The Magician – Meanings & Interpretation – Major Arcana

The Magician Meaning In A Tarot Reading

The Magician represents us not at our greatest potential but at our greatest potential realized. When your projects fall into your lap with ease, when you produce high-quality work with ease, and when the path of your accomplishments came without trial, you are in this state.

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The Magician has all the universe’s potential at his disposal and naturally knows how best to apply it and use it. The Magician knows what is possible, and therefore navigates the path to its execution with absolute ease.

Below we will talk about the Magician Card of the Major Arcana in three different positions and orientations. (Upright or Reversed). Most of the tarot decks like the Rider Waite use the upright and reversed tarot meanings.

The Magician Tarot Card Meanings – Upright

Overview:

At the height of one’s potential, we are in the heart of our art, and those things we seek to create are actively at our disposal. When harnessed, this time of freely flowing creativity can create some of the greatest works of our life. We can enter into and fade out of this place repeatedly throughout our lives, but this is purely a representation of us being in our time, place, and element.

Past Events:

You have been in a time of great creation. You have been utilizing this opportunity, though your peak has faded into the past. This does not mean you are on the decline, but certainly that you may have plateaued. Your work in the recent past has seen you burning at your current highest potential.

Present Events:

You have already entered or are on the cusp of a moment of perfection. This does not mean all things in your life will be grand. But whatever project you have turned your hand to will flow easily and well, with little effort applied.

You will participate in this project or task as if born to it, keep your head about you and nurture this time!

Future Events:

A project you may or may not know about will present itself to you in the not-too-distant future. It will be a time of creation and an opportunity for you to exemplify yourself.

It would help if you worked at your current greatest potential. Keep an eye out for it, and be ready to take advantage of this opportunity.

The Magician Tarot Card Meanings – Reversed

Overview:

The craftsman is in his shop, but he is not working. They are creating, at best, mediocre and pointless things that hold no part of themselves within them and that they have no passion for. They may not be in a place that is inspiring them. It could be that they are not applying themselves or do not recognize the opportunity.

Past Events:

Your environment, or you, has been holding you back in your current situation. Being in a place that does not permit you to explore your full potential or being in a mental state that does not allow you to recognize that you are, in fact, in that place. It’s time to take stock of this and find out if the problem is you or where you are!

Present Events:

There is the potential for greatness in your life at this moment, but it is either being squandered or you do not recognize the significance of your current circumstances. Examine where you are at this moment. Are you not taking advantage of where you are?

Or is there an opportunity you’re ignoring because you do not see yourself in it? Re-examine your situations and opportunities; one of them is a significant event in your life right now. Don’t miss it!

Future Events:

An opportunity is coming that may appear to be a great opportunity for you, professionally or personally. Keep an eye out for it, as it will move into your path and try to pull you in. Avoid it, as in the end, it will not lead to any great fulfillment and will shackle your creative power and motivation.

Associated Colors:

Orange, creativity, and self-expression

Associated Incense:

Rose for inspiration, Cedarwood for Confidence

Meditation For The Magician – Upright

You will feel yourself fall into this Magician tarot card as your focus comes to fruition. Visualize yourself entering a workshop.

Alchemical equipment bubbles and hisses on one side, various tools are arranged along one wall, and a great project is underway.

You will see the magician there, working on this project. Depending on what it is, he will appear differently. Perhaps he’s wearing a painter’s smock and is working feverishly.

Perhaps he is a programmer surrounded by snacks and sodas, half drunk and forgotten as the code slings past his screen like a visual symphony. Or a musical virtuoso curled around their instrument or lost in the majesty of their song.

The Meditation

Do not interrupt him. He is in his perfect moment, and all around him is lost to him. But observe his surroundings, and his behavior, and look for your message.

It may be some article upon a shelf. It may be a sheet of paper or two people speaking in the corner. Let yourself become enchanted with the place, with the workshop, and it’s a perfect expression of its purpose.

If the urge fills you, throw yourself into his work, for at this moment, the Magician is an avatar of you, in your perfect moment, and thus it is yours to share. You may feel exultation, a buzzing high.

Tarot Meditation Techniques for Magician Upright Card

A deep need only scratched by the process, fulfilled only by completion, is felt deep inside. There is a message for you in this place, and it will make itself known to you as it draws you to it, a moth to the flame.

There is a time in all of our lives when we enter this moment, and sometimes we need guidance, or we’ll miss that opportunity. The joy of our metaphorical hands creates something lasting, something with integrity and time.

This can be found in the crafting of our children as they grow, creating a meal that will stick in the memories of our families, or building the foundation of a company or idea that will touch the lives of those around us.

Know that if you are looking for guidance in the magician card tarot meditation, you will find it. It may give you a subtle hint, it may explode like a flower of brilliance, or you may be notified that now is not the time.

When you have found your message when there is a moment in your meditation when it is time, the Magician may speak to you, may show you something, or dismiss you.

When it is time to go, depart, and be sure to note all the points of significance in your journal. Remember the details and what drove you and brought you into the meditation’s tarot meaning.

Associated Colors:

Blue for overwork

Associated Incense:

Cedarwood and Rose

Meditation For The Magician – Reversed

The tone of this Magician card in reversed meditation is unrealized potential, creativity, unhappiness in our craft, or just a lack of direction.

Once you have an environment conducive to uninterrupted meditation, place the card in front of you, light the incense and candle, and take a few breaths to the center.

Rest your eyes upon the card, taking in its imagery without truly attempting to ‘see’ it. You will feel yourself fall into the card as your focus comes to fruition. Visualize yourself entering a workshop; alchemical equipment bubbles and hisses violently on one side. Its purpose is forgotten.

Tarot Meditation Techniques for Magician Reversed Card

The tools that lay around are rusted, forgotten, in some cases covered with a layer of dust. In this place, you will find the Magician unrealized.

It is difficult to place the nature of this place, as the Magician has no part of himself in it. There may be partially completed works, all showing a lack of care, a lack of any real ambition.

Perhaps you will observe the same theme repeatedly, or it will feel ‘plastic’ and artificial. You may find him as an artist sitting on a stool, lazily and moodily drawing brush-stroke over brush-stroke over someone else’s work. Or performing data entry with the dull, heartless eyes of the uninspired.

The Magician reversed here is in a personal hell, all of his hopes and dreams unrealized. But he knows he is full of it. Look carefully. Are there sketches full of loving detail to be found, in stark contrast to the heart, put into his ‘great work,’ is there something outside the workshop doors that represents where he’d rather be or what he’d rather be doing?

Techniques

You may be able to draw him out, to speak to him, but know that he is in a great malaise, a permanent state of his heart being somewhere else. If you can find that spark, that topic, he will explode into great energy, speaking with fire and passion, which truly inspires his soul. He may have a message for you, or perhaps it is hidden in his shop.

Look carefully, for, in this place, all things become drab and dull, inspiration is repressed and stunted, and the fire of the soul can fail. If this is a place you feel yourself in, look for the secret to why among the various detritus of the repressed workman’s shop.

If you have a tarot journal, take notes on what you observed, record your feelings and emotions in this place, and what stood out. Pay special care to note anything that left you feeling dragged down and exhausted and that which inspired you, if such a thing was. Within those are likely to be found messages for you.

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