The Magician
by Christy Lein

Who are you?

The Magician is the name of one of the 22 trump cards, or major arcana, in a Tarot deck. This delightful character, part enchanter part con-man, has been depicted as the gentleman standing at a table. A man wearing a hat with the double nimbus in the form of the eternal number eight. In his left hand he holds a rod pointed toward the heavens, while his other points downwards toward the earth.

Metaphorically he exists somewhere between heaven and earth, representing many attributes; originality and free will, trickery and guile, creativity and imagination, sleight of hand and deception. The Magician bears the number 1. He is mystery and illusion, and he is used by Jane Jensen to represent Gabriel Knight.

Perhaps when you hear the term "Tarot Deck" you picture a gypsy in long colorful flowing skirts, with large gold hoop earrings. A beautiful creature waiting to tell your fortune with her cards? Then read this introduction to the tarot, and check out the in-depth article at the Realm of Shadows. At the Realm of Shadows you will find out much more about the Tarot and how it comes into play in GK2:The Beast Within.

From where do you come?

The oldest deck still in existence is the Visconti-Sforza deck where the magician (or more correctly the Juggler) sits at a small table. He has a very real look to him, resembling a portrait. Upon this table are a knife, two coins or loaves of bread, a cup and a large white dish. His right hand is cupped over the ornate covered dish, which is speckled with gray. In his left hand he holds a rod.

The Magician wears a richly colored red robe. His hat, the edge of his coat and his cuffs are trimmed with white ermine, and looks like ocelot spots black on white. His feet are covered with loose-fitting slippers. The floor seems to be an expanse of green grass broken by an occasional leaf pattern. The symbols of all four suits are depicted in this card: the knife or sword represents swords; the rod or baton, staves; the cups, cups; and the small white loaves, coins.

Along with the 22 cards of the Major arcana, there are the 56 additional cards in the Tarot deck called the minor arcana. The minors are divided into four groups of fourteen cards each- Ace to ten, King, Queen, Knight, and Page. Each group of 14 is decorated with a specific suit: coins or pentacles, rods or staffs, knives or swords, and cups. If this sounds familiar it should. The minor arcana are is the source of current playing cards. The Jack is a hybrid of the Page and the Knight, leaving 52 cards, and the suits may vary, but all in all very similar. The Magician is the only trump, or major arcana which has one of each of the four suits in the picture.

The Visconti-Sforzas deck did not have numbers or names for each major arcana. The numbers, the suits, and the names attributed to the images, sort of standardized themselves. Though one set of "rules" were never followed by all decks, a general pattern - now known as the Tarot of Marseilles - did evolve, beginning in the late fifteenth century.

The Tarot of Marseilles has a less real look to the imagery. The images are of much brighter colors, with a more ‘cartoony’ look to them. The hat’s brim became more of a figure eight, in his left hand is a rod. The magician still faces the same way, but the table is on the other side and he is standing not sitting. Again there are green leaves under his feet, and the table has several items upon it: knives, cups, and coins.

And how did you get here to us today?

The tarot cards, their illustrations and interpretations, underwent three major transitions from these original cards to what you see today. The first from the Court de Gebelin to Papus, producing the whole idea of an "esoteric" Tarot and putting into place the major elements of traditional Tarot interpretation.

Antoine Court de Gebelin, an avid student of mythology, archaeology, and linguistics, can be called the *father* of the esoteric Tarot. From the moment he first saw a deck, he concluded that it was in fact the Egyptian book of Thoth, saved from the ruins of burning Egyptian temples thousands of years ago.

Thoth was the scribe to the other gods, and was himself the Egyptian god of wisdom, occult arts, and sciences. He was also given a name by the Greeks which means three times master, or the thrice great Hermes, and refers to his supposed authorship of works on alchemy, astrology, and magic.

Eliphas Levi, credited with creating the basic structure of modern ritual magic, was perhaps the most influential explicator of the esoteric Tarot. His linking of the Tarot and Kabbalah shaped the mainstream of Tarot interpretation for a century.

Dr. Gerard Encausse, a follower of Levi better known as "Papus", elaborated and refined these esoteric ideas which had already become the mainstream of the Tarot tradition. There ideas were organized around the Hebrew alphabet, the Kabbalah, and numerology. The Hebrew alphabet contains 22 letters, and there are 22 paths connecting the ten serhiroth in the tree of Life of the Kabbalah

The second transition, began with the formation of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn was unique in that it drew in serious scholars, poets and artists along with the would-be magicians. The order also allowed women, a practice unheard of till it formation. This order counted among it’s members Alister Crowley, Arthur Waite, and William Buckly Yeats. At the very center of the societies secrets was the Tarot deck and individual members had to copy his or her own deck from a master. Since there were no instructions on how to do this, it resulted in many different personalized decks.

Arthur Raider Waite designed the most popular of all modern Tarot packs, and explained his deck in the book: A Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Waite had begun his work with the tarot in the late 19th century when he translated the works of Papus and Levi into English.

Waite also wrote books on Roscrucianism and alchemy that are considered classics. Waite’s specific contribution to the interpretations of the tarot was his recognition of the importance of Alchemy, in addition to the Kabballa, as a means of understanding the tarot. Both the Rosicrucian tradition and the Golden Dawn movement made use of the symbolism of alchemy that revolves around the nature of the elements and the fusion of the male and female polarities.

He describes his magician in A Pictorial Key to the Tarot as:

"A youthful figure in the robe of a magician, having the countenance and shining eyes. Above his head is the mysterious sign on the Holy Spirit, the sign of life, like an endless cord, forming the figure 6 in a horizontal position. About his waist is a serpent-cincture, the serpent appearing to devour its own tail. This is familiar to most as a conventional symbol of eternity, but here it indicates more especially the eternity of attainment in the spirit. In the Magician’s right hand is a wand raised towards heaven, while the left hand is pointing to the earth. This dual sing is known in very high grades of the Instituted Mysteries; it shows the descent of grace, virtue and light, drawn from things about and derived to things below. The suggestion throughout is therefore the possession and communication of the Powers and Gifts of the Spirit. On the table in front of the Magician are the symbols of the four Tarot suits, signifying the elements of natural life, which lie like counters before the adept, and he adapts them as he wills. Beneath are roses and lilies, the flos campi and lilium convalluim, changed into garden flowers, to show the culture of aspiration."

"This card signifies the divine motive in man, reflecting God, the will in the liberation of its union with that which is above. It is also the unity of individual being on all planes, and in a very high sense it is thought, in the fixation thereof. With further reference to what I have called the sign of life and its connection with the number 8, it may be remembered that Christian Gnosticism speaks of rebirth in Christ as a change "unto the Ogdoad." The mystic number is termed Jerusalem above, the land flowing with Milk and Honey, the Holy Spirit and the Land of the Lord. According to Martinism, 8 is the number of Christ."

Alister Crowley was referred to by British tabloids as "the wickedest man in the world." He created the Thoth Tarot and the book of Thoth with the deck’s use and interpretations. He is better remembered for his use of sex and drugs in magical pursuits than in any contributions to magical theory.

His magician, like his whole deck, is haunting, swirling, colored in beautifully eerie shades, filled with barely veiled sexuality. The deck has an atmosphere of strangeness, which makes it seem as if each card were a peephole into another world.

A change of scenery and a fresh influx of colorful characters marked the third transition of the Tarot. The new American venue offered an exuberant and much more public setting for Tarot research. No more hidden societies and disguised knowledge were necessary. The American influence on Tarot can be seen now in the diversity, the eclecticism, and the individualism of contemporary Tarot interpretations- as well as the increasing commercialization of the Tarot.

In 1978, Stuart Kaplan, owner of U. S. Games Systems, Inc., published his formidable Encyclopedia of Tarot, containing not only the first thorough survey of Tarot history, but also illustrations of over 3,200 different cards, from 250 Tarot and tarock decks. Kaplan’s fascination with Tarot has made him the foremost collector and publisher of Tarot cards, and he has since published two more volumes of the Encyclopedia, each larger than the last.

And so my dear Magician how do you look today?

New Tarot designs began to appear in the 1970s, and they have continued to arrive at an every-acceleration pace. The Tarot writers of today have created diverse and fascination new approaches to the cards, incorporating mythology, mysticism, psychotherapy, imaging work, and self-analysis.

Check out Lynne Vettel’s web page, The Realm of Shadows, for more on the Tarot. There are also examples of the Visconti-Sforzas, the Marseilles, the Crowley, and the Raider-Waite Magicians along with 50+ others. Find out there how the Tarot specifically connects to Gabriel Knight, who is according to Mrs. Smith, "The Magician."

The End

The article can be found at: http://www.oocities.org/TimesSquare/Realm/4207/gk2tarot_reading.html

60 examples of different Magicians: http://www.oocities.org/TimesSquare/Realm/4207/gk2tarot_examples.html