The History of the Magician Card

 

The Magician in historic tarot decks conveys a somewhat different archetype than in the modern decks. There are two kinds of magician. One is the magus, master of metaphysical secrets and ancient knowledge, calling on the powers of the cosmos to bend reality in accordance with his will. The other is the stage magician, the conjurer, the entertainer, the charlatan. Although the two visions of the magician can mix and interact in fascinating ways, it is accurate to say that in modern decks we usually see the magus; in the historic decks we usually see the stage magician.

This character is the fast-talking, attention-grabbing, flamboyant stuffed shirt who cons passers-by out of their money using sleight of hand and clever prattle. He is the ancestor of the man in the black tophat and waxed mustache, of P. T. Barnum, and of every two-bit hustler who hopes to make the big score.

The Waite-Smith and other occult decks introduced some changes that helped bring out the magus archetype. What is fascinating, though, is that only relatively minor changes were needed to effect the transformation.

The classic Marseilles-type Magician (see the Tarot de Besancon image here) holds up a wand in one hand; it's a standard stage prop. His other hand is busy at the table, perhaps ready to rearrange the cups and balls while our eyes are on the wand. In the Waite-Smith deck, though, the second hand points to the Earth, making the magician a channel for drawing down energies from the higher planes.

In the modern decks, the Magician's table almost invariably shows the four suit symbols: a sword, a wand, a cup, and a pentacle. At first glance, the Magician's table in the historic decks just seems cluttered with juggler's props and tools, which do not resemble the suit symbols at all in the way they are rendered. And yet, with an uncanny eeriness that gives one pause for thought, they are all there in less conspicuous form: the staff or baton is present in miniaturized form as the magician's wand; the swords are likewise present in the form of a knife or two (which the magician would use for cutting rope or twine); the cups are present, not as ornate goblets but as small tumblers for use in the shell game; and there are often coins on the table, or if not, at least small balls, rendered as simple circles in the woodcut designs.

It is details like these that make the historic tarots so delightfully intriguing. Perhaps the props on his table are just the routine apparatus of his trade. But can we rule out that the woodblock carver, who after all would have carved out each suit symbol 59 times (!) in producing the minor arcana for the deck, would have had them well ingrained in his mind (and hands!) to the extent that they resurface here? Or perhaps some long-forgotten designer put them there on purpose for reasons no longer known, and they were copied routinely for centuries.

The lemniscate over the Magician's head in modern decks is a consequence of French occultist Elpiphas Levi's musings on the shape of the Magician's hat in the old decks. Since many of the court cards also wear hats of this design, it is unlikely that early designers saw any special significance in the headware.

The Magician in the historic decks is connected with another archetype as well; that of the craftsman or artisan, as we see in the Tarocchi del Mantegna prints. Remarkbaly once again, just a small change of design is needed to transform the "man behind a table cluttered with tools" from juggler con-man to industrious jeweller or cobbler. Do these two seemingly different characters have anything at all in common, aside from a superficial similarity in props in pose? I think so. The tarot dates from times when the ancient feudal system had been intruded on and transformed by an ever more important middle class of artisans, merchants, and others "out for themselves" in the world. Such people were not well respected. The great artists of the Renaissance, whose paintings and sculptures are now seen as priceless masterpieces of what is highest in the human spirit, were in their own time lumped together with the cobblers, housepainters, tailors, and others who worked with their hands to provide purely utilitarian goods and services. So both the juggler/magician and the artisan/craftsman were "nobodies" operating outside the formal hierarchical world of the nobility, yet neither were they serfs or slaves; indeed they might be wealthy enough (or clever enough) to carry influence out of proportion to their social status.

The original Italian name for the Magician, Bagatella (or Bagatto or Bagatino) is a not a commonplace word in Italian. It is apparently derived from the word for stick or wand, so that a Bagatella is someone who uses a wand, hence a magician. The French name for the card, Bateleur, is thus a close translation. The English "Magician" is a clumsy but serviceable analog. ("Juggler" or "Mountebank" are also fair renderings.) Probably because of long association with the tarot card, the Italian word has also come to mean a trifle or a thing of little worth. It is also a word for "cobbler" in the dialect of Milan. This is interesting because Milanese tarots for the last two centuries have depicted the Magician as a cobbler, complete with a half-made shoe on his work table (see the Soprafino Tarot). Which came first, the picture or the word? We can't say, but it is intriguing to speculate that the Milanese design may be a throwback to the "artisan" pictured in the Tarocchi del Mantegna. The Milanese designs include another enertaining feature: instead of a wand, the Bagatto holds up one of the cups from his table, presumably well filled with wine.

The Magician card, like the Fool, has a very special role in the game of tarot which deserves comment. In the game, the court cards are all worth points, but the trumps are generally not. The only exceptions are the World, the Magician, and the Fool, which are each worth as much as kings, making them among the most valuable cards in the game. Now if you are dealt the Fool or World, those points are guaranteed to you, because neither of those cards can be captured during play. The Magician, on the other hand, is extremely vulnerable to being captured, because it is outranked by all the other trumps. So to win a trick with the Magician, the other players must all play suit cards, not trumps. This is not an easy thing to arrange. It can happen only if (a) you are out of a particular suit that everyone else still has, or (b) everyone else is completely out of trumps. If neither of those conditions occur, you will likely lose the Magician (and all its points) to some other player. So arranging an opportunity to play the Magician card without losing it is a major component of tarot strategy.

One can generally not count on the lucky opportunity of running out of a suit that others still have, although it is easy enough to take advantage of the opportunity if you are the last one to play in a given trick. More challenging and fun is saving the Magician until everyone else has run out of trumps. (For this to work, you must be dealt many of the trumps to begin with--if not, you are likely to run out early yourself.) You hold the Magician card until the end of the game, when you hope all the other players will be defenseless against it. Furthermore, the way the game works, players are often caught holding court cards through the middle of the game, because it is too risky to play them when they might be captured by a trump. So at the end of the game, players are finally forced to play their valuable court cards. There is no greater glee in the game than taking a handful of royalty by playing the Magician in the last trick. This feature is so prominent that in most versions of the game, a player who pulls this maneuver off gets a hefty point bonus!

Even in the French-suited "tarrock" decks, in which the traditional trump designs have all been replaced by animals or scenes of country life, the Magician card still often depicts a flashy magician-like character, so strong is the association between the card's role in the game and the "personality" of the magician.

I go into this detail of the game because (believe it or not) I think it adds a great deal to our understanding of the character of the card. The Magician is a coward, a swindler, and a cheat. He lives by his wits. All the other cards of the major arcana depict high earthly rulers (Pope and Emperor, for example) or archetypal powers (like Love, Death, and Time), which are unambiguously superior to the kings, queens, and knights of the court. Only the Magician, as an ignoble commoner, cannot "logically" triumph over royalty. By his powers of illusion, dexterity, and fast talk, though, he can capture them! As if his portrayal on the card were not enough to make the point clear, the rules of the game are contrived so that the Magician lurks secretively throughout the entire hand, waiting for the great powers of the cosmos to play themselves out; he appears by surprise at the end to capture a veritable hoard of royalty who were too cautious or inept to enter the fray of the early part of the game. I think the game of tarot is full of wry social and metaphysical ironies of this type. The Magician is the ultimate manipulator. Although without nobility or rank, he rakes in his victory by unabashedly exploiting the rules of the game of life.

Having taken this historical perspective on the Magician card, one might find it easy to write off the "magus" persona as an unworthy occultist intrusion on the earlier tradition. But that would be to miss some very interesting avenues of thought. For although magus and charlatan are very different characters, their paths have been profoundly intertwined throughout human history. From ancient Greece down to the present day, charlatans have posed as magi--and magi have posed as charlatans! Writers of the late Renaissance bemoan the problems of distinguishing true alchemists from frauds. Even today, tarot enthusiasts find themselves needing to emphasize the distinction between legitimate card reading and the exploitative scams that are exposed by the TV journalists. But what makes one reading legitimate and another bogus? Is it the method? The intention? The grace of the gods?

My thoughts are drawn back to The Wizard of Oz (movie version). Professor Marvel is a charlatan, but one with a heart of gold. In Dorothy's dream, he becomes the Great and Powerful Oz, who alone can make her wishes come true. In the end, she finds that power in herself, and the professor is no longer either charlatan or magus, but just a well-meaning old man who knows how to get a lot of mileage out of a few clever words and old props. In the end, he uses his theatrical gifts to help Dorothy's friends discover what they've carried within themselves all the time. And isn't that a form of magic that reunites charlatan and magus?

The Magician is the "front man" for the tarot deck. In the Tarocco Siciliano, we see him dealing a pack of cards! Disreputable, commonplace but mysterious, ambitious but charming, a hustler, inventor, and showman. Is he a Power or a Poser? Perhaps there is power in the pose . . .

Visconti-Sforza Triumph Cards, c.1450
Minchiate Etrutia, c.1725
Tarocco Siciliano, modern

 

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Copyright 1999 Tom Tadfor Little