Hermes and Circe
By J. A. Jones
Though The Magician is numbered one in the Major Arcana, it is not the first card. The Tarot is non-linear in equal parts to it being linear; therefore, there is no first card. The Major Arcana can be read in one direction, or backward in the other. The Magician may come at the beginning or the end of the deck, depending on where you are standing — depending on your singular perspective.
The Major Arcana is like a wheel — a wheel of fortune. And perhaps this is why people referred to the early Tarot as a "game of fortune." Over time, it's etymology morphed into "fortune-telling game," which Tarot is not. Rather, the fact that the wheel can spin this way or that is what is meant by fortune in this sense — a game of roulette.
Interestingly, roulette was invented by Blaise Pascal, (accidentally, while trying to invent the perpetual motion machine), over 200 years after the earliest renaissance Tarot cards were created. The earlier cards showed an alchemically influenced contraption with Inquisition vibes. I prefer Colman's Belle Epoque interpretation — it is kinder on the eyes.
I liken the Magician to Hermes, who was the emissary and messenger of the gods. He moves freely between the worlds of the mortal and divine, and he is the god of knowledge. Hermes interweaves with the Egyptian god, Thoth, and together they are a core to all Hermetic mystery traditions.
The Magician's stance says, "As above, so below." In his right hand, he holds a magical wand, not unlike the caduceus Hermes holds. The snakes that usually wrap around the caduceus instead here form a simple belt around the magician's waist. His kundalini energy is misplaced, perhaps? The infinity symbol serves as either a thought bubble or a mystical halo above his head. Is it something to ponder or something to inhabit?
On his table are The Magician’s alchemical tools. The four directions, the four elements, the four symbols — coins (pentacles), cups, swords, and wands. The Magician is the only card where all four symbols are present together. The cup is dominant, because the artist, Pamela Colman Smith, used intuition as her creative guide.
The cards progress through a series of archetypes towards Strength, which I see as foundational aspects of different types of knowing. They hold energies that come from within, but also from the external world. With the alchemical tools The Magician presents, those energies can be forged, mediated, and integrated along the journey.
And then there is Strength, who I see as Circe (or any of the many lion taming goddesses). In the Rider-Waite deck, she appears as number 8. In the Tarot de Marseilles and older decks, she appears at number 11. Either way, she is the counterpoint to The Magician. I believe A.E. Waite and Pamela Colman could not resist the symmetry of the 1 to 8 connection and the infinity symbol both cards share.
Strength tames her lion. Or does the lion give her strength? She represents the other types of alchemical processes that forge the soul. Whereas The Magician relies on the tools of alchemy through an intellectual sense, Strength uses the elements from an intuitive sense. He is Ether, and she is Earth. He is Shiva, and she is Shakti.
When the two connect — it is magic.
“For after all, what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.”
— Blaise Pascal, Pensées No. 72
