The Renaissance Tarot presents one of my favorite renditions of the Magician. In my post on the history of the card, I discussed the tension between three archetypes: the charalatan, the magus, and the artisan. Now there is a remarkable thing about this combination: the three have been united since ancient times in the person of the god Hermes or Mercury. This is the connection that Williams exploits so wonderfully in this card design.

Hermes is a clever and devious god. His first act after birth was to steal Apollo's cattle, leading them backwards with brooms attached to their tales to obscure their tracks. The god is the patron of travelers, thieves, peddlers, and artisans. Astrologically, Mercury rules Gemini by day and Virgo by night, again reminding us of the charlatan and the artisan.

And then there is Hermes Trismegistus, lengendary inventor of alchemy and father of the magical sciences. The identities of the great magus and the god became inseparably interwoven, and all the great principles of magic were thus attributed to the clever god. As magus, Hermes sometimes appears as an elder sage, rather than a young messenger. When correspondences are made with the Teutonic deities, Mercury is paired with Odin. I always regarded this as very strange until remembering that both are patrons of magic.

Today, we are accustomed to seeing science and occultism in stark opposition, incompatible alternative views of reality. But this is a by-product of the Enlightenment. In Renaissance times, magicians *were* scientists, calculating the positions of the planets and proposing intricate chemical theories based on the four elements and the numerological principles of the Pythagoreans. Many of the ideas we now associate with the occult tradition were not the exclusive property of heretics and secret societies; rather, they were the common intellectual property of the times, taught in universities and debated among philosophers and clergymen.

The Renaissance Tarot Magician is thus a young man of intellect and education, perhaps a bit glib and pretentious, but nevertheless a serious intellectual with a confidence in his ability to describe the cosmos in theoretical terms, and apply that knowledge to produce effect. On his table, instead of the suit symbols, we see the perfect solids of Plato. Plato recognized that there are only five solid figures that can be made out of regular polygons: the tetrahedron (pyramid), octohedron, icosahedron (all three with triangular faces), cube (made of squares), and dodecahedron (made of pentagons). These he argued to be the shapes of the atoms of the elements: fire, air, water, earth, and the celestial element quintessence, respectively. By symbolizing the elements with these shapes, rather than the suit signs, Williams reveals his Magician to be a philosopher and scholar, rather than a mere performer.

As a working scientist and an avid student of philosophy of all sorts, I identify easily with this Magician. He is ancestor to Papa Al Einstein as well as Uncle Al Crowley, and that is a provocative connection. He symbolizes the way of the intellect; the Magician lives in a universe of categories, equations, and deductions. In a reading, he may signal a need to apply reason to a problem, or to develop one's mind. Conversely, he may signal that one has become to caught up in models and theories. He brings to mind the Paul Simon lyric:

Maybe I think too much for my own good
Some people say so
Other people say no, no
The fact is you don't think as much as you could

Tom Tadfor Little
tlittle@telp.com

Tarot at Telperion Productions
http://www.telp.com/excursions/tarot/

The Hermitage: A Tarot History Site
http://www.crosswinds.net/members/~hermit