The Magician (tarot card)

In the occult context, the trump cards are recontextualized as the Major Arcana and granted complex esoteric meaning.

The Magician in such context is interpreted as the first numbered and second total card of the Major Arcana, succeeding the Fool, which is unnumbered or marked 0.

The Magician as an object of occult study is interpreted as symbolic of power, potential, and the unification of the physical and spiritual worlds.

The Mantegna Tarocchi image that would seem to correspond with the Magician is labeled Artixano, the Artisan; he is the second lowest in the series, outranking only the Beggar.

Visually the 18th-century woodcuts reflect earlier iconic representations, and can be compared to the free artistic renditions in the 15th-century hand-painted tarots made for the Visconti and Sforza families.

The curves of the magician's hat brim in the Marseilles image are similar to the esoteric deck's mathematical sign of infinity.

The essentials are that the magician has set up a temporary table outdoors, to display items that represent the suits of the Minor Arcana: Cups, Coins, Swords (as knives).

[6] Such symbols signify the classical elements of fire, earth, air, and water, "which lie like counters before the adept, and he adapts them as he wills".

[9] The Magician in the Marseilles deck is depicted with six fingers on his left hand[note 2] rather than five, which Jodorowsky interprets as a symbol of manipulating and reorganizing reality.

[6] Tarot experts have defined the Magician in association with the Fool, which directly precedes it in the sequence; Rachel Pollack refers to the card as "in the image of the trickster-wizard".

[12] According to A. E. Waite's 1910 book The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, the Magician card is associated with the divine motive in man.