Wizards & More
Magic is all around us. Sometimes we have the eyes to see it; sometimes we do not. It is the core of what we label as "the numinous" and so it is
bound up with our religious experiences as well.
Humans have had what might be called "magico-religious" impulses through all of recorded history and presumably before. For example, one of the
earliest images of a human being is the so-called "Sorcerer" in the paleolithic cave of Les Trois France. We know that magicians flourished in ancient
Egypt and Greece and the Middle East as well as in India and China. Such facts suggest the presence of what Jungians would call an "archetype.
ARCHETYPE, ARCHETYPAL IMAGE, AND SYMBOL
Archetypes, according to Jung, are "active living dispositions, ideas in the Platonic sense, that preform and continually influence our thoughts and
feelings and actions." They are not inherited ideas, but rather, as Jung says elsewhere, "inherited possibilities of ideas." The exact nature of these
archetypes has been much discussed both within and outside of Jungian circles. What matters for our present purposes is just that the underlying
archetypes (which by definition are beyond or beneath consciousness) are expressed in conscious images called "archetypal images" which have the power
to fascinate us. It is one such image, that of "magician", which is the subject of this thesis.
Given this contrast between the archetype as such and the archetypal image in which it finds cultural expression, "the magician" might better be
regarded as an archetypal image than as an archetype itself. Jungian usage is, however, inconsistent on this point and because one so often sees the
magician referred to directly as an archetype. This seems the simpler and more straight-forward course. What needs to be insisted on, however, it that
there is something still deeper behind the image of the magician, something itself unknown, which expresses itself in the psyche as "magician.
Jung himself describes this as an archetype in "The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious" in Two Essays on Analytical Psychology:
One of the archetypes that is almost invariably met with in the projection of unconscious collective contents is the "magic demon" with mysterious
powers. ... The demon can also have a very positive aspect as the "wise old man." Jung makes this comment in connection with his patient's saying,
"Sometimes you seem rather dangerous, sinister, like an evil magician or a demon." And he interprets her remark: "... we saw that on the subjective
level I became an image for the figure of the magician in the collective unconscious."
So it seems reasonable to consider "magician" as one of the archetypes in Jung's sense.
It would be interesting, to explore Jung's ideas about archetypes in general and perhaps to defend Jung against various misunderstandings. In
particular, the common assumption that Jung is a kind of Lamarckian who believes in the inheritance of acquired ideas would be worth refuting since
this misinterpretation has interfered with Jung's acceptance in many scientific circles.
In addition to the concepts of archetype and archetypal image, the concept of symbol will also be important for this thesis. The word "symbol" is
based on the Greek symbolon, from sym, "together," and bolon or ballein, "to throw or fit." The Greek word refers to the practice of breaking a coin
or other small object in half when friends parted. Each half of the object would serve as a reminder of the friend during his or her absence. Then
when the friends were reunited the re-fitting together of the two halves would serve as a kind of proof of his or her identity. One friend could also
entrust half of the object to a further friend or relative and thus show to the holder of the original half that this stranger was entitled to
recognition or hospitality. Thus, as Verena Kast puts it, "... the symbol is a visible sign of an invisible reality. ... When we interpret, we seek
the invisible reality behind the visible and the connections between the two." In contrast to signs, for example, the road sign "+" (meaning
"crossroad ahead"), a symbol points to "... an intuitive idea that cannot yet be formulated in any other or better way." As A Critical Dictionary of
Jungian Analysis expresses it,
Symbols are captivating pictorial statements .... They are indistinct, metaphoric and enigmatic portrayals of psychic reality. The content, i.e. the
meaning of symbols, is far from obvious; instead, it is expressed in unique and individual terms while at the same time partaking of a universal
imagery. Worked upon (that is, reflected upon and related to), they can be recognized as aspects of those images that control, order and give meaning
to our lives. Their source, therefore, can be traced to the archetypes themselves which by way of symbols find more full expression ....Symbols are
thus one type of what Jung called "archetypal images," that is, the representation in consciousness of an underlying archetype.
So the theme of this thesis could be expressed in a variety of ways: What does the magician symbolize in human life? What are the aspects of the
archetypal image of the magician? or, simply, What is the archetype of the magician?
"Magician"
We all know informally and roughly what a magician is. A magician is, of course, a person who does "magic. That is, a magician is a person who can
make things happen that wouldn't happen under the normal or familiar laws of nature. Something is transformed in a mysterious way, or disappears, or
appears. We know also, if we reflect on our use of the word, that a "magician" could be an entertainer (a "conjuror" or "prestidigitator") or a "real"
magician (something like a "witch doctor," "medicine man," or, perhaps, "sorcerer"). Still, both conjurors and "real" magicians are assumed to have
the power to transform things and make them appear or disappear, whether playing cards and silk scarves or illnesses and spirits. And such
transformations take place in a way which is, literally, extra-ordinary. This thesis intends to deal with both types or senses of "magician" and to
explore the possible relationships between them.
In passing, it should be noted that a distinction is often made between the "white magician" and the "black magician. This distinction occurs, for
example, in one of the "big" dreams discussed by Jung. Although there are interesting symbolic aspects of "white" and "black" which could be
developed, the basic distinction seems to be in whether the magic is being used for helpful or for harmful purposes. This is, of course, to some
extent relative to the standpoint of the observer.
The English word "magician" comes from the Greek and the Latin magia that is, having to do with "the religion, learning, and occult practices of the
Persian Magi, or priests of the sect of Zoroaster, in the form in which they became known to the West."
Although these "Magi" were men, and although (for the sake of simplicity) I use the male pronoun to refer to magicians in this thesis, many women have
also been magicians. One scholar has even claimed that in every period of history and in every country the majority of magicians have been women. Be
that as it may, the magicians who have captured the public's attention and who have been written about have been overwhelmingly males.
This controversy over the ratio of men to women in magic may be connected, however, with the ambiguity of the word "magic" already referred to, that
between performing, stage, or "entertainment" magic, on the one hand, and ceremonial, ritual, or "real" magic, on the other. As I have mentioned, the
first is sometimes called "conjuring" and the second "witchcraft. Even here, however, there remains an ambiguity since "conjuror" is sometimes used
for a person who can cast spells or "conjure up" the dead. Now it might be the case that the practitioners of witchcraft have been mostly women and
the practitioners of magic for entertainment have been mostly men. Given the common negative associations to "witchcraft," this assumption might be
unfair to women so let us leave the question open. Still, this controversy points to the tension between what might be called the two "contexts" for
magic: the changing of the world through allegedly magical power and the entertaining of people for the sake of pleasure. In actual cases, of course,
it is not always easy to discern which is intended. Shamans and ceremonial magicians can be entertaining. And conjurors do sometimes rise to the level
of performing "real" magic.
Still, our consciousness is shaped by our fantasy or fantasies of magicians. As Nikolai Tolstoy writes,
The centuries come and go, literary fashions pass, but the magician reappears before us: shifting his shape and changing his name, now mocking, now
awe-inspiring, but essentially the same character whose fame flew over all Europe eight centuries ago. Trickster, illusionist, philosopher and
sorcerer, he represents an archetype to which the race turns for guidance and protection.
"Guidance and protection," of course, can come from a variety of sources. What is unique to the magician?
The magician is a man (or woman) of power. In this sense, the substance of magic is fundamentally serious (despite the combination of magician with
clown in some cases). Furthermore, the magician gets his power from another level of reality. He is not like the engineer who has learned how to
harness the power of this world.
In the Introduction I mentioned the connection between magic and the numinous and referred to "magico-religious" impulses. So one might well wonder
about the similarities and differences between the magician and the priest. One way of drawing the distinction might be to say that the magician's
power is somehow his own, whereas the priest's comes from a higher power. Roughly, this seems right although, as we shall see in discussing the shaman
below, some magicians claim to have their power from a helpful spirit or animal rather than simply from themselves, so the distinction cannot be made
solely on this basis. Still, the image of the priest is of someone who is a servant, while the image of the magician is of someone who the spirits
obey.
Some writers have seen magic and magicians as simply an earlier or more primitive form of what later becomes religion and the priesthood. This is one
of the popular 19th-century claims which I intend to bypass here (although we shall see in the section on Shaman, below, that Marie-Louise von Franz
has her own proposal about this contrast). Perhaps it is enough to notice that both magic and religion arise from something similar in the psyche. If
not parent and child, or even siblings, they are at least close cousins.
Magicians of all kinds combine our natural human interest in power with our natural human interest in mystery. Another name for this is "the occult.
And, along with the charge of "Lamarckianism" mentioned in Chapter Two, the charge that Jung was too involved in the occult is one of the standard
rebukes one hears in academic or scientific circles. (After all, Jung's doctoral dissertation was "On the Psychology and Pathology of So-called Occult
Phenomena" and the index to his Collected Works has many entries under "occult," "parapsychology" and the like.)
Marvin Spiegelman makes some interesting observations about "occultists" [or, we might say, magicians in general].
[They] are interested not so much in relationship, as in power. They seek to train both fantasy and the will. Fantasy is trained by focusing upon
given images as in Tarot, or upon given rituals or prayers in magic. The implication is that if one focuses upon the given mantra [for example], then
predicted and known events will occur. In contrast with the open system of Jung, the occultist focuses upon training and conditioning his psyche; thus
he is more like the behaviorist. The Jungian focuses upon relating to and understanding his psyche. And this focus on relating to and understanding
one's psyche will be a theme in the following pages. First, however, let us briefly examine several concepts which might help us better understand the
image we have of the magician himself.
Mana Personality
Jung concludes the second of his Two Essays on Analytical Psychology with a chapter on the so-called "mana personality." The term "mana" is a
Melanesian word used by anthropologists to refer to the subjective experience of "... the extraordinary and compelling supernatural power which
emanates from certain individuals, objects, action and events as well as from inhabitants of the spirit world." Jung cites Friedrich Lehmann's phrase
"the extraordinarily potent" as his definition of "mana" and remarks that
... the mana-personality is a dominant of the collective unconscious, the well-known archetype of the mighty man in the form of hero, chief, magician,
medicine-man, saint, the ruler of men and spirits, the friend of God. So whatever else the magician archetype might be, it is clear that it is one
instance of a mana-personality. As I mentioned above, the magician is a person to whom extraordinary power is attributed by others (and, perhaps,
given the ever present danger of psychic inflation, by himself).
Shaman
A standard definition of "shaman" begins: "among tribal peoples, a magician, medium, or healer who owes his powers to mystical communion with the
spirit world." The term has been used by generations of anthropologists, especially in their descriptions of certain Siberian and native American
tribes. More recently, the use of shamanistic techniques for self-discovery, personal growth and healing has been popularized by Michael Harner and
others.
Clearly, a better understanding of the shaman will aid us in understanding the magician. But the exact relationship between the two is not always
clear. Mircea Eliade, for example, begins his classic study of shamanism as follows:
Since the beginning of the century, ethnologists have fallen into the habit of using the terms "shaman," "medicine man," "sorcerer," and "magician"
interchangeably to designate certain individuals possessing magico-religious powers and found in all "primitive" societies. ... [But] If the word
"shaman" is taken to mean any magician, sorcerer, medicine man, or ecstatic found throughout the history of religions and religious ethnology, we
arrive at a notion at once extremely complex and extremely vague; it seems, furthermore, to serve no purpose, for we already have the terms "magician"
or "sorcerer" ....
So it seems that the shaman is one type of magician. Or, to put in another way, the shaman expresses one aspect of the magician. How so?
Eliade continues:
Magic and magicians are to be found more or less all over the world, whereas shamanism exhibits a particular magical specialty, on which we shall
later dwell at length: "mastery over fire," "magical flight," and so on. By virtue of this fact, though the shaman is, among other things, a magician,
not every magician can properly be termed a shaman.
Central to shamanism as such is a belief in spirits who can help or harm human beings. The shaman typically has a special relationship to one or more
such spirits (which may have singled him out in some manner which he could not refuse, usually involving an illness or psychic crisis of some kind).
With the aid of his spirit "guide" or "helper," the shaman is able heal other members of his tribe by removing destructive spirits or rendering them
harmless. This process usually involves the shaman entering a trance, a special form of the abaissement du niveau mental which Jung so often
mentioned. Trance as such is important in many forms of magic and is currently the subject of investigation in many branches of science.
In its simplest form, the world view of shamanistic tribes is one of a universe with three levels or "layers" our "middle-world" of ordinary reality
plus an "upper-world" and an "under-world" of divinities and spirits. The shaman is one who has learned the techniques for journeying between these
different worlds and his power to help and to heal is based on this.
But most important of all, the shaman has not learned about the spiritual world from books but through his own experience, through his own body. So
when he acts or speaks he is one who "speaks with authority. As Marie-Louise von Franz writes,
In civilized societies the priest is primarily the guardian of existing collective ritual and tradition; among primitive peoples, however, the figure
of the shaman is characterized by individual experience of the world of spirits (which today we call the unconscious) ....And here we find our first
intimation that this world of "spirits" and "powers" which the shaman (and magician) know and use is what we also call "the unconscious. This insight
is the basis for the parallel between shaman and analyst.
The magician in general is a person of power in the spiritual world (as contrasted with the power of the king or tribal chief in secular affairs). The
special features of the shamanic magician is that he has undergone a certain kind of initiation into the multi-layered world of spirits, has learned
the methods of trance and soul retrieval, and has thus become, in Eliade's recurring phrase, a "technician of the sacred.
Many shamanistic techniques are very widespread, for example, the shaman's use of the drum to create the rhythmic beat conducive to trance or the
practice of dressing in the clothes of the opposite sex to foster contrasexual powers.
While not all magicians are of this shamanistic type, we clearly see one aspect of the magician here. Moreover, the special characteristics of the
shaman are related to the approach which Jung took to his own analytic work:
... the main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neurosis, but rather with the approach to the numinous. But the fact is that
the approach to the numinous is the real therapy, and inasmuch as you attain to the numinous experience, you are released from the curse of pathology.
Even the very disease takes on a numinous character.
Jung himself has been described as "a modern shaman if I have ever met one." And another writer on shamanism said of Jung: "All he lacked was the
drum." Finally, there is a story that when Marie-Louise von Franz once remarked to Jung that he was like a shaman, he replied, "Well, that's nothing
to be ashamed of. It is an honour."
Trickster
Perhaps because of the expression "magic tricks" or "conjuring tricks," the figure of Trickster comes immediately to mind when one thinks of the
magician.
Primarily, the Trickster is a figure in mythology and folklore who has entered our psychological vocabulary through Jung's essay "On the Psychology of
the Trickster-Figure," in Paul Radin's Der g"ttliche Schelm. As Jung puts it, "The trickster is a collective shadow figure, a summation of all the
inferior traits of character in individuals." Although Radin focused his attention on the Trickster stories of the Winnebago Indians, Jung is reminded
of the practices of carnival, the medieval Feast of Fools, the pranks and shape-shifting of Mercurius, and of the shaman.
There is something of the trickster in the character of the shaman and medicine-man, for he, too, often plays malicious jokes on people, only to fall
victim in his turn to the vengeance of those whom he has injured. This side of the shaman, however, as of the magician, is his shadow side. And, of
course, just as we all need to become conscious of our shadows to keep, for example, from simply projecting them on our neighbors, so the shaman or
magician needs consciousness of his shadow/trickster side. And, on the other hand, the prankishness of the trickster can serve to "leaven the loaf" of
an all-too-serious magician's personality. Jung notes in the same essay that the trickster is "a forerunner of the savior."
Fool
Just as the shaman can be viewed as a certain type of magician-figure, the fool can in turn be viewed as a certain type of trickster-figure. The fool
and the trickster are not always distinguished, of course. (So, for example, the entry for "Fool" in A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis simply
reads "See Trickster.")
In his now-classic work The Fool and His Scepter,William Willeford mentions two main tendencies in our attitudes towards fools: the naive view that
fools are just silly and the more refined view that fools show a kind of wisdom. Each is a partial truth, of course: on the surface the actions and
speech of the fool are silly, but, as Willeford writes, "the surface of folly sometimes breaks open to reveal surprising depths ....
Like all tricksters, the fool somehow stands outside of the normal social order. In the form of the jester, the fool can say to the king what no one
else would dare. As "outsiders," the fool, the trickster, the magician can all show us things that we otherwise avoid.
While the trickster is more likely to deceive, cheat, or shock us, the fool (as related to the clown) is more likely to make us laugh at his antics.
We may laugh at the outrageous behavior of a trickster, the pathos of a sad clown, or the surprising happenings in a magician's show. There is also,
however, as Willeford points out, a connection between horror and humor.
... [H]oriole things may also be laughable. When we laugh at them, we often do so partly because we do not know what else to do, because we do not
find our way to another and more appropriate reaction. Through laughter we achieve a provisional stance, outside belief and disbelief, in the face of
the horrible. We also laugh as part of an automatic recoil into life. So the fool, too, through the function of laughter, helps us find our way back
and forth between worlds. This, of course, was also one of the functions of the shaman. And, in a certain way, it is a function of the analyst as
well.
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A Gathering of Magicians
Having considered magic and magicians in general, we now must examine several particular magicians in search of further insights into this archetype.
HERMES
The Greek god Hermes is known for many things: being the messenger of all the gods, being the conductor of souls (the so-called psychopompos) to the
underworld, and for his connection with fertility. In addition, however, he is the god of tricksters, thieves and magicians. In his Roman equivalent
of Mercury he appears in the center of the seal of the International Brotherhood of Magicians and is regarded as the patron of magicians and as a
magician himself. His golden staff (the kerykeion, in Greek, but often referred to later as a caduceus) is an example of the magic wand, to be
discussed in the next chapter. The illustration below shows a Greek coin from 360 B.C.E. bearing the likeness of Hermes holding his wand entwined with
two snakes.
With this wand "he charms the eyes of men or wakens whom he wills." And, as Karl Kearny writes of this passage, ... the text speaks of death, but of
death not as an unambiguous and final event. Re-awakening in this context also contains a double meaning: it can refer to an escape from death itself.
So there is an implicit theme of death and resurrection here, an important theme in magic.
In the General Index to Jung's Collected Works, a distinction is made between "Mercurius/Hermes/Mercury, in alchemists' writings" and "Mercury/Hermes,
Greek/Roman god" with approximately six times as much space being given to the Hermes of alchemy as to the classical god. Jung is referring to both,
however, when he writes, "Mercurius or Hermes is a magician and god of magicians."
What is it about the story of Hermes which makes this so? Such attributions cannot be simply arbitrary, the assigning of gods as patrons of various
human activities on a random basis.
As with many gods and heroes, there are miracle stories connected with his birth. On the day of his birth, for example, Hermes was already able to
walk. He immediately killed a tortoise and, hollowing out its shell for a sounding board, invented the lyre. (This, of course, prefigures Hermes'
connection with the opposites of life and death.) Next Hermes stole the cattle of his brother Apollo, tricked his brother by driving the cattle
backwards and by wearing his shoes backwards (so that the tracks left behind would confuse Apollo), and then lied (by "playing innocent" and asking,
"what are cattle?" when eventually confronted by Apollo). Thieves and magicians do such things, of course.
The stories of the lyre and the cattle are connected in that Hermes also killed two of the cows to make strings for his lyre and also in that Hermes
charmed Apollo with the music of the lyre, with the result that Hermes gave his brother the lyre (which became Apollo's symbol) and that Apollo gave
Hermes the golden staff or wand (which Hermes then always carried). So, in their way, these stories of the birth of Hermes show the "union of
opposites," the coniunctio oppositorum, so important in Jungian thought. In any case, stories such as these show how Hermes logically became the god
of both thieves and magicians.
THE TAROT MAGICIAN
The controversial and mysterious set of cards known as the "Tarot" have become popular in the 20th century and have been interpreted by many Jungians.
Jung himself refers to the Tarot cards only once in his Collected Works, mentioning them, in parallel with the pictures found in alchemy, the Tantric
chakra system and the nerve system of Chinese yoga, as seeming to be "distantly descended from the archetypes of transformation."
Some interpreters of the cards claim to have traced their origin to ancient occult traditions. Virtually all commentators agree, however, that parts
of the Tarot are at least six centuries old and that the Marseilles version of the Tarot is perhaps the oldest complete Tarot still in general use.
What matters for this thesis is that Tarot images, in particular those of the Major Arcana, can readily be understood as arising from some deep level
of human experience and lend themselves to interpretation just as dreams and fairy tales do. As humans we have a tendency toward projecting aspects of
ourselves on object that provide "hooks" for these projections. The cards of the Major Arcana are well suited to receive these projections and thus
can serve as tools in our search for self-knowledge. And since the 22 cards of the so-called "Major Arcana" (also called the "Greater Trumps") are
pictures, this section of the thesis will be something of an exercise in picture interpretation. The goal, however, is to understand better another
aspect of the magician.
Consider now the figure of the magician as depicted in the Marseilles deck:
This card shows a beardless young man with long, blond curls. His clothes are tri-colored, red, blue and gold, and the colors red and blue are always
paired opposite one another. For example, he wears a blue shoe on one foot and a red one on the other, one sleeve is red while the other is blue. He
wears a large, floppy hat with a red brim and a golden crown. In each hand he is holding something, in one hand a golden wand and in the other, a
round, golden object, either a ball or a coin. The Magician stands behind a table which extends, to the viewer's right, out of the frame of the
picture. On this table are a variety of small objects: a golden bag or purse with a golden scarf protruding, a golden cup and a red one, a red ball, a
knife with a blue handle, a blue object which is perhaps a feather, three golden coins, a pair of golden dice, and a red object which is probably
another ball. The Magician stands on very hilly, uneven ground. A small amount of grass or other vegetation is visible near his feet and there is what
appears to be a thin, green tree visible in the distance.
Consider what we can surmise about this figure simply from the evidence in the picture. His face is clearly young, and his curls are still blond,
rather than having darkened (or grayed) with age. His youth and his beardless face suggest that he stands at the beginning of his life's journey. If
we compare this figure with other men depicted in the Major Arcana, we find the beardless men typically in precarious positions such as falling,
hanging, or standing at a fork in the road. The bearded men of the Major Arcana, in contrast, all have their feet on the ground. These facts, plus the
unevenness of the ground beneath his feet, suggest that this Magician symbolizes a state of psychological youth and insecurity, a person at an initial
stage of life. This is further emphasized by the number assigned to this card in the series: '1'
His clothing provides further clues to his nature. The size and unusual nature of his hat, for example, merits reflection. As Newman points out, the
hat "is the insignia (i.e., signifies) the bearer, whether it be the hat of the train conductor, ... or the crown the king receives at his
coronation." Most commentators on this card have observed that the brim of this hat resembles a figure eight lying on its side, the mathematical sign
for infinity (called the "lemniscate"). In the Rider-Waite version of this card the hat is actually replaced by this symbol. In the Royal Fez Moroccan
Tarot the Magician wears a hood or cowl rather than a hat, but holds a luminous figure eight in his hand along with his wand. The Jungian Tarot does
not contain the lemniscate directly but it is at least hinted at in the figure formed by the two snakes on his wand. These three cards are pictured
below. In the Ansata Tarot (not pictured here) the infinity sign is represented by a cobra at the Magician's feet.
The fact that so many different versions of this card include the sign for infinity suggests that it is important to the symbolic meaning of the card
and not just incidental. Bernd Mertz sees in the lemniscate "a hint about the endlessness of the powers of magic." It might also be seen as a hint
that this Magician is more than he seems: perhaps this sign of infinity is to remind us that although we see but a youth before us, above or behind
this youth are transcendent powers. And the lemniscate is a sure sign that we are not concerned here solely with the street conjurer, the magician as
entertainer.
The Magician's hat can also be seen as a complement to his clothing in general. Just as the hat has two parts the loops of the reclining figure eight
which are unified through the golden center of the hat, each item of his clothing in general shoes, leggings, jacket, sleeves is composed of two
opposing parts, their difference being emphasized by their contrasting colors. Their ultimate unity, however, is shown both by their being obviously
the clothes of this one man and by the golden belt with which they are held together. So here we see in pictorial form the coniunctio oppositorum
which we have seen before in the stories about Hermes and which we will consider again in our final chapter.
The items in the Magician's hands provide further clues to his symbolic nature. The wand is both a badge of his office or status and a tool with which
he creates his miracles. Like the staff of Moses which could alternately astound the masses by turning into a serpent and nourish them by striking
water from the rock, we know that this tool will be used both to charm and to help us. Its golden color suggests that the power of the wand comes from
heaven itself, unlike the power of the evil magician or sorcerer. The round object in his other hand, whether it be a ball or a coin, is also golden
and therefore connected with this divine power.
Another way of looking at the objects in his hands would combine the objects themselves with the position of the hands and arms: the wand is in the
hand raised toward heaven while the coin(?) is in the hand closer to the earth. This might be connected with the Hermetic saying "As above, so below."
The saying "As above, so below," is attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, described in Putman's Concise Mythological Dictionary as an identification, in
late Classical times, of the Greek Hermes with the ancient Egyptian Thoth. The god Thoth, in Egypt, was the scribe of the gods and the inventor of the
art of writing, and as such was the patron deity of knowledge and the sciences in general, of which magic constituted an important part.
The position of the Magician's hands might also be connected with Jesus' words in the Lord's Prayer: "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
The traditional posture of the Buddha, with one hand raised in spiritual blessing and the other hand touching the earth, also comes to mind. This
"above and below" symbolism is emphasized even more strongly in the design of the Rider-Waite card.
What of the items on the table itself? Newman describes them as "an assortment of objects relating to gambling and chance." In this connection, Newman
informs us that this card has also been called "The Gambler." With this interpretation in mind Newman writes: "Without conviction and commitment, he
endlessly turns his cards and shakes his dice. ... The Gambler signifies one lost among possibilities, unable to take a chosen path and stick to it."
So, according to Newman's interpretation, this Magician card represents a kind of puer.
I disagree with Newman here. It is true, of course, that chance plays a role in human affairs and that "life is a gamble. But there is a Tarot card in
which this factor is already evident: The Wheel of Fortune. What Newman appears to have done is to misinterpret the items which the Magician is about
to use in his work as the tools of the gambler. True, dice and coins are present, but most likely as the items with which our Magician is about to
show us his miracles. Even today magicians use these same objects. And in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and earlier, when these cards were
presumably designed, the road-side or drawing-room magician or conjuror would have been a familiar figure in Europe. The Flemish painter Hieronymus
Bosch (1450?-1516) portrayed a conjuror of his time whose table and equipment resemble that of the Marseilles Magician. Later, in circa 1740, a
woodcut from The Old Hocus Pocus, being the Whole Art of Jugling [sic] shows a conjuror giving a performance with similar items on his table:
It seems to me, therefore, that what we have here are not "objects relating to gambling and chance," as Newman claims, but objects to be used in
conjuring or sleight of hand. This is further supported by the fact that the Magician card in German was sometimes labeled "Der Gaukler" and in French
"Escamoteur," both words more connected with sleight of hand and deception and neither with gambling (and neither, by the way, with the
"spiritualized" magic suggested by the Rider-Waite card). Also, the traditional French label on the Magician card in the Marseilles deck is "Le
Bateleur" ("The Juggler"), rather than "Le Mage" (or something similar). Two other English labels for this card have been "The Mountebank" and "The
Thimble-Rigger," both words rather like "trickster."
Some commentators on the Tarot make much of whether the Magician holds objects in his "right hand" or his "left hand. I put these terms in quotation
marks because they are sometimes used to refer to the hand at the right or left side of the card from the viewer's standpoint. Thus Newman writes, The
convention will be followed throughout this work that the right hand is the hand of a figure closest to the right side of the card and represents the
side closest to consciousness. It is here that the events and contents closest to consciousness are found. Similarly, when I refer to the left hand I
am speaking from our point of view and am referring to the hand holding the unconscious content, which is the hand that appears on the left-hand side
of the card.
While I agree in general with this approach to picture interpretation, I suspect that not too much weight should be placed on this question of left
and right in this case. Note, for example, that the Marseilles Magician holds the wand in his left hand while the Rider-Waite Magician holds the wand
in his right hand. Similarly, the Royal Fez Moroccan Magician holds the wand in his right hand while the Jungian Magician holds the wand in his left.
(See the above reproductions of these three cards.)
What else can we surmise from this consideration of the Magician in the Tarot? Thus far little has been said about his location in relation to the
other cards in the Major Arcana. The Magician is "Arcanum I," the initial card in the series of 21 numbered cards. The Fool card sometimes comes
before the series of 21 cards and sometimes comes after the other cards. Sometimes the Fool is numbered "0" and sometimes (as in the Marseilles
version) it bears no number at all. In any case, it the Magician who is "Number One. This position can be interpreted in terms of one's overall view
of the nature of the Tarot. Newman, for example, as the sub-title of his book indicates, sees the Tarot as "a myth of male initiation. Joseph
Campbell, in a related vein, sees the order of the cards as suggesting "the graded stages of an ideal life, lived virtuously according to the knightly
codes of the Middle Ages." A. E. Waite and many others find various occult traditions and esoteric teachings embodied in the order of the cards. What
is certain, however, and most useful for our purposes, is that the Magician bears a special relation to one-ness or wholeness. Here, I believe, Newman
has got it right:
The number one symbolizes the undifferentiated totality. Out of the one come the two, i.e., the opposites. In the state signified by the number one,
the opposites have not yet been experienced, nor the conflict, the tension, or the possibility for consciousness. The numerical value given to this
arcanum by virtue of its location is that of a wholeness in its predifferentiated condition. It is the distinction often made between unity and union.
As a young man at the beginning of his journey, the Magician lives with the opposites (as shown, for example, by the features of his clothing) but has
not yet fully experienced them and thus has not yet learned to overcome these opposites through holding the tension between them. That is, he has not
yet reached the state of union. Here, at the beginning of his life, he exists in a state of participation mystique. In a certain sense, however, this
kind of oneness is a valuable quality for someone at the beginning of a journey, perhaps even an essential one. Like the experience of "falling in
love," or like the developmental stage of the "love affair with the world," this pre-conscious unity provides a launching into the struggles and
growth of adult life.
Before leaving the Tarot behind we should note that not only is the Magician one of the images within this mysterious set of cards. Magicians also use
the Tarot for magical purposes, especially for divination, one of the traditional functions of magic and one with close ties to psychology. So
regardless of the age of these symbols they can be used for an ancient purpose. "So," as Grillot de Givry writes,
there we come back to the pythoness of antiquity; the seer, the inspired one, the sibyl, whose tripod was only a material instrument helping to induce
trance and to facilitate the reception of the Spirit. To-day the tarot replaces the tripod; the phenomenon remains identical and quite as disturbing,
but the procedure is better adapted to the requirements of modern society, and it has been successfully introduced into the humblest cottage as well
as the most sumptuous dwellings.
MERLIN
In contrast to Hermes and to the Tarot magician, Merlin is known by virtually all Western adults. His name and his popular image, clothed in dark robe
and conical hat with astrological symbols, waving his magic wand, are known even by most children. We may even think of Merlin as an icon of
"magician" for our culture. This in itself is significant since we may learn about the deep meaning of "magician" by studying this figure which
continues to enchant us.
Scholars differ in their opinions about the extent to which the stories of Merlin are based on an historical person. As one might expect, the "quest
for the historical Merlin" has been popular in the 20th century. And although some experts continue to hold that Merlin is a completely fictional
character, the current view seems to be that he has a historical basis. In fact, it seems likely that there were two historical figures underlying the
literary character: a fifth-century Welsh political prophet, referred to as Merlin Ambrosius because he was called "Ambrosius" in the earliest
stories, and a sixth-century visionary and "wildman of the forest" named "Myrddin," referred to as Merlin Silvestris because of his connection to the
woods. In the 12th century Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote about both of these Merlins: first about Merlin Ambrosius, in his Historia Regum Britanniae
(History of the Kings of Britain), and then about Merlin Silvestris, in his Vita Merlini (The Life of Merlin) which was composed some years later and
which also attempted "to fuse the fifth- and sixth-century Merlins into one person."
Some recent scholars have maintained that one or the other of these two (probably) historical figures provides the more plausible basis for the Merlin
stories. Leona Goodrich, for example, favors Merlin Ambrosius, while Nikolai Tolstoy favors Merlin Silvestris as the primary basis. Fortunately, for
our purposes, this issue may remain open. The point, however, is that unlike Hermes and the Tarot Magician, the stories of Merlin often seem to be
possible descriptions of an actual human being.
As with Hermes (or with Jesus or any other "hero," for that matter), the stories or legends surrounding Merlin's birth and childhood are significant.
In the first vernacular version of the Merlin story, Robert de Boron tells of the devils plotting to undo the work of Christ by "incarnating" one of
their own a kind of "Anti-Christ. One of the devils impregnates a virgin at night, conceiving Merlin. Realizing what has happened, the girl confesses
to her priest who sprinkles her with holy water thus breaking the devil's power over her and her child. So although Merlin is born of a devil father
and a virgin mother (and thus from the very beginning is a union of opposites), his overall impact is for good. This is confirmed by the story, also
related by Robert de Boron, that when Merlin was 18 months old he saved his mother's life by speaking out eloquently and prophetically when his mother
was on trial for having borne him.
At the age of seven, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Merlin was brought before King Vortigern. The king had been told that the walls of his tower,
which kept collapsing, would stand firm if their mortar were mixed with the blood of a fatherless boy. Merlin, of course, was "fatherless. Because of
his clairvoyant powers, however, Merlin was able to tell the king that if he would dig beneath the tower he would find the true cause of the tower's
collapse: two dragons fighting, a red one and a white one again, a struggle of opposites. As Gollnick puts it, "Merlin is represented here as the wise
child. He has the ability to see into the depths and to diagnose the roots of a problem that cannot or will not be seen on the surface." Because of
his power to see and confront the opposites, whether in the psyche or in the external world, Merlin is able to transform situations. The "opposites,"
however, are within him as well. Jung wrote:
Just as all archetypes have a positive, favourable, bright side that points upwards, so also they have one that points downwards, partly negative and
unfavourable, partly chthonic .... witness the extremely instructive figure of Merlin ....
Of course, it is instructive that so often even those actions which may seem at first to be "negative" turn out to be seen as positive, as celebrated
by the concept of the felix culpa in Christian theology. An example of this in the Merlin stories is when Merlin deceives Igraine into thinking that
Uther Pendragon is her husband. The product of their illicit sex is, of course, Arthur. Merlin, like all magicians, is a deceiver. But he also has a
"bright" and "positive" side. As von Franz puts it, "... those primal opposites which the Christian teaching has torn apart into an unresolvable
conflict exist together in his nature."
Two final stories about Merlin may help balance his magical powers with his more human side. According to Geoffrey's Vita Merlini, Merlin goes mad
after a great battle in which he kills his nephew and withdraws to the Caledonian Forest, becoming a kind of wild man.
The second story which shows Merlin's "human" side, and one which seems to have particularly impressed Jung, is Merlin's falling in love with the
mysterious "Lady of the Lake" (variously identified as Viviane, or Vivien, sometimes as Niniane, or Nimiane or Nymus or Nimu). This "lady" eventually
imprisons Merlin forever in a tower, showing that even a great magician is not immune to anima projections ("because she sums up everything that a man
can never get the better of and never finishes coping with"). As Jung writes in discussing a particular fairy tale,
In that case the hero has been wafted out of the profane world through his encounter with the anima, like Merlin by his fairy: as an ordinary man he
is like one caught in a marvelous dream, viewing the world through a veil of mist. One thinks in this connection, naturally, of Jung's own experience
of "poetry" with Sabina Spielrein. "Human, all-too-human."
According to legend, Merlin's mysterious call continued to be heard in the forest during the last years of his life. Von Franz acknowledges the
importance of this image for Jung by calling the final chapter of her C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time "Le Cri de Merlin." And Jung himself wrote the
following about the large stone which he carved at his Bolligen "Tower" in connection with his seventy-fifth birthday:
The stone stands outside the Tower, and is like an explanation of it. It is a manifestation of the occupant, but one which remains incomprehensible to
others. Do you know what I wanted to chisel into the back face of the stone? "Le cri de Merlin!" For what the stone expressed reminded me of Merlin's
life in the forest, after he had vanished from the world. Men still hear his cries, so the legend runs, but they cannot understand or interpret them.
HOUDINI
The final figure I have selected for this "gathering of magicians," is Harry Houdini. Born Erich Weiss in Hungary in 1874, he moved to America with
his parents when he was still a child. He changed his name to "Houdini" to honor the popular and creative French magician Jean Eug ne Robert-Houdin
(1805-71). Before the recent fame of another American magician, David Copperfield, Houdini was clearly the most famous conjuror in history. (One
evidence of his influence is the large number of performing magicians who have adopted stage names ending in "-ini" since his death.)
Like Jung and many others in this period, Houdini (who was born one year prior to Jung) had a life-long interest in spiritualism and the occult. But
where Jung attempted to find the sources of such manifestations in the psyche, Houdini first attempted to replicate them, then to debunk them, and
then, desperately, to use them to make contact with the dead. Rogan Taylor writes of Houdini:
At the height of his career, he was loved, even worshipped, by literally millions of people in Europe and America. Whatever it was about Houdini and
his feats that so impressed the minds of his faithful followers, that power seems hardly to have waned at all. Houdini still casts an irresistible
shadow, and long after his death [in 1926], his name remains a household word. He captured the imaginations not only of his contemporaries, but also
of successive generations who never even witnessed any of his stupendous feats. He is a modern myth, a true showbiz shaman of our time.
Houdini was fascinated by magic as a boy and began his stage career performing rather standard tricks. He was inspired by the famous stage magicians
of the recent past, Hermann the Great and Harry Kellar in addition to Robert-Houdin, and he desperately wanted to be "great" himself, but it was some
time before he found the approach which led to his special fame. As his biographer put it, "He was convinced that he had some role to play but could
not work out what it was." The key came through his interest in spiritualist seances.
In the typical spiritualist seance of Houdini's time, the so-called medium would be securely tired up with ropes prior to the darkening of the seance
room or the closing of the "spirit cabinet. Nevertheless, drums and trumpets would sound and people would be touched by "spirit hands. Houdini soon
learned that the secret of such performances was that the mediums had ways to free themselves and then re-tie themselves. He set himself the goal of
becoming history's greatest escape artist. He succeeded in doing just this.
What Houdini did not know at the time that he set himself this goal was that escaping from restraints was a typical shamanistic demonstration.
According to Rogan Taylor, again, The escapology trick is one of the most ancient and potent symbols of the drama and the dilemma of human existence.
We are bound in our bodies. How can we escape? Consequently, escapology is also one of the most frequently occurring feats performed during
shamanistic healing magic all over the world. Regardless of whether the shaman literally demonstrates his ability to escape, he must convince his
audience that he has undergone an initiation in the Underworld or on a different plane of existence and has returned healed. He must convince his
audience that healing escape from sickness is possible for them as well through his help.
Although Houdini remained unfamiliar with this shamanistic context for his art,
His shows contained such an ancient and powerful healing drama that his contemporaries found them as fascinating, moving and "therapeutic" as their
nomadic forebears had done ten thousand years before. Houdini's escapology was, in essence, a healing rite which the demon-possessed modern Westerners
avidly attended in the hope of a dramatic exorcism. ... [T]he effect of these feats lies less on visual stimulation than on their impact on the inner
lives of the watchers. The audiences identified with him totally and shared every minute of his ordeal. When Houdini got free, everybody got free.
One of Houdini's most famous stage tricks was the illusion known as Metamorphosis, sometimes referred to as "the substitution trunk. In this trick the
magician is bound with restraints such as ropes or handcuffs and locked in a large trunk. His assistant holds a curtain in front of the trunk and in a
matter of seconds the curtain is dropped and the magician, now freed from the restraints, is standing there. The assistant (in Houdini's case, his
wife, Bess) is found, tightly bound, inside the trunk. Versions of this trick have become a standard part of stage magic shows since Houdini's time.
(Coincidentally, given our focus on the magician as archetype, the most famous current performers of this effect are "The Pendragons.") But with
Metamorphosis the most striking thing for Houdini was not the reaction of his audience, it was his own reaction: performing the trick gave Houdini the
feeling that he had left his body. Despite knowing full well that it was "only a trick," Houdini felt that a genuine miracle had occurred. As Taylor
puts it,
It is fascinating that a trick that, in its original context, was designed to point towards the ecstatic experiences of the shaman, should actually
begin to create such experiences. Houdini was, as it were, working backwards, starting with the tricks and ending up with the supernatural
experiences, instead of the other way around. ... Houdini was baffled by his own experiences.
As a performer myself, I have occasionally had the same feeling. It can happen in many fields, of course. The gymnast who completes a difficult
routine without a hitch and the musician who performs a demanding piece in a "magical" way can know this same sense of ecstasy. It is rare, but when
it happens to the magician, as it did to Houdini, it raises the question of the relationship between "the two magics performance magic and ceremonial
magic."
As a result of such experiences, Houdini became obsessed with his search for "real" magic. He collected thousands upon thousands of books about magic
and the occult (books which are now housed in a special collection at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.). As Taylor, poignantly, describes
Houdini's library:
It was like an occult version of Citizen Kane's vast collection of European art, only Houdini was gathering together all the desperate fragments of
literature reflecting Europe's long-standing obsession with magic. Houdini plumbed the European unconscious in his search for a genuine tradition in
which to find a home. But he never found it.
Lacking the context of a spiritual "home" or tradition, Houdini's inner life took a rather morbid turn. He had long since achieved both fame and
wealth. And he had escaped from all the locks, ropes and jails that both America and Europe had to offer. What he could not escape from, however, was
has dependence on his mother. Bizarre as it may seem, he was never concerned with the possibility of his own death, despite the fact that he often
risked his life with his spectacular escapes. Nor was he concerned with the possible death of his wife. He was, however, obsessed with the thought
that his beloved mother would die before him and that her death would drive him insane. (It is for this reason that one of his most interesting
biographies is titled Death and the Magician.) Because of this fear of his mother's death and his belief he would inevitably go mad, Houdini visited
the local psychiatric hospitals, then called "lunatic asylums," of course, in all the major cities where he performed. (As a result of these visits he
developed several famous escapes from the psychiatric restraints of those days, the strait-jacket, for example.) He also visited graveyards, being
especially interested in the graves of suicides.
When his mother did die, in 1908, Houdini collapsed. Afterwards, he visited her grave every day and would lie face down on it hoping to receive a
message from her. Despite his public attacks on spiritualist mediums, Houdini began seeking out mediums who might help him make contact with his
mother. When no such contact came, Houdini made pacts with those around him, arranging secret codes and signs which could be used to prove
communication after his own death. For fifty years following Houdini's death on Halloween 1926, an annual seance was held for his family and friends.
After fifty years without success, the seances were discontinued.
As the rabbi said at his graveside, Houdini possessed a power which he himself had never understood. In another culture he might have become a shaman.
Given still another background, he might have become an innovative and powerful therapist. He was clearly a "superstar," perhaps the first. But he
failed to find a framework in which to make full sense of his gifts or his life.
And yet, as Eugene Burger writes, "This image of freedom from bondage, in whatever form, is a powerful one indeed."And Houdini's success and a huge
success it was due "to the great power of the mythical (if not archetypal) character he was portraying namely, the 'Man No Chains Can Hold.'
The phrase "if not archetypal" in the above quotation is echoed in the most recent biography of Houdini which I have read. In her 1993 work The Life
and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini, Ruth Brandon quotes Jung on "the primordial images of the unconscious" and then concludes
Houdini, in his (literally) death-defying stunts, brought this 'primordial image' to the level of conscious experience, both for himself and on behalf
of his audience.
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