Member Articles

Magician

As the student steps into the role of the Magician, s/he peruses her tools; Tarot deck and texts. The Sword/pen will note her intellectual and insightful understanding of cards' meanings; her emotional commitment and enthusiasm is the water that will carry her intentions along the river of deeper insight and secure her commitment to the Tarot on a deep emotional level; the Wand is the fire that heats up her passion and commitment to practice; and the earth is her disk of grounding in the cards and texts.

The cards are the physical, earthy element that will serve as the conduit for her powerful psychic insight. Putting all the primary elements together in the Magician, the Fool/Initiate now begins the "play" withthis intriguing divination tool. She draws a card to answer a question and receives an astounding and valuable piece of advice and guidance. She has demonstrated to herself that she holds a powerful tool filled with genius and competence. In using this tool she has uncovered a vision of herself as confident, self-reliant, and able to transform her thoughts into reality. With this tool in hand she becomes a visionary story-teller, problem-solver, and truth-sayer. She becomes the Magician!

Students begin to perceive how powerful a tool the Tarot is – they do a reading for themselves that is eerily accurate. As they "play" with this new tool they get a sense of its magic and venture to tell others that they have got this new tool and offer to do a reading for them (the Magician stage is marked with increased communication!) – typically when a student their friends and family about their developing magical skill, they are asked use it for them - the student realizes that not only does the tool itself have power but they do too.

Suddenly my elderly wimmin students find themselves the centre of a family gatherings – granddaughters are phoning and visiting. Grandma is cool and she reads fortune-telling cards! Grandma is getting more attention, awe, and respect than she's ever had.

One of my students slipped into the abyss when she decided this tool could be used to forward her agenda with her grandchildren – I knew trouble was probably ahead when she had 2 Princess of Wands in her deck! I warned her that using the Tarot to forward her own propaganda could result in the loss of her power – if she failed to stop this practice at once she wouldn't be able to advance and benefit from the gifts of the High Priestess!