Men can be represented by the High Priestess and Women by the Magician.
The Magician and the High Priestess represent aspects. Often these aspects can be confused as gender. Many authors write that the Magician represents the male/aggressive and the High Priestess as the Female/passive. Such is shallow, and falls way short of the point of both images in my opinion (yes you are free to disagree).
Isisrana, it’s actually kind of funny – I just had this conversation with Wonderwoman. I should have had you move down a few seats…
So the Tarot was invented in the 1400’s. How was the Magician looked at then? Let’s use the TdM as an example. Let’s look at the word – Le Bateleur. What is a Bateleur? Essentially, the word translates to “A wandering (itinerant) juggler/comedian/storyteller.
The Magician or more correctly Le Bateleur, in its original context was a ‘Penn and Teller’ type magician, a juggler, sideshow barker, comedian, and not a ceremonial magician, or a person of power, commanding divine inspiration or power as he is currently viewed. That change occurred in 1909.
Le Bateleur is the smooth talker, the mountebank, the con man, and the snake oil sales man, the Traveling Salesman...also…and perhaps just as important – he has no roots, no town – a traveler. In the pre-war Russian language, there was no word for an adventurer. It was unheard of to leave your town, family, and responsibilities to wander for whatever reason. Such is the character of the Le Bateleur.
You will also notice, and mind you this is a question to which there is no answer: Le Bateleur and La Papesse are always in order – before the Empress or the Emperor and the Pope. Why are they so special in that time period? Would not the Emperor or Empress, and especially the Pope, come before a traveling juggler and a ‘pun’ of the so-called Pope Joan, Le Papesse. I believe there are things we don’t yet know concerning the history of Tarot.
Okay, so I think that the La Bateleur & La Papesse are about human nature – and not stations.
Tangential insertion - On the leg of the Magicians table in the Waite-Colman smith deck are the letters DIN. Perhaps on the reverse side are the letters NER.
The Magician/Bateleur is about measuring, qualifying, quantifying, that infernal intellectualization that essentially bogs us down, but we so love to justify our thinking process cuz we are trained to be oh so smart and have all the answers and never ever be wrong and don’t fail on the test and get a good review and beware run on sentences and don’t butcher the punkshoeashun or speling and what’s the ground speed of an African Swallow, wanna buy this car it was only owned once by a little ole schoolteacher from Belmont who only drove it on Sundays…
The High Priestess is about living in the heart rather than the head.
The High Priestess is about the Spiritual aspects of life – which cannot be boxed or measured or weighed or justified.
Traditionally Men don’t get the spiritual, we’re not trained on that but some of us develop it.
And it used to be that women didn’t get the word of the Magician…
Now there’s a lot of role reversal.
And folks lose balance – that’s the key. Being off balance.
If you live in the world of the Magician, you can intellectualize all you want, but you cannot intellectualize living from the heart.
If you live in the world of the High Priestess, you can live from the heart all you want, walk the pure spiritual path…and if you do so at the expense of the intellectual – you’re off balance.
Magician as fear?
Here’s an answer…Think about it. Wahahahahahahahaha. Sorry…