Intro: My Tarot Journey ~

I started using the Tarot deck purely out of curiosity; as a writer, I am always looking for creative ways of manifesting stories, characters, situations, dialectical philosophical warfares…I originally started years before with an “oracle” deck, specifically the Archetype deck from Wild Unknown by Kim Krans. Fantastic deck, highly recommend it as a great resource for understanding Hero’s Journey & Jungian archetypal forces at a granular yet digestible level.

As a creator, especially as a novelist, it is good to know what kinds of archetypes you shall be dealing in through your stories. We are all participating in the streams of creation, and they go far beyond us. Oracle decks and the Tarot deck can really help a creator ground their work into cognizable shapes and sizes, a keen grandiose delight for those whose imaginative mania may lead them into burnout or endless world-building disease. The Tarot provides a stabilizing force in your creative practice, much like the cinema can, by saying: Yes, these things have been done before. So go forth without fear and full of more imaginings along these lines. Or something like that.

More specifically, these decks aid foremost with outlining character energies & story arcs; the former must have conviction, a real ideal at heart & thus an inherent anti-thesis too, and the latter must have rhythm and reason to them for the story to be satisfactory by the end. As a bonus to all this, yes, Tarot can absolutely serve as an ascendent force launching one into the realm of True Divination, i.e. fortune telling. Every time you draw the cards up, you call on the forces of supernal manifestation with yourself as the conduit. Ultimately, these cards are simply a useful way of organizing your mind and mana for coming action & creation.

Godspeed,
Dylan

P.S. We are doing a double-dip of cards for April 1st (so we can match numbers to days from hereon). The Fool & The Magician are quite the pair, polarized by experience and yet united in their sublime creative instincts. Look forward to meeting Tarot Trump #2 The High Priestess on April 2nd.

1. The Magician 🔮

The Magician stands as the channel between heaven and earth, one hand pointing skyward, the other grounding divine will into matter. He is skill, diplomacy, address, sickness, pain, loss, disaster, self-confidence, will. Before him lie the four elemental tools: the Wand (Fire, will and creative force), the Cup (Water, emotion and intuition), the Sword (Air, intellect and discernment), and the Pentacle (Earth, material manifestation). In reversal, The Magician acts as Physician or Magus, and he may suffer from mental illness, disgrace, disquiet.

UPRIGHT: Skill, Diplomacy, Self-confidence, Will

REVERSED: Disgrace, Disquiet, Mental illness, Cunning

The Magician is the ultimate creator & destroyer. He is alchemist and ensorceler, summoner and speaker; he stands with Hermes and Thoth and you know he is channeling Source. The Magi rep skill & diplomacy, confidence & will, but also sickness, pain, loss, disaster. Magus is the {Dis}Integrated Self {un}consciously wielding the forces of nature, for better or {worse}, depending on his tao. The Wizard is someone who must undergo his own Hero’s Journey, with talents and triumphs and pits and falls too. (Remember: Not every magick-user understands all his spells, or knows who exactly is listening inside of his sanctum, or what side of the line he or his daemon stands on.) The Sorcerer is keenly ambitious, competitive, probably a show-off. The Mage is a card of doubtless magnificent power and the deck, or universe, would not exist without them. The Shaman is someone who wields each of the elements within the community, reads the signs and makes the potions, altogether crafting mystic translations of universal truth by telling stories as much as levying proclamations. Know this above all: Beware a Jedi turned; Sith relinquish soul to passion and deal in absolutes, and their prowess with the Force, or mana, or Source energy, is immense enough to consume a galaxy.

On the journey, the hero meets his mentor, who has walked the path, knows the spells, and can show the way forth. Or he realizes he needs to become something of a Magi himself…

Bottom Line: When you pull the Magician, new worlds are ready to be crafted or sundered.

Tree of Life Path: Kether to Binah -- the direct divine woven into transpersonal mystic understanding; the Magi always fashion themselves by the model of their Creator.

A.E. Waite quote: “[The Magician] signifies the divine motive in man, reflecting God, the will in the liberation of its union with that which is above.”

Previous: #0. The Fool

Next: #2. The High Priestess