Tarot-The Magician
A powerful looking young man stands behind a table. The raw nature of the universe lays out on the table before him and the very fabric of reality seems to bend around him. I am talking of course about card number 1 of the tarot deck, The Magician.
The Magician wasn’t always this way however. In earlier tarot decks The Magician was a sleight of hand artist, a stage magic practitioner, or even a juggler. It wasn’t until the more esoteric tarot decks were created that he became a magus or wizard. A fine example of this is the card from the Rider-Waite tarot deck which was created by Arthur Edward Waite and illustrated by Pamela Coleman Smith in the early twentieth century. This deck is still one of the most popular today, and most other modern tarot decks borrow liberally from its rich symbolism.
Primary symbols on the modern magician card include representations of the elements, a lemniscate halo above his head, and a uroboros belt. The elements are represented by the elemental tools laid out across the table. They match with the symbolism of the magic tools used in the Hermetic Order Of The Golden Dawn, which A.E. Waite and Pamela Coleman Smith were both members of. Cups represent the water element, rods the fire element, swords the air element, and pentacles(also known as coins or discs) the earth element. Understanding these elemental attributions to these symbols is important for understanding the meaning of tarot cards.
The lemniscate, also known as an infinity symbol, halo above his head illustrates The Magician’s power over the infinite energy of the universe. In some decks an additional lemniscate is shown near The Magician’s throat. This shows the infinite magical power of the spoken word.
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