Letter: Aleph = Air (between Heaven and Earth)
Path: Heart crossbar, Chesed to Gevurah
Quality: Breath, chest, respiration. Tongue of Balance
The Magus represents the imagination, site of one’s genius and uniqueness. This is the communicating intelligence, Gichtel’s “lifespirit,” which employs planetary cycles to knit our random experiences into a coherent narrative of the self.
Around him shimmers the energetic architecture of the higher planes towards which he is constantly striving. In the Sophianic Mysteries this is the scribe or aspirant to initiation who is coming awake to his true nature and seeks a path of return. He could also be viewed as the Christos, male half of the Christ/Sophia pair, who are each sent to redeem the world at different stages of the cosmic drama.
We take this emanation of pure awareness as the first premise of our Trump sequence. This Trump’s original title and image, the Mountebank, shows him on the lowest step of the social hierarchy. At this stage he wore the cultural camouflage of a traveling salesman, juggler, magician, or tinker.
Such a person lived a rootless life so his possessions would be meager. Later, as the archetype of the theurgical Magus emerged, the Magus evolved to represent the seeker of hidden truths and invisible powers. His tools came to symbolize the Four Elements: Fire and Water plus their two “children” Air and Earth.
Due to the personal freedom his lowly status grants, the Magus can respond to whatever unique opportunities arise. Freed from bondage to either fate or faith, the Magus follows the leading of Spirit through the Three Worlds. When functioning optimally, this individual has an innate form of self-discipline with which order and organization are evoked out of the chaos of life.
The Magus advises to put oneself at cause, claiming the spiritual inheritance of a soul made in the image of God. We are witnessing the moment one awakens to a higher potential and sense of mission, initiating a ripple of action that will multiply across every subsequent Trump.
To serve the Creation in this way, one’s immortal spark must willingly embrace enmeshment in the earthy (blood-red) sphere of embodied life. The Light body precipitates and concentrates around the lower Sephira. This evokes an upwelling of his animal vitality and egoist passion, gifts of the physical plane.
The astrological Sun and Moon mark time in the physical sky, while the alchemical principals (Sun, Moon, and Mercury) anchor his spine in the Three Worlds, represented by the three circles of energy around his body. Inwardly and outwardly these great symbols educate the soul about its innate potentials. Such are the raw materials of incarnation that our Magus will subdue to fulfill his evolutionary mandate.
The Magus carries all the correspondences of the letter Aleph and the Element Air (mind). Blazing forth like a candle in the dark, his presence declares “Aha! Behold! Eureka!” Wings at his feet bear him into the pure sky of the imaginal, his natural element. Astrological and alchemical symbols of the Hermetic Cosmos circle his upper body.
The peak of natural Fire supports and crowns him, while overhead the symbol of androgynous Mercury (Azoth) activates the caduceus in each hand. Thus armed with the tools of tradition, the soul of the Magus penetrates matter to arouse its latent potentials. He pledges to devote all the energies of his lower Sephirot to the actualization of his upper Sephirot.
The awakened individual draws up from the animal/elemental self the resources needed to evolve towards eternal being. Our Magus possesses a keen mind to pierce through the world of appearances and to connect with the Divine Idea that he embodies. The raw materials he is working with are his inborn nature and qualities, including any built-in limits or challenges.
The caduceus in one hand represents his birth chart, his unique interior fixed points of reference. The caduceus in his other hand collects and transmits energies from the eternally changing dance traced in the sky by the moving planets. By staying in touch with both micro-and macrocosm, he witnesses and hosts the continuous play of creativity manifesting through his inner and outer senses.
This Magus lives out an ongoing conversation with Spirit, and in response the world becomes increasingly ensouled, able to manifest ever-more sophisticated and resonant ideals.
The above text is an excerpt from our book Tarot of the Holy Light: A Continental Esoteric Tarot - Volume One.