Eliade puts it, a technician of the sacred. The shamanic call involves some kind of illness or psychic crisis. After going through this ordeal and curing himself, the shaman is capable of healing others.
If we are able to go through the dark night of the soul, we are illuminated by an inextinguishable spark, the fount of all light. All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle. The shaman is not only a medicine-man who picks the right herbs and ingredients to make a healing concoction for curing physical illness, but also guards his community from loss of soul.
Shamanism can be seen as the oldest system of healing known in the world. von Franz writes: “The roots of both priesthood and psychotherapy lie in the primitive phenomenon of shamanism and the existence of medicine men. ” Priests often serve as spiritual leaders within their religious ceremonies and are responsible for conducting rituals within their faith tradition, as well as acting as intercessors between the human and the divine.
Their rites of exorcism, doctrine of transubstantiation, access to holy water and blessed herbs, could be conceived as magical practices. The analytical psychologist is like a modern shaman, who seeks to heal a patient and teach him or her about the importance of dreams, which are the essential guides in bringing our unconscious contents into consciousness, in order to progress towards the Self (the total personality). The Self is represented by the sacred symbol of the mandala, a magic circle which is found all over the world.
It appears in connection with chaotic states of disorientation and has the purpose of reducing the confusion to order, as it expresses balance and wholeness. Patients often emphasise the beneficial or soothing effect of such pictures, as if they possessed a magical significance. All magic, miracles, and parapsychological happenings seem to have one theme in common, namely, an attitude of hopeful expectancy on the part of the participants.
This is also known as the archetype of the miracle or the archetype of the magic effect. Many of the founders of the great religions often performed miracles. Jesus would make the person whom he healed a participant in the healing, “your faith has healed you.
” One might say that miracles can only happen in a response to a need transcending the ego. For example, in the Bible, Moses strikes water from a rock to quench the thirst of his people. This miracle is not a prideful trick or ego trip from the Magician, but rather a compassionate act.
There are many cases of people avoiding terrible accidents by hearing a voice out of nowhere, for example, telling one to get off the road, only for there to be a major accident shortly after—as if one was warned by one’s guardian angel. We have no explanation for such events, but they affect us profoundly. The Magician is responsible for these seemingly miraculous eruptions into our everyday world of space and time, cause and effect (which Jung calls synchronicity).
The Magician gives us unexpected glimpses of the transcendent world, offering a numinous experience that temporarily suspends our rational beliefs, and our superfluous worries. Psychologically, the Magician is the archetype of transformation, transforming old realities into new ones. He is capable of transforming reality by changing consciousness.
He is the archetype of self-realisation par excellence. The Magician aids us in our lifelong task of attaining a higher level of consciousness, and of recognising that higher power which is greater than ourselves. We are always in a process of transforming ourselves, others, and the objects and the world around us.
For the Magician, matter is energy and energy is matter. As the law of conservation of energy states, “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only be transformed from one form to another. ” The same might be applied to the eternal and immortal soul.
Often everyday people unknowingly use the basic principles of magic and never think they are doing magic. We have all probably known people who emanate caring and peace, and sometimes we can feel better just by standing next to them. Conversely, we all know people whose inner world is chaotic and desperate, and that inner state affects people around them.
The Magician has control over the mystical laws, which are mirror reflections of the physical laws. As the Emerald Tablet teaches us, “As above, so below, and as below, so above, to accomplish the marvels of the One work. ” The Magician realises that at a fundamental level, there exists a transcendent unitary world where inner and outer reality coexist, known as the unus mundus “the one world.
” The magical and sacred plane is not something that is above us and is inaccessible. On the contrary, it is immanent in ourselves, others and the cosmos. The Magician archetype provides a sense of connectedness with the whole and an understanding that what is within us contains all that is outside ourselves.
The microcosm and macrocosm mirror one another. Sometimes, the simplest of things contain the greatest magical effect. Our world is full of magic and wonder, for those with eyes to see, and it is up to us to awaken ourselves to the true beauty of life.
The order that we establish in our inner world corresponds to order in the external world. Thus, if we want a peaceful world, we must start with becoming peaceful ourselves. As we ourselves become healthier and more alive, each of us sets in motion a ripple effect in others.
This expresses a fundamental truth that is shared by almost all the world religions. It is the golden rule, “do to others as you would have them do unto you. ” Love thy neighbour as thyself.
In the ancient Sanskrit epic poem, the Mahabharata, it is written: “One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one’s own self. This, in brief, is the rule of dharma. ” While dharma expresses a virtuous life, the principle of karma supposes a relationship of cause and effect, whereby people’s actions or deeds influence their future as well as their rebirth.
There appears to be a fundamental law of universal equilibrium in nature so that what you do to others will come back to you. That is the divine energy inherent in every human being. As Newton’s Third Law states, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
” We are not only made to live in harmony with each other, but are also interconnected with each other in a metaphysical sense. The Stoic philosopher and Emperor Marcus Aurelius states, “What injures the hive injures the bee. ” When a man does wrong to another man, they are hurting themselves.
What you do to others will come back to you. And this may go beyond our physical existence. In Hindu and Buddhist cosmology, Indra’s net is an infinite cosmic net which contains a single glittering jewel in each “eye” of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number.
Moreover, if we were to inspect and closely look at one of these jewels, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, ad infinitum. The shamans perceive the world as a vast web of energy, to which all living beings are connected (the Anima Mundi), and the Melanesian and Polynesian cultures speak of mana, which is the extraordinary and compelling supernatural power which emanates from certain individuals, objects, action and events, as well as from inhabitants of the spirit world.
This concept has been popularised in role-playing games, representing energy used to perform magical abilities. Jung writes: “[T]he mana-personality is a dominant of the collective unconscious, the well-known archetype of the mighty man in the form of hero, chief, magician, medicine-man, saint, the ruler of men and spirits, the friend of God. So whatever else the magician archetype might be, it is clear that it is one instance of a mana-personality.
” As a practitioner of black magic, the Shadow Magician has no interest in helping others, but rather controls or manipulates others for his own benefit. 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. The dark Magician’s esoteric knowledge on his craft causes his ego to become inflated and he takes advantage of others who have limited knowledge.
As Lord Acton stated, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. " The shadow Magician also has an Asclepius complex, a common form of inflation that comes from identifying with the healer archetype. He has no need for any personal relationship with the wounded.
Taking on an archetype eliminates one’s humanity, resulting in grandiose beliefs, megalomania, or a messiah complex. This is typical of charlatans, false prophets or cult leaders. The dark Magician believes that he is a god because he has the power to heal, and falls into hubris (considered as the worst of the seven deadly sins).
Because the power of the Magician in each of us is so potentially great, integrating the shadow is essential so that we do not consciously use our power for evil purposes. If we do not integrate our repressed content, they take on a monstruous form and possess us like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Perhaps because of the expression “magic tricks”, the archetype of the Trickster comes immediately to mind when one thinks of the Magician.
In fact, Mercury and Hermes are both gods of tricksters, thieves and magicians. When they are in their shadow side, they become illusionists, convincing others of overnight success or a magic pill to solve all problems, usually at high prices. This method of diverting people from their personal journeys to mindless consumerism is a major force of evil sorcery in our time.
On the other hand, the prankishness of the Trickster can serve to deflate an all-too-serious Magician’s personality. Both can shapeshift, create illusions, and confuse us with their sleight of hand. By making objects disappear, they can dramatise the simple truth that every object, everything, is but an appearance of reality.
The underlying essence of the magical art is revelation. The Magician has the power to reveal the basic structure underlying all appearance, by stripping away the unnecessary details. Behind the “ten thousand things”, all is One.
It is as if the Trickster conceals this fundamental reality from us, until we do the necessary inner work to realise the illusion of appearances. This is the veil of maya which conceals the true character of spiritual reality, creating the cosmic illusion that the phenomenal world is real. In Hinduism, we are part of the Supreme Being’s leela (divine play).
All of reality is the outcome of the divine play of the Supreme Being, revealing the interconnectedness of all existence. The goal is to understand our role in this cosmic game, while realising that the Ātman (true self or essence) is identical to Brahman (unchanging and supreme reality). In Tarot, the Magician is assigned the number one, and comes just after the Fool who has the number zero.
In the Marseilles deck, the Magician is called the juggler. He appears as a young street performer holding a golden wand and wearing motley, the traditional costume of the court jester, trickster or fool. The brim of his hat resembles a figure eight lying on its side, the mathematical sign for infinity.
In the Rider-Waite deck, the Magician appears as a holy priest—discarding the aspects of the Trickster. The hat has been replaced by the symbol for infinity, encompassing creation, preservation, and destruction; the cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth. This may be a hint about the endlessness of the powers of magic.
The number one symbolises undifferentiated totality, out of which comes the two (the opposites), a necessary conflict for the possibility of consciousness which defines the human being. Elevation, however, is motion toward unity. The Magician’s task is to unite with the One source, from where we all come from and will return, when the time is right.
In Kabbalah, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet (aleph), symbolises the oneness of God. The Magician points one hand with the wand to the sky and the other hand to the earth. As above, so below.
Or as Jesus said in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. ” The sky—inspiration, dreaming, vision—is grounded in the facts of everyday existence; both are equally important. Real power comes from recognising our dependence on the earth, on other people, and on our spiritual source.
Thus, many traditional shamans begin their work by consciously connecting with and thanking the earth, the four directions, the people they love most (including their teacher), and finally the spiritual power they serve. In the Red Book, Jung dedicates a chapter to the Magician. He meets Philemon, his inner Wise Old Man and Magician.
When Jung talks to him about what magic is, Philemon replies that magic happens to be precisely everything that eludes comprehension. One cannot understand magic. One can only understand what accords with reason.
Magic accords with unreason, which one cannot understand. Jung writes: “The practice of magic consists in making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner. ” Magic will never be lost to humanity, since it is reborn with each and every one of us.
We need magic to be able to receive or invoke the messenger and the communication of the incomprehensible. We must accept that the world comprises reason and unreason, and that magic remains a mystery, until one attains gnosis. Then one might say, as Jung did when asked if he believed in God, “I don’t need to believe, I know.
” Jung writes: “This magical power allows itself to be neither taught nor learned. Either one has it or does not have it. Now I know your final mystery: you are a lover.
You have succeeded in uniting what has been sundered, that is, binding together the Above and Below. Have we not known this for a long time? Yes, we knew it, no, we did not know it.
It has always been this way, and yet it has never been thus… Why did I have to wander such long roads before I came to Philemon, if he was going to teach me what has been common knowledge for ages? Alas, we have known everything since time immemorial and yet we will never know it until it has been accomplished. Who exhausts the mystery of love?
” If we listen to our inner voice, conscience or intuition—despite our awareness that others might think what we are doing is crazy—we awaken the inner Magician. The Magician’s path is a lonely one. By delving into one’s own psyche and inner images, one can bring the unknown into the known, the unconscious into consciousness.
That is magic, and that is the purpose of Jungian psychology. When we dedicate time, energy and resources to something (cooking, music, painting, writing, etc. ), we are working on integrating the Magician archetype, which is part of the individuation process.
The Magician not only works on perfecting his art for practical purposes, but also has extensive knowledge about it, and its connection with one’s way of life. Much of our inner negativity results from repression. The issue is not to get rid of it, but to transform it by allowing it to resurface, be acknowledged, and take on a new form.
It is possible to learn to transform emotional energy once we learn to feel our feelings fully. We can see this in our personal relationships when we talk through our pain or anger and come out the other side feeling more intimate and loving than before. When a person opens to feel with another person’s pain, and move through it with the other person, it is often the case that both feel better in the end.
The power of words is evident in psychoanalysis, “the talking cure”. We know the problems in our outer life reflect our inner state, but it can be very painful when we are incapable of healing ourselves. The highest form of healing is the balance between body, soul, and spirit.
Good nutrition and exercise, a connection with our innermost self, and staying true to our spiritual source. Often magic is as simple as prayer. Many Magicians simply ask for what is needed—health, forgiveness, transformation, resources.
As long as it is reasonable and within the humanly possible, one can attain it. The answer comes from the wisdom of a power greater than one’s own. Hence the saying in Mathew 7:7: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
” Interestingly, the number seven is considered the most mystical of all numbers (symbolising fullness and completion, as it is the day God finished his work, blessed it, and rested). It is the most repeated number in the Bible. All of the great inventions and wonders of the world first existed as images in the unconscious.
As we paid attention to them, we brought them into consciousness and solidified them into the external world. The Magician brings the realm of fantasy and imagination into reality. By visualising it, he creates it.
In numerology, this corresponds to the master number 22 (master builder) who is the most capable of all in making his or her dreams come to fruition. To some extent, thoughts create reality. Belief is not trivial; it has tangible results.
The power of the mind can even heal sickness as is seen in placebo-controlled studies. In New Age thought, the Law of Attraction supposes that positive thoughts bring positive results, and negative thoughts bring negative outcomes. Psychologically, however, it is too one-sided.
We must not impose our will on reality, but surrender to both the positive and the negative, which must coexist, for that is the fundamental reality of the human condition. It is their synthesis, not the repression of the negativity, that brings about the fullness of being, of psychic wholeness, balance and harmony. Positive thinking should never be used to avoid responsibility for the harm you do to yourself or others.
When we do harm, we need to ask for forgiveness. When we can do so honestly, we should also make amends in some way. The Magician always practices some kind of ritual.
Rituals express a change in commitment and help us experience a sense of connectedness, and rituals repeated over time connect us with our historical ancestors. Individuals and traditions differ on the details of such practices (meditation, active imagination, prayer, entheogens, etc. ).
Psychologically, the idea is to align your consciousness with your unconscious, so that your unique story may be unfolded in life. Like fruits and flowers, our life experiences are products of nature. They grow spontaneously in our garden, awaiting discovery—for the nourishment of our soul.
The Magician journeys to another world, through altered states of consciousness. We all enter these altered states, but most of us choose not to become very conscious of them. These, however, open us to a deeper wisdom and a connection with the transpersonal that greatly improves the quality of the rest of our lives.
One way to awaken the Magician within is simply to become conscious as we enter these other planes of reality. Synchronicities become more frequent, inner images suddenly materialise in our outer reality, without any causal connection, just as if we had conjured them forth, or as if the synchronistic event must hold a special message for us. How one goes about decoding the meaning of such an event is part of the integration of the Magician archetype.
Many people attempt to meditate and implant favourable images in the unconscious by self-hypnosis or other techniques. However, one cannot manipulate the activities of the unconscious by will power. The unconscious is, by definition, unconscious.
A more useful technique, as has been practiced since ancient times, is to simply observe one’s inner thoughts, feelings, and images—and allow whatever pictures to appear in the mind’s eye. The inner Magician can help us become aware of the visions of power that exist within us, so that we can bring them into reality—or transform the repressed contents into something beautiful—for the Magician can turn the ordinary into something extraordinary. Our inner images yearn to be born, struggling against our indifference to free themselves from the unconscious.
Like a stone held “captive” waiting to be released by the sculpturer. Some artists in this medium say that they do not create their figures. Instead, they simply chisel away all superfluous material so that the image already implicit in the unconscious can stand free in the stone.
Similarly, when we are in a state of massa confusa, of inner chaos, we can delve into the eternal guide within, to find the source of our confusion and clear up conflicting urges. “If the spectator could enter into these images in his imagination, approaching them on the fiery chariot of his contemplative thought… [If he] could make a friend and a companion of one of these images of wonder… then would he arise from his grave, then would he meet the Lord in the air, and then he would be happy.
