Ancestral Path Study Group - The Magician

[Orb Weaver]

I know we were originally supposed to begin with the court cards, but since we started with The Fool, I decided to continue with the next Major Arcana card, The Magician.

The first thing I notice is this card's similarity to The Magician in RWS deck. I like the artwork here with the sympathetic magic depicted on the walls of the cave. Here he still represents manifestation, taking the idea and making it reality. I'm not sure that I agree with the idea put forth by Tracy Hoover in the accompanying book that the Magician is also a trickster figure. While he is clever, I don't get a sense of capriciousness with this card. Nor do I feel like this card teaches us the lesson of the trickster who is an image of the shadow as described by Carl Jung.

 

[annik]

The wall and the wall's paintings gives a air of prehistory to the card. The man look like more a shaman to me. Especially when he hold the stick that the top is shaped like a horse.

I don't see him as a trickster. A triskster is having good adventures where he is a master in doing tricks but he also have misaventuire where he is being tricked. This magician seems too much in all possession of his tools that he doesn't match my definition of a trickster.

But I must admit I like the part of anciently to the card. It remind us of our roots and sources in our magical sides.

 

[Orb Weaver]

It makes me feel better to know that I am not the only one who doesn't see this figure as a trickster figure. Thanks for the input.

 

[Grizabella]

Any Magician is a trickster. He's the master of illusion. What you see isn't necessarily reality where he's concerned. He's tricking our senses and making us see what he wants us to see, not necessarily what's really there. He appears to be showing us one thing when it's really another. That's definitely being a trickster.

 

[Grizabella]

I've just dug out my Ancestral Path and have decided to rotate it into my "most used" basket since I've always loved the art work and just haven't worked with it very much, especially lately. It certainly deserves deeper study.

I didn't mean to stop this thread dead in its tracks. I tend to sound blunt when I post, I think, even though I don't mean to.

Maybe he's tricking us into thinking he's not really the trickster in this card? I do think that's possible.

One of you mentioned that they see him more as a shaman. What a shaman does can actually be an illusion, or seem to be. In some respects this could be seen as "trickery", couldn't it?