The Magician

Major Arcana I

(Ink on Paper; see more in the Tarot Gallery).

The very first step on the path.

Although I follow the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition of card design and position (see the whole thing with the position of Strength and Justice), and adhere strongly to Rachel Pollack’s interpretations of the cards, my biggest influence in how I think about Tarot as a system is Promethea, by Alan Moore, JH Williams III, and Mick Gray. The series’ depiction of the journey up the tree of life, through the sephiroth, remains the sharpest illustration I hold for the underpinnings of reality.

(Well, that and VALIS, but that's a whole other can of distressing worms)

Promethea is also my absolute favorite depiction of Aleister Crowley ever.

I love the way Crowley designed his Thoth deck with an emphasis on the tree of life, but the deck as a whole is way too fucking complicated for me. I can’t remember the whole system.

Instead, I like to take his emphasis on the sephiroth and the journey on the tree and apply it to the simpler system in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. The Magician is the first step on the journey, all the tools prepared, into the world. I wanted my Magician to be carrying their tools, rather than admiring them on a table, and I wanted them to make the world as they moved through it.

(And I wanted them to have a dog. Obviously.)

The Magician is where we start on the path because they’re every one of us. The next stages of the Major Arcana require choice to move through them, but all storytelling creatures create reality as they go.

That’s the magic that Alan Moore and Grant Morrison and Peter J Carol tried to explain to everyone. Not some unobtainable, elusive bullshit. Just the hard, sharp bones of inescapable reality. It’s easy to forget this is true, because knowing it means you have a responsibility to stay conscious long enough to make the right impact. Which is kind of a fucking bummer if what you prefer to do is not be existentially burdened with that kind of power.

Being in the world, it turns out, is an intense situation. Might as well meet it with equal force, a determined soul, and the tools for shaping reality.

…and… if possible: a dog.