In particular, Waite interprets the Magician through a Gnostic lens, linking the card's connection with the number eight (which the infinity symbol is visually related to) and the Gnostic concept of the Ogdoad, spiritual rebirth into a hidden eighth celestial realm.

The Thoth deck, first released as part of Aleister Crowley's The Book of Thoth in 1944, [71] represent a somewhat different evolution of the original Golden Dawn designs. A traditional tarot deck consists of 78 cards, which can be split into two groups, the Major Arcana and Minor Arcana. Magi’s palms stating suspiciously that he had written a book on fortune-telling with playing cards and he was testing him.Rather than flowers, the Magician of the Marseilles deck is depicted with a small plant between his feet. References to the tarot as a social plague or indeed as exempt from the bans that affected other games, continue throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, but there are no indications that the cards were used for anything but games. Its images were drawn by artist Pamela Colman Smith, to the instructions of Christian mystic and occultist Arthur Edward Waite and published in 1911.

only the figures are somewhat different, and besides, there are twenty-one [additional] cards upon which are symbols, or pictures of symbolical situations.Both cards can be used in every sequence, but as the Fool cannot be captured while the Magician is vulnerable to capture, the player holding the Magician would want to use it only judiciously. The meanings [96] and many of the illustrations [97] showed the influence of astrology as well as Qabalistic principles. In fact, historians have described western views of the Tarot pack as "the subject of the most successful propaganda campaign ever launched. The Magician is depicted with one hand pointing upwards towards the sky and the other pointing down to the earth, interpreted widely as an " as above, so below" reference to the spiritual and physical realms. To enable personalized advertising (like interest-based ads), we may share your data with our marketing and advertising partners using cookies and other technologies.

Although the Rider–Waite Tarot deck is the most often used in occult contexts, other decks such as the Tarot of Marseilles usually used for game-playing have also been read through a symbolic lens. The Magician as an object of occult study is interpreted as symbolic of power, potential, and the unification of the physical and spiritual worlds. These are described by Waite as flos campi and lilium convallium, in an apparent allusion to the Biblical Song of Solomon.

I find that my Tarot cards work better for me on every day general readings with no question in mind. Tarot historian Michael Dummett similarly critiqued occultist uses throughout his various works, remarking that "the history of the esoteric use of Tarot cards is an oscillation between the two poles of vulgar fortune telling and high magic; though the fence between them may have collapsed in places, the story cannot be understood if we fail to discern the difference between the regions it demarcates. The democratization of digital publishing in the 2000s and 2010s led to a new explosion of tarot decks as artists became increasingly able to self-publish their own, with the contemporaneous empowerment of feminist, LGBTQ+ and other marginalized communities providing a ready market for such work. No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, and no underlining/highlighting of text or writing in the margins.

In the Persona games, The Magician is represented by three characters: Makoto Yuki's classmate Kenji Tomochika in Persona 3, Yu Narukami's classmate Yosuke Hanamura in Persona 4 and Ren Amamiya's cat companion Morgana in Persona 5. The belief in the divinatory meaning of the cards is closely associated with a belief in their occult properties, a commonly held belief in early modern Europe propagated by prominent Protestant Christian clerics and Freemasons. The Magician (I), also known as The Magus or The Juggler, is the first trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional tarot decks. The first was Antoine Court de Gébelin, a French clergyman, who wrote that after seeing a group of women playing cards he had the idea that tarot was not merely a game of cards but was in fact of ancient Egyptian origin, of mystical Qabalistic import, and of deep divine significance. The appearance of this card here may indicate that this decision has larger ramifications than John yet realizes.On the table before him are a wand, a pentacle, a sword, and a cup, representing the four suits of the Minor Arcana. Alejandro Jodorowsky's reading of the Magician as Le Bateleur draws attention to individual details of the Marseilles card, such as the fingers, table, and depiction of the plants, in addition to the elements shared between the Rider–Waite and Marseilles decks. I've read a lot of books over my years as a card reader and highly recommend this book as one that you definitely need for your collection.