TRUMP 1 - THE MAGICIAN
The differences between the Fool and the Magician are very subtle, but they are in fact very profound. The Fool is infinite potential; it is God without attributes; the sum totality of the universe before anything was created. The Fool is the Arik Anpin. As we turn to the Magician, we see the first moment of God with attributes: God as Creator, God as He, God as the Word. In the beginning, God created.
As we us look at the card, I want to remind you that we are dealing with symbols. We are talking about realities which go far beyond human comprehension--realities which cannot really be spoken of in simple human language--realities which are the basis and power and essence of our ability to speak or think. Therefore, the pictures are cryptic and strange, and require a bit of analysis before we understand them.
As we look at the Magician, we see the number one at the top of the card. We see the figure of a young man with a sign of infinity over his head, holding in his right hand a Magician's staff or wand. His left hand is pointing down to the earth. Around his waist is a belt in the form of a snake whose mouth is swallowing his tail. In front of him, there is a table on which there are four items: a disk with a star on it, a cup, a sword, and a staff.
How in the world can this mean anything, and even if it does mean something, isn't it a rather dark symbol? Doesn't the Bible forbid magicians? The first thing we must deal with then is the idea of the Magician.
What is a magician? A magician is one who, with the strength of his word, manifests and manipulates the physical world. That has come into ill repute, because the power of the magician has been used for very dark, evil purposes. However, it was not always so, and in its purest form, magic is religion.
Let me give you some examples. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth with His word. God said, “Let there be light." And there was light. God said, “Let there be earth." And there was earth. God said, “Let there humanity." And there was humanity. The power of the word is integrally related to the Magician. The #1 card of the Magician does, in fact, represent the Logos, the Word. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Jesus says if you have faith like the mustard seed, you will say to the mountain be gone, and the mountain will be gone. That is the power of magic in its purest sense--not in an evil satanic sense, but in its purest sense. Jesus looked into the grave and said, “Lazarus, come forward." And His words are life and power and truth.
I will tell you another story. Even young school children learn the words “hocus-pocus.” Do you know where those words come from? Hocus pocus are the wonderful words used in cartoons and other things to represent magic. The magician simply says, “Hocus-Pocus," and wonderful or evil things happen. What is its origin? It comes from the Christian practice of holy communion. The priest holds the wafers or the bread above his head and pronounces the words of institution. On the night that He was betrayed, Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to His disciples saying, “This is My body, do this in remembrance of Me." At the moment the priest says, “This is My body," he makes the sign of the cross. In fact, when he uses the word "this," he begins his downward motion for the vertical staff of the cross. When he says the word "body," he finishes the horizontal bar of the cross. At that exact moment, according to Christian, especially Catholic, doctrine, that bread ceases to be bread and physically becomes the body of Christ himself.
Through the magician’s words, the bread has become transformed into the living, actual presence of God. I use the word "magician" advisedly, because at that point the priest is performing an act of magic. The difference between magic and prayer is that prayer requests something of the divine; magic demands it. Through the words that the magician speaks, the bread turns into the body of Christ. The term “hocus-pocus” comes from words spoken in the Catholic mass. Until recently, the Catholic mass was said in Latin. At the moment the priest pronounces the words of institution when he says, “This is my body," he is actually saying in Latin, “Hoc est corpus meus." To the ears of the uneducated who may not understand what words the priest is saying but do understand that something holy, sacred and magical is going on, those words can sound like, “Hocus-Pocus.”
I am not, in any sense, saying that this makes all "magic" okay. Most of it is wrong. It will lead you far astray and will lead you down various pathways of great darkness and danger. But in its purest form, magic is the essence of creation. Magic is the word of God. As God said, “Let there be light," so too has He placed within us the ability to speak. Our words do contain power. As the Bible says, “The tongue is a mighty flame and an incredible power." Through your very words, you have the ability to create, and you have the ability to destroy. This is so essential. There is no way to over emphasize it.
To return to the card then, the Magician as number one is related to the letter “Beth” or “B” in the Hebrew alphabet. The very first word of the Bible is "Bereshith."
“Bereshith” means in the beginning. It obviously begins with the letter "B," and for the Hebrews, the letter "B" has always had a very sacred, special meaning. Notice, the symbolism. This all may be chance, but the symbolism fits so well that it does indeed communicate a very profound truth. The first letter of the alphabet for the Hebrews is the Aleph, but it is not the first letter of the Bible. Aleph stands outside and before the moment of creation. The "B" is the beginning of manifest creation. That is the power of the Magician.
The Magician is holding in his right hand the Magician’s staff. Just as the priest carries the cross and the cross is the vehicle through which God's power is relayed, the Magician’s staff is a transformer. It is an antenna. It is used to pickup the power and energy from beyond. What power and energy is the Magician picking up? If the Magician is God and his creative energies, what does he need to transmit? I hope the answer is obvious. The Magician is transmitting the power of the Fool. God the creator is transmitting those positive aspects of his being into the creation. This is a key point. As God creates everything he says this is good, this is good, this is good, this is very good, everything in the universe which has been made by God is perfectly and absolutely good.
That is the power of the Magician's wand that he is holding. He is to transmit only the good. The left hand pointing down shows that the energy is going to move from the Fool through the Magician into the rest of the universe. This is a card of manifestation. This is a card of power; a card of creation and all the energies embodied therein. This is a card of activity. The symbol above the Magician’s head is the infinity symbol. It is one of the most obvious symbols in the entire deck. It stands for never ending, ever going, limitless, total power. We have no way of knowing how large this created universe is, and even if we were able to find its limits, we would have no way of conceptualizing how vast that truly is.
Light travels 186,000 miles per second. It takes light 8 minutes to travel from the earth to the Sun because it has to travel 93 million miles.
That means that the Sun could explode right now, and you wouldn't know it for another 8 minutes. To get to the nearest star to the Sun, Alpha-Centauri, light has to travel for 4 1/2 years. That's 27 trillion miles. In our little teeny, tiny cluster of stars called the Milky Way, there are well over a billion stars, and for light to travel from one end of this teeny, tiny, little bubble to the next would take well over 100 thousand years.
Scientists have counted well over a billion galaxies and have no way of knowing how many there really are. Infinity is vast beyond our comprehension--100's of trillions of stars and galaxies and power and light, the likes of which go far beyond our ability to imagine. The Bible tells us God holds all of that power and all of that universe in the palm of His hand. That is the Magician’s left hand--the hand pointing down toward the physical world.
Around the Magician’s waist, we see a snake, and the snake is swallowing its tail. This an ancient symbol, and there is no way that I could possibly convey to you the power and importance of this symbol, but I can give you a few examples.
During the last 20 years, mathematicians have discovered a mathematical structure called a fractal. Many books are being written now on fractals, and the science and mathematics of fractals are being applied to many different fields of human study. The sciences of biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, sociology, electronics, and computer engineering are all being affected by this mathematical idea. The essence of a fractal is very, very simple. You take any system--be it a equation, a structure, or a music piece--and place something into it. Something comes out. You take what comes out, and you place it back in. The simplest mathematical fractal I could give you would be x = x + 1. Start off with x as being any number, 0. x = x + 1, so you add one to x and you wind up with 1. You then take that result, and run the equation again. x now equals 1, x = x + 1, now x = 2. That simple little equation as we take its output and put it back into the input becomes a fractal, and that fractal generates every whole number there is. It generates an infinite number of numbers.
There are many books you can get to read up on this, and the field will yield immense results. The importance of fractals has not yet hit the religious community, but the universe is a fractal equation, based upon God's name! God's name, as I hope you remember from the Fool, is, “I will be what I will be.” That is a fractal equation. “I will be” is your “x”, “What” is your “=”, I will be is the resultant function.
X = X + 1……..+1……….+1…
I will be, what I will be, what I will be, what I will be….
We live our lives and do certain actions, make certain decisions. I will be what I will to be. As a result of those actions and decisions, we wind up being a certain type of person living in a certain type of environment. The person we are and the environment we live in then act back upon us, and we must again be who we will be. Everyday we have new decisions. Every moment is another creation and another manifestation of the fractal relationship, I will be what I will be.
My past decisions help in a large degree to decide what I will do today, and what I will do today, helps determine to a large degree what I will do tomorrow. As the Bible says, the sins of the Fathers are passed down to the children and then to the grandchildren and then to the great-grandchildren. We live in a fractal universe. This is the very essence of the Tarot principle that we talked about in the introduction regarding “as above-so below.” I will be what I will be. My body reflects what goes on in my heart. My heart reflects what goes on in my mind. My mind reflects what goes on in my body. The input for our bodies and our souls passes through our lives and becomes the input for the next cycles round of becoming. That is what is alluded to with the snake whose tail is being eaten by the snake.
Infinity is never ending and yet is completely enclosed within itself, because all things reside inside of God. The only reality is the Fool and God said, “Let there be light" and there was light. The Bible tells us that God is light and that in Him there is no darkness. I find it remarkable that at the first moment of creation God says, “Let there be light," and the Bible is so clear to always refer to God as light. We could go very far afield here, but I will indicate to you that if you study the books on physics regarding the nature of light, including Einstein's theory of relativity, you will find that every single mathematical equation that we have regarding light tells us something about the nature of God himself. I believe it is entirely possible that when the Bible tells us that God is light, it actually means what it says.
Back to the #1 card. Notice that the Magician’s face has deliberately been drawn young. This indicates that God is the same yesterday and today and forever--forever young, forever creating, forever new. The table in front of him has four elements on it. Hopefully at this point you can determine for yourself which elements those are. The coin, the cup, the sword and the staff all relate to one of the four primal elements: earth, water, air and fire. The coin is often called the pentacle, penta meaning five. When the pentacle is inverted so that the one point is down, this is a symbol of evil. When the two points are at the bottom and the one point is moving upward, this is a symbol of goodness. The pentacle represents the earth. The coin is very connected obviously to the idea of money. Love of money, as the Bible tell us, is the root of all evil. What is money? Again this is an issue that we could discuss at some great length, but suffice it to say that money is the potential to manifest the physical universe. If I have 25¢ in my pocket, I do not have as much ability to manifest this physical universe as you have if you have $100. In shortest form, money is the ability to manipulate the physical world and is therefore a symbol for all of matter.
The cup obviously holds fluid. It holds water and is a symbol for our heart, our emotions, our desires.
The two edged sword is capable of separating good from evil. The sword of the spirit which is able to discern truth from falsehood is a symbol of the mind. In all aspects of our intellect, this is the symbol of the air.
And finally, the staff is a symbol of life. Because the staff is a tree and is therefore unlike the coin or the cup or the sword, the staff is actually alive. This represents the fire, the spark of life that keeps our bodies warm and actually gives us the miracle of life itself. That is the symbol of fire.
This is the only card in the Major Arcana where you see these symbols. The symbolism is almost too obvious to need comment; however, for the record, the card symbolizes that within God, within the Magician, all levels of reality are created--the physical universe, the emotional desire universe, the realm of thought and mind (mathematics and science), consciousness itself and the highest mystery of all, life.
Jesus says, “Even when you have an abundance, your life does not consist in your possessions." Well what do you possess? Not only do you possess physical objects you've acquired, like a car or a couch or a book, but you also possess a body. Your soul is housed inside of your body, and your body is much more of a possession than anything else. You possess feelings. Those do not consist of your life. You possess thoughts, ideas, and memories. Those do not embody your life. Your life is beyond all of those. Your life is a spark of God. It cannot be created; it cannot be destroyed. It can only change form.
The Bible is clear that God knelt down, took his air, and exhaled it into Adam and Eve--the life giving air. This is an incredibly powerful symbol. The thing which beats in your heart, that which gives you life, is none other than God himself. I know that for some of you this must be an incredibly radical and almost threatening idea, but I told you at the beginning, this study is not for neophytes.
One last observation on the Magician. This is a card of maleness. The Fool is androgynous, neither male nor female, neither positive nor negative, but the entire sum totality of all there is. If you will, the Fool is a bunch of electrons floating in free space without any structure or flow. As we enter the realm of creation, a battery, in order to work, has to have a positive pole and a negative pole--a plus and a minus, a giver and a receiver, a male and a female. This is the nature of the universe. The Magician is God the Father, the giver, the sender. In this respect, the Magician’s staff is also the symbol of the phallus--the giver, the sender, the transmitter of the seed. But, there must also be a receiver.
Western culture is very comfortable with the idea of God the Father, but if you even say the phrase, “God the Mother”, people become very nervous. It starts to sound like a cult. It starts to sound like some weird eastern religion. But ask yourself simply and clearly, without any fear, if there is a God the Father, how can the universe exist without God the Mother. And, if there is a God the Mother, where is She, who is She, what is She like? Why don't we talk about Her?
The power of the Fool, the free flowing electrons, enter the realm of action. In order to act, the electrons must leave some pole and enter another. There must be a flowing direction. If you lay the cards out on a table in front of you, put the Fool at the top. On the left hand side below the Fool, put the Magician. On the right hand side below the Fool, put the High Priestess card #2. The oneness of the Fool becomes separated into the two poles of the Magician and the High Priestess, i.e., God the Father and God the Mother, infinite maleness and infinite femaleness. We hear a lot of talk about women's liberation, and we are so far beyond the essence of social order here, that it’s almost laughable. Suffice it to say that pure maleness and pure femaleness are each absolutely essential and are completely wholly 100% equal.
