Magical thinking

"Has the world ever been changed by anything
save by thought and its magic vehicle the Word?"
~ Thomas Mann

 

 

 

 

The Fool is numbered 0; he is nothing, a blank slate, a tabula rasa, ignorant even of his own ignorance. The Magician, second of the Major Arcana, and numbered 1, is the Fool within the Abyss, knowing himself and his ignorance and the transformative power of that ignorance. The Magician is the Fool enabled, energized, created; he is the Trickster God made manifest.

 

Where the Fool represents the seeker after wisdom, the Magician represents the awareness of things unseen. He is not the apotheosis of wisdom - that comes later - but he is on the path, because he is no longer seeking. What we are seeking, we cannot have found, or else we would not be seeking it. The Magician understands that it is more efficient to stop looking and instead focus on seeing. In Rider-Waite, the Magician is crowned with infinity, and girdled with Ourobouros: all things begin and end in this moment of awareness, this consciousness, this satori. The staff of the Fool has transformed into the wand of the Magician; the wand is raised to the heavens, while his other hand points to the earth.

 

The Magician is the bridge between the subjectively real and the transcendentally surreal; he is the Gateless Gate. He is the potential in Man, the aptitude, the capacity. Self-aware, self-possessed, self-sufficient, he is the catalyst: unchanging himself, he changes all. This is the mystery beyond reason. This is the maker and unmaker of mountains and rivers. This is the beguiler of the senses, the deceiver of the mind, the keyholder to the doors of perception. Should we trust him? That doubt is the manifestation of the Unknown; fear of the Abyss keeps us from him, but acceptance of the Abyss - Foolishness - encourages us to take the leap of faith. We take nothing in there with us; we are only ourselves, but fortunately ourselves are more than our selves, since we are parasimplices. The Magician knows this, knows us, intimately; the Magician is us, any of us, when we accept all of what we are - fearlessly, foolishly, fully.

 

The Magician represents, above all, the mystical process by which the unknowable objective is transcended to become subjectively real. This most crucial mystery is the beginning of all magic: it is the creatio ex nihilo, the divine spark without which the world remains meaningless and void.