The Magician · Le Bateleur

The Magician is the first trump, and Pamela Colman Smith drew him mid-gesture. The right arm is lifted, a white wand pointed at both ends held straight up in the fist. The left arm hangs open, index finger aimed at the ground. Above his head, clear of it, floats a black lemniscate, the sideways eight. A white band crosses his brow, a blue-green serpent rings his waist, tail brought to its own mouth, and a red mantle hangs open over his white tunic. On the table lie the four suit emblems: a gold pentacle stamped with a star, a gold cup, a sword laid flat, blade tinted blue, a wand across the boards. Red roses and white lilies crowd the bed at his feet, and more roses hang from the vine across the top of the card. Behind it, flat yellow sky.

Smith drew the second before the work. The deck never shows the one after.

Classically the card is given to Mercury, and the gesture carries the rest: as above, so below, the sky drawn down through a hand onto a bench. Upright, the tradition reads the Magician as will aimed at one task. Skill, speech, readiness to start today. He is the trump of the kept word, the promise that arrives as an act.

Reversed, that same quickness turns sideways. Cleverness spends itself steering people, the patter outruns the craft, the arm stays up and nothing comes down. Some readers take the reversal as scattered will, the hand that starts five things and finishes none. The energy has not changed, only its aim. The card asks the smallest honest question there is: has the thing been begun?