The Magician archetype corresponds with the Planet Mercury and deities like Thoth, Hermes and Odin. He’s all about communication but can be a bit of a trickster. Spiritually, he can act as a medium or psychopomp since he can travel across different realms, including the Underworld where the dead reside. Today, we are going to get to know the Magician in-depth but before we dive in, let’s take a look at some of the meanings commonly associated with him.
Positive Tarot Card Meanings for The Magician
- Creative Power: The Magician represents the ability to manifest your creative ideas and turn them into reality. It signifies the power to bring your dreams to life through your unique skills and talents.
- Communication and Expression: The Magician emphasises effective communication and expression. It encourages you to use your words wisely and skillfully to convey your thoughts, ideas, and intentions.
- Self-Confidence: The Magician embodies self-confidence and self-assurance. It reminds you to believe in yourself and your abilities, knowing that you have the power to achieve your goals and overcome any challenges.
- Resourcefulness and Adaptability: The Magician signifies resourcefulness and adaptability. It encourages you to think outside the box, explore different options, and use the resources available to you to find creative solutions.
Negative Tarot Card Meanings for The Magician
- Manipulation and Trickery: The Magician can sometimes indicate manipulation and trickery. It warns against using your communication skills and charisma to deceive or manipulate others for personal gain.
- Lack of Focus: The Magician reversed suggests a lack of focus and scattered energy. It may imply difficulty in concentrating or staying committed to a specific task or goal.
- Unreliable Intentions: The Magician reversed or ill-dignified can signify unreliable intentions or hidden agendas. It warns against being deceptive or engaging in dishonest behaviour that could harm others or create negative consequences.
- Misuse of Power: The ill-dignified Magician warns against the misuse of power and authority. It cautions against using your skills or influence in a negative or harmful way, emphasising the importance of ethical behaviour and responsible actions.
Getting to Know The Magician
The Magician teaches us that we can use our words in positive ways. Our words have the power to create balance and harmony in our bodies as well as in the world around us. Remember that your words are magical. Always speak about yourself and what you do in positive terms.
The Trickster Aspect
Researching The Magician I learned a wonderful new word: prestidigitator from the French prestidigitateur – conjurer. This is one of the keywords used by Alejandro Jodorowsky to describe the Magician in his book The Way of Tarot.
Prestidigitation (from the Free Dictionary)
- Performance of or skill in performing magic or conjuring tricks with the hands; sleight of hand.
- A show of skill or deceitful cleverness.
The Magician archetype contains the full spectrum of meaning – from skillfulness to sleight of hand. He is indeed the ultimate prestidigitator. Corresponding to the planet Mercury, his cunning is cleverly expressed in speech and writing.
Magic and Co-creation
The Magician’s spiritual gift is the ability to co-create. Emotionally, he grants us adaptability. Agility is the physical gift he bestows on us and the ability to detach is his intellectual endowment.
On the soul level, he embodies the animus archetype. Without a full integration of this masculine energy in conscious awareness, people suffer from a lack of expression of their true will. To fully integrate something in conscious awareness means to allow for what has been suppressed to surface and then to cut away any destructive thought patterns.
Doing this is actually an expression of the Magician who is a psychopomp which means he can bring messages from the realm of the unconscious mind into the light of consciousness. This is what makes Mercury/The Magician the Divine Messenger.
Alignment with Higher Will
The highest expression of the Magician is that of the ego personality aligned with Source, so that little will and Higher Will are aligned. This is the Magician in service to humanity — the full expression of the Divine Messenger. But first, he has to become aware of himself and his place in the bigger picture. This can be done through the Mercurial pursuit of learning and studying a multitude of topics.
Observing himself and his place in the greater scheme of things, the Magician allows for individual expression and personality even after aligning with Higher Will. There is no mortification of the personality self because there is an innate understanding of the need for a unique expression. Existence would be pointless without it. And the point is 1, the number of the Magician.
The Shadow Magician
When the Magician serves the ego, we have a destructive power at hand. The effort is focused on achieving selfish goals – at any cost. Empathy is non-existent. People and resources are used and abused. The personality supersedes the soul. This is the Black Magician. His sympathies often change in accordance with who can offer him the best deal. Would he lie to you? You betcha!
When the Magician is unaware or repressed, physical symptoms may occur. Psychologically, shyness, conformity, inability to act or focus and lack of personality/creativity are all symptoms of a weak Magician archetype. There is a strong need to heal the inability to express one’s will. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for this. It is your unique expression that is being healed, remember? Methods for healing could include but are not limited to counselling, soul retrieval, self-help (but beware of your ability to trick your own mind!), flower remedies and crystal therapy.
Correspondences
Archangelic Correspondence: Raphael, the Healer Magician
Element: Air
Planet: Mercury
Chakra: Throat, Solar plexus
Colour: Azure blue, yellow, green
Crystal: Aquamarine, citrine, aventurine
Body: Shoulders, arms, hands, nails, lungs, bronchial tract, nervous system, brain, tongue, thyroid, bowels, spleen, intestines
Exercise: Gymnastics, aerobics, running, stretching
Stance: “As above, so below” (see the image of The Magician below!)
Magickal Tool: Wand
Associated Major Arcana Cards (through numerology): The Wheel of Fortune, The Sun
Associated Minor Arcana Cards: All cards associated with the planet Mercury (these are the minors to use in The Healing Key Tarot Spread).
- 8 of Wands (Mercury in Sagittarius). Healing through slowing down.
- 3 of Cups (Mercury in Cancer) Healing through ensuring that the heart and mind are aligned.
- 6 of Swords (Mercury in Aquarius) Healing through detachment and moving on.
- 5 of Pentacles (Mercury in Taurus) Healing through taking action and possibly seeking help, change of diet.
- 10 of Pentacles (Mercury in Virgo) Healing through focusing on how to provide a firm foundation for future generations.
The Magician Through The Elements
Corresponding to the Element of Air, The Magician archetype energies flow more freely through Air and Fire. His quick wit really shines here. Too much Air might cause anxiety and too much Fire might cause delusions of grandeur.
A Water-logged Magician might become manipulative and full of deceit. He might seek power over others. On the other hand, as seen in the 3 of Cups, a harmonious alignment in Water might cause joyful communication and communion with others.
An Earth-bound Magician might suffer from nagging worries about health and finances. Harmonious alignment in Earth, as seen in the 10 of Pentacles, sees him taking action and providing an abundance for others as well as himself. Here he concerns himself with the legacy of his unique self-expression.
Remedies to increase the Magician energy in your life:
- You can make a tarot essence to increase The Magician energy, using the Magician card of your choice, and a clear quartz crystal, a citrine or an aquamarine. The citrine is especially good if the Magician energy is suppressed, as it strengthens your solar plexus chakra (will centre). Aquamarine is one of the best crystals to aid communication and it also helps you detach. Use aventurine for general healing.
- Gentle stretching increases the agility of both body and mind.
- Place the Magician card directly on your throat or solar plexus to strengthen these chakras.
- Wear blue to aid communication if you have an important meeting.
- Light a yellow candle while studying for intellectual stimulation. Wearing yellow can be overpowering – yellow on the body works better as an accessory.
- Create a tarot essence of one of the associated Major Arcana cards to transmute repressed energy: The Sun for confidence to speak your truth and The Wheel of Fortune to have the courage to set creative plans in motion.
- Create a tarot essence of one of the Aces. The Ace of Wands brings in vitality and creativity, and the Ace of Cups conjures a new relationship or greater compassion for self and others. The Ace of Swords gifts you with brilliant ideas and problem-solving abilities. The Ace of Pentacles provides physical health or potential for abundance through work. The Magician is an initiator and the Aces are numerologically linked to him, as are all new beginnings.
Affirmation: “I express my true self and my true will.”
Angelic Tarot Prayer to Archangel Raphael
Dear Archangel Raphael, be with me now to help me connect fully with the will of my soul and to express my true self with clarity, kindness and diplomacy. Heal any and all communication on all levels of my being and in the world around me. And so it is!
Grounding/Balancing/Banishing
- Going for a run or other vigorous aerobic exercise grounds the energy and quietens the chatter of the ‘monkey brain.’
- Balance an overabundance of Air by eating home-cooked, nutritious food at least twice a day. An extremely mercurial person sometimes even forgets to eat at all!
- Standing in front of the mirror and saying ‘me, me, me!’ until you crack yourself up transmutes any delusions of grandeur.
- Banish the energy of negative words directed at you by burning a copy of The Magician. You can print an image out–no need to destroy a deck. Also, don’t use the deck you dedicated for healing work to do this. Do read up on psychic protection.
Love and Relationships
In a love reading for a single woman, The Magician often represents her soul mate or ideal partner. If she has just started dating and her new love interest is represented by The Magician, there is great promise that this might be ‘The One.’
As signifying the quality of a relationship, The Magician is symbolic of a significant mental connection and sparkling communication. This is the card you want to show up in a reading if you ask specifically about intellectual compatibility as the corresponding planet for The Magician is Mercury, the planet of communication.
If you are in a relationship and this card comes up as relationship advice, it usually means one of two things: A) It’s a good idea to spend some time developing your own skills and interests or B) You could benefit from relationship counselling to improve your communication skills.
Are they a trickster?
If you are in a relationship and this card shows up reversed or ill-dignified, it could mean that your partner is less than truthful with you. The Magician is known as ‘the trickster’ and one of the archetypes linked with him is Loke, the Norse God of Mischief.
Better relating
However, at its best, the presence of the Mercurial Magician in a relationship could mean the start of either a new and wonderful relationship or starting over again, with a new and better way of relating/communicating.
The best chat-up lines
On an intimate level, talking dirty and/or giving each other verbal instructions could be fun to try suggests The Magician. Also, he has the best chat-up lines!
Take me to the Angelic Tarot Card Meanings Index
