Death Becomes Her is a weekly newsletter exploring Tarot and its relationship to creativity. You can read more about why I started it here, but the cheat notes are that I believe unleashing creativity starts with getting up close and personal with ourselves. As a student of Tarot, I have unlocked multiple outlets for creative expression that otherwise might have remained out of my reach.
For me, reading the Tarot begins with accepting there are realms of knowledge that exist outside of our human understanding - just as there are realms from which we can draw creative inspiration and beauty. I’ll be exploring these ideas each week by a) focusing on a close up study of a chosen card as well as an overview of the numbers, sequentially moving through the Majors and Minors; b) providing Tarot prompts for creative work; c) sharing a spread for you to add to your repertoire, and; d) a dedicated weekly chat thread for everyone to discuss, share and learn together.
Let’s shuffle!
“I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sensed it enough to get a hold of it and make it do things for us” ― Frances Hodgson Burnett
If The Fool is the avatar we drop into the Major Arcana with, then The Magician is where we glean our first insight into potential. What could we be capable of if we channel the energy of the unseen into the realm of the material? What could we create if we just had a little faith?
In the Smith Rider Waite deck depiction of The Magician (1), we see a young, androgynous figure standing in an undefined location. Their right arm (which is holding a double ended wand, oo er vicar!) is pointed to the sky (above) and their left arm (and finger) is pointed to the ground (below). Before them (but only half entering the card) stands a wooden table on which there is placed one of each of the four elements depicted in the Minor Arcana: a cup, a pentacle, a sword and a wand.
The top and bottom of the card are adorned by wild rose bushes and hanging vines, indicating the contrast between human made material things (tables, cups, swords, wands, coins etc) and the ranginess of nature. A lemniscate (better known as an infinity symbol) floats above The Magician’s head. This is one of only four cards across the whole deck in which this appears, the others being Strength (8), The World (21) and the Two of Pentacles. We’ll get into the relevance of that shortly, but for now I just want to focus on The Magician.
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On a simplistic level, The Magician isn’t all that hard to understand. Its appearance essentially reminds us that we have the means and tools with which to create reality, even if we can’t always see what that process looks like. But the key words here are “means” and “tools”. If we sit around waiting for magic to happen to us, we’ll never get anywhere. The items spread across The Magician’s table have the power to create change and vibrancy, but without someone to channel energy through them they’re just inanimate objects. Basically, The Magician is here to tell us that we can be the conduit that magic works through - but we have to be the alchemists in charge of mixing the elements.
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