Tarot Card for the Day ~ January 24

The Magician

Merlin

 

Fortune Cookie: How do you need to honor the Magician in you? And how do you need to live a life in balance so you can access and use all of your wonderful skills and gifts?      

Another card up from last October.  And boyo, can we all use a card like this on a winter Sunday!  It’s worth the long read here, and some extra contemplation. 

I consider The Magician to be the Ace of the Major Arcana in the Tarot deck.  (The Major Arcana are the twenty-two cards that are all archetypal, allegorical figures – The Magician, The Tower, The Priestess, etc. − that have no complement in a regular deck of playing cards.)

So, as you’ve heard me say before, Aces in any Tarot deck are cards of a new beginning.

Therefore:

~ How can you (how do you need to) begin your life anew, today, right now?  Or at least open to the possibilities that can help bring it? 

~ What changes can you begin, even in small ways? 

~ What potentials can you believe in, hope for, reach for and remember?

Here’s an excerpt from an article on my web site (www.shamanspath.org) that will give you a bit more Nealio’s perspective info about The Magician:

“When I look at The Magician, no matter what deck I hold, I consistently see (and sometimes sense through intuitive awareness) some specific elements or aspects: 

There’s the element of deep scholarship and functional learning, often represented by books, scrolls or papers. 

There’s the element of magical tools, including wands, crystals, and icons from various traditions.  [What are YOUR magical tools? Piano?  Pen?  Computer?  Healing hands? Trowel?  Paintbrush? Clay and cloth?  Voice?  Smile?]

There’s an element of ceremony or ritual, often depicted in the motions of The Magician. 

There’s a connection to the realms of Spirit, often represented through the presence of spirit helpers like angels or totem animals participating, or at least being present. 

And there’s an aspect of connection to Power – of focusing will, energy, mind and soul to bring positive things into being in the world.    

I may find that each or any of those elements and aspects seen in the card should be selected and emphasized for any specific client, and then included in recommended “homework” I may suggest as a result of our session.  

For example: softly sing to yourself what was your favorite lullaby three times a day for three months to help you reconnect with the magic that is in you but has been allowed to go fallow. 

Or: remember and reread the three novels that have been most influential in your life to help remind you what you really care about, and why. 

Or: write a haiku a day for thirty-six days to help re-find and heal the writer in your soul.  

Importantly, each of the elements I “see” in The Magician card is a thing that many of us have had learned out of us as we have “grown up.” 

So we give those things, which are central to many traditional cultures and most spiritualities, extremely short shrift as we attend to our cultural paradigms for living a fulfilling life in the here and now that we have been taught. 

As one client ruefully said, ‘I have ritual in my life.  I DO.  Every day except Sunday, I get up at seven.  I stop at the ’Buck’s at 7:45 for a grande cappuccino.  At noon, I eat rabbit food from a black plastic bowl.  I worship the Goddess of spinning at the gym ’most every evening, and I’m prostrate under goose down with TIVO by 10:00 at night.  I might as well be a nun.’

Well………… Okay. 

But that’s not quite what I have in mind by ritual.  Although, over the course of working with any client, I may help them find that such events and actions, which most of us would consider meaningless from a perspective of personal ceremony, can in fact take on deeper meaning and become a connection to our higher aspects for our own magical good.  If we consciously determine that they will.

But back to The Magician.

There’s an additional aspect of the card that I came to understand one afternoon when I was reading for someone on the cusp of a beneficial but stressful personal − let’s call it − evolution. 

I stressed that The Magician, or in our case, Merlin the Wizard, brings together

learning/tools/ritual or ceremony/spiritual connection & guidance/embracing of power for the benefit of self and others. 

BUT, I realized as I was speaking to this particular client:

in order to be able to do so – to be ready to blend, focus and use each of those elements at the right moment, perhaps in an instant – the Wizard must attend to living a truly balanced and positive life, moment by moment.  And that’s something our culture hasn’t really helped us with much over the last century or two (or fifty).”

So given all that:

How do you need to honor the Magician in you? 

And how do you need to live a life in balance so you can access and use all of your wonderful skills and gifts IN THE MOMENT when they can be most helpful to you and to us all?

Work with that today, and see what magic you can claim − and work − for the highest and best of all of us!

Bright blessings and YOUR OWN Magic!!!

Quote for the Day:  Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?   ~ J.K. Rowling, from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Today’s Weather:  Derling wurvishes escarining up and around the mossy downlands.  Buy your wildebeest lavender petit-fours.  

On This Date: 1961 – 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash: A bomber carrying two H-bombs breaks up in mid-air over North Carolina. One weapon nearly detonates; its uranium core is still lost.  [Oh. Swell.]