General Meaning

Traditionally, The Magician is one who can demonstrate hands-on magic — as in healing, transformative rituals, alchemical transmutations, charging of talismans, and the like. A modern Magician is any person who completes the circuit between heaven and Earth; one who seeks to bring forth the divine gold within her or himself.

At the birth of Tarot, even a gifted healer who was not an ordained clergyman was considered to be in league with The Devil! For obvious reasons, the line between fooling the eye with sleight of hand and charging the world with magical will, was not clearly differentiated in the early Tarot cards.

Waite’s image of The Magician as the solitary ritualist communing with the spirits of the elements — with its formal arrangement of symbols — is a token of the freedom we have in modern times to declare our spiritual politics without fear of reprisal. The older cards were never so explicit about what The Magician was doing. It’s best to keep your imagination open with this card. Visualize yourself manifesting something unique, guided by evolutionary forces that emerge spontaneously from within your soul.

In the Advice Position

Trust your inspiration. You are smarter than you think.

The card in the Advice position suggests a course of action which will harmonize what you want with what is currently possible.

Have faith in your innate creativity. The Magician advises you give your questioning nature and free-associating mind plenty of room to explore the subject at hand. Behave just as if you were an open-minded and curious scientist. Through this process, you may bring freshness and clarity into the situation that is both stimulating and catalytic.

You do not have to understand it all intellectually. Besides, intuition is your ace in the hole. Respond in a spontaneous manner to what is right in front of you. There is no reason to hold yourself back. Your natural urges are exactly what is needed, and, your ingenuous timing and elegant style will help smooth over any awkwardness.