The Magician is the son in the Trinity. Son is a lovely word, because in the Anglo-Saxon language it is so close to the word ‘sun’, which also has a link with ‘Soul’. In French the word for son is ‘fils’, which looks the same as the French word for thread, so this reminds us of the thread of Ariadne that Theseus carried with him into the under world to enable him to find his way out again. This is the ‘son’ that is ready to go into the darkness of earthly life. That golden thread of inspiration from the Soul means he can come back and synthesise the receptive and active qualities of the God we live in, becoming the result of the union of the first two – the son.
So these first three cards depict the higher Trinity and then Number 4 is The Emperor; this is the concept of that Trinity that has to be crystallised. Through the vigilant guidance of the wise men and women of humanity, he is an active, masculine principle and this gives him authority. It is important to see the figures in the cards not as male and female, but rather as active and receptive. Some times some of the active figures are quite passive as well and vice versa, because a complete balance has been achieved.
It is interesting to see that Number 6 is called The Lovers, but in fact it is ‘The Lover’ and it could be masculine or feminine. This is an example of how words can influence and get in the way of true understanding. Eventually, as we work more with the symbols, the deeper level of interpretation will not come from the intellectual, but from somewhere more profound and subtle. So rather than try ing to make sense of them via the intellect, we can allow them to speak to us from that deeper place. It is out of survival and despair that we’ve said that there must be more than what we find in ordi nary life, so it is necessity that pushes the nature in us up to her lover. Then the intellect in man has to give up and look for another answer to the question, “Is this all there is?”
Number 12, The Hanged Man, represents the state that any initiate aspires to. He is depicted upside down, with his hands tied behind his back and he is in hell. All he can remember is how to be the wind and the fire and so he gives his life for the greater life. He is upside down because spiritually the world is actually the wrong way up, the true life being the inner not the outer. He can’t actually do anything, because all he can do is serve and what he is doing doesn’t even appear to be service to the world. In The Hanged Man we can see an upside down Number 4 made with the shape of his legs, which shows us that the Number 4 has reached the breaking point; here even the idea of pride has to be given up. Pride makes us think that we are special and that we can actually ‘become God’. Then in Number 13 we remove the intellectual head to stop nam ing anything that may keep us tied to self appreciation. This is a Number 4 that has uplifted itself towards the Trinity; every notion of self has got to disappear so that the mind, free of the intellect, can see situations from a transpersonal point of view.
The Magician has a lovely happy face, but the face of the Fool is his other side. The Fool is the end result of the journey, where any self-protection has been removed. When we consider that, we can see why we have to be a Fool to come back again!
We’re looking here at the exoteric way of grounding ideas in order to guide or frustrate the world, so that men can start asking questions and desire another way of life. When we are guiding oth ers, we may say “Go for it!” even if everyone else says the opposite. A little bit of foolishness can get people a bit frustrated, but then they start to think for themselves. That is the way to be a Fool of God, which is our last card, The Fool. The fool in the court, the jester, or comedian, is the one that is doing all types of silly things, but in fact he is the one that is wise. In the past the jester would guide the king or the emperor, because he had one or two bits of wisdom in his little bag. This is the role of the initiate; it is not so much having a long face and telling the world the dread, or beauty of things to come, it is about saying ‘go for it’ and teaching people to laugh at themselves, because from the point of view of Soul we are only wit nessing, so to want to be better than anyone else is a joke.
Basically, the problem is with all of us. We can perceive, some times we can even apply the higher pattern to the lower dimension and hopefully we are as honest, aware and awake as we can be with our reaction to the world. The world is us and it is within us. We know intellectually that we mustn’t suffer disappointment, because that would mean that we are not there yet, or not ‘it’ yet. If we are honest with ourselves and if we recognise the world in us we cannot be disappointed, because if we stand from a point of where the world is at, where is the disappointment? We can’t go lower than where we already are. That is where we all have to start and there’s no way we are above anybody else. If we do get disappointed by the result of our actions, it only means that we think we are better than we are. We can tell others they did their best, but we do not apply the same rules for ourselves. So stop trying, keep going and keep doing!
There is a point of wisdom where we have to learn when some thing is not viable any more. We persevere and then there is a point where we have to ask, ‘what is the pattern that I keep repeating? Has the karmic lesson been learnt? Is it a bad habit left behind, or should I persevere because I have not seen it yet? We all are very fragile and young and maybe we send our arrows in completely the wrong direction, but as long as we keep sending them, one day the goal becomes internalised. The characteristic of the action of the profane world is action for the sake of reaction and this will never exhaust its possibilities, or achieve a goal.
In the sacred world of the Magician, the actions are above all symbolic and so have the value of true ritual. From this point of view an action is not about learning to do a ritual, it is doing it with the knowledge and understanding of why we are doing it; that is what makes the magic. An action is performed with elegant poise. The vision of the mind is held with love, as in transpersonal har mony with the Soul, rather than for some self gratification or self-aggrandisement. It could be exactly the same action as the man next to us, but it is the understanding and the love that we put into it which makes all the difference. This is the purity of intent aligning us with the natural, abundant, creative force of Spirit, which makes nature come up every spring.
The Magician is confronted with all the problems to be solved. Once he comes into matter, he knows that straight away he’s going to be faced with the sphinx; this is the work! If we look at Number 2, The High Priestess, her left arm is resting on a black sphinx which represents ‘the dweller on the threshold’, meaning all the dark shad ows of the subconscious. His life will be full of enigma, questions and problems that he has to understand in order not to be eaten by the sphinx; in other words not to be taken in by the monsters of the subconscious. If he sees all the misunderstandings and pictures that the subconscious has presented to him as real, then he will be eaten by the meaning and go down again into the illusion and form of the small self, or personality. The work of this first card is extremely important, because this is where he is tested to see whether he can go through to the next level, for if he goes through when he is not ready, he faces annihilation, so it is an eternal life or cyclic death matter. If he doesn’t pass that threshold he will stay in ordinary con sciousness and become the magician who plays games and tricks people.
Once he has grasped the secret and been able to take the key and open the great door, he knows that there is no return. If he can’t open it or chooses not to, he can retreat; that is the choice and this is what the average mass consciousness in humanity has done for thousands of years. Many who come to the door do not go through it, for they haven’t enough of that incredible sacrificial fiery quality that the Number 1 has to have, so they go back to survival mode. It is like being faced with ‘the fires of hell’ and being prepared to go through them; actually those fires are the purifying fires of love. Number 1 can have some fool-hardiness and pride, which may make them go into the fire of sensual passion and so into degenera tion and destruction, rather than the passion of the love of God of truth. But that is a choice and if we are foolhardy enough to take that choice, we should remember the message from eternity, that there is all the time in the world!