The MAGICIAN: Your Trick Play
A Tarot offering for Virgo season
Virgo Season—and everyone is hard at work. Hustling between the office and school. Checking boxes. Circling back. Closing loops.
Then MAGICIAN saunters into town, folding table under one arm, carpet bag on the other. With a flash of his cape and a tip of the hat, he sets up shop in a shadowed corner of a busy square (permit? nope). He beckons you near.
Prepare to be amazed! Mystified! Delighted!
Will you stop? Will you let him pull a red rose—its scent as fresh as children’s laughter—from the curve of your neck? (Or the sleeve of his coat?)
Labor — Sacred and Profane
I have been busy with autumnal tasks this month. Taking stock of what I’ve grown this year and ramping up for a final productive push before the holidays sweep me up in their current. Virgo is ruled by Mercury and so I’m hoping the messenger god’s sharp thinking can help me get the job done. And yet…with Mercury, the process rarely unfolds in the way that I expect.1
He’s a trickster after all.
The MAGICIAN is Mercury’s card. And he’s looking quite priestly here in the Rider Waite Smith deck—crowned with a lemniscate, like the goddess in STRENGTH; adorned with Sophia’s red robes and flowers. His raised and lowered arms suggest power—the ability to manifest the many wonders of the spirit world. (As Above, So Below.) Wielding the elemental tokens (pentacle, cup, sword, and stave) as tools of the trade, he’s an impressive ally for makers of all kinds, reminding us of the sanctity of our creative labor.
And yet, there’s something delightfully profane about MAGICIAN, too.
Older decks dubbed him the Conjurer, emphasizing his skill in the art of deception, illusion, and sleight-of-hand. As art historian, Laetitia Barbier says of the MAGICIAN: “He is both a charlatan and a prophet and his tricks don’t have to be real to produce real effect.”2
MAGICIAN asks us to suspend our disbelief in order to get at some deeper element of Truth—capital T. Like children fashioning mudpies, we open ourselves to affect, to experimentation, with the aim that we might learn something through the process—rather than obsess over outcomes. MAGICIAN implores us to come out and play.
It can get messy.
There’s a touch of the chaotic in this energy that serves as a powerful antidote for Virgo’s tendency toward “perfectionism” in the guise of efficiency and attention to detail.
As Mercury’s envoy, MAGICIAN announces that Spirit has a message for us. But we cannot receive it unless we open ourselves to unexpected possibilities. In other words, (talking to myself here!) go ahead and make your to-do lists, set your goals, assemble your tools and “manage” your time. But leave some room for surprise—for FUN for gods’ sakes—or you may lose the vitality that set you on this path in the first place.
Banish your inner Trickster and you risk becoming a “martyr” to your work. As Elizabeth Gilbert explains (with a good dose of humor) in her book on creative living, Big Magic, creative martyrs often become rigid, austere, sad and—ultimately—lifeless. But the mercurial Trickster in us always finds a Way through ‘No Way.’
And if he can’t…well…at least he had fun trying.
I love Trickster characters in myth. Maybe because I have over-indexed on being ‘good,’ the Trickster’s moral ambiguity appeals to me. He is, as Lisa Martiano writes, “willing to subvert conventional values in service to growth and life.”3 As a child, I loved stories of Robin Hood, “Prince of Thieves.” Of Peter Pan and his lost boys. My favorite Marvel super hero? Loki!
MAGICIAN invites us to take a page from the Norse God of Mischief. Why not? He always manages to have a little bit more fun; he laughs a little more heartily; states his beliefs more confidently—but with a wink.
I may be a good protestant worker out of habit, but when I draw MAGICIAN, I look to game my own systems, asking myself: If I have to do this task, can I insert a little levity?
Shouldering what’s Heavy
Times are tough out there. We are reaping a harvest that was sown generations before we got here and some of it is rotten, folks. But if we can share a laugh, or conjure up an image of something beautiful, something we can appreciate together in wonder and in awe, even if it’s an illusion…it helps. If we’re lucky, the trick will surprise even us. The lie revealing a truth that we can’t yet see.
So play! Play with your tarot cards. Sing to your soup bowl. Make a mess of things and dance while you pull the pieces back together. We can only be as free as we believe ourselves to be.
Try this spread
Connect with your inner MAGICIAN. Draw tarot cards on each of the following questions and reflect on your results.
CARD 1—What does my Soul want to create?
CARD 2—How can I have more fun creating it?
CARD 3—What rule may I need to bend in the process?
CARD 4—What (surprising!) tools are at my disposal?
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Thank you for being a part of this magical space with me. I wish you bountiful creative joy through the close of Virgo Season and until next month, when we will meet again in the hallowed chambers of the Hierophant!
You may remember from my challenging Chariot-Summer months, I like to call in Mercury to help with impossible situations…but I often have trouble with the requisite release of expectations he requires.
from Tarot and Divination: A Visual Archive, Abrams: 2021.
From The Vital Spark: Reclaim your Outlaw Energies and Find Your Feminine Fire, 2024.