The Magician, Number I

Today, Friday 13 March 2020, sanitisation work has begun in my City and will be completed in just a few days. So a “contamination” of cleanliness and positivity is setting out, to safeguard the health and wellbeing of us all. This apparent silence we sense around us is exactly the spirit of the Tarot, which is compared to a mute book, since it is we who must converse using the language proper to the mute. In their apparent silence they are a philosophical machine of great power, a combinatory art, a language that seems simple to read but is in fact complex in structure. A card is a simple sign that must be read, not described. In the search for analogies, signs become a stimulus, an inner search that represents the foundation of every true transmutation. We must never forget the value a figure can have in impressing itself on memory. It is the same function a card can perform with regard to both personal and universal memories; the figures of the Tarot become an experience unfolding parallel to our own, as if two parallel worlds were living the same event at the same time.
And so, letting myself be guided by the “dialogue” I have established with the cards, it is precisely Arcanum No. I, “The Magician”, that today wants to share with all of you the strength of man’s will, recognisable in the particular headwear where we “read” the horizontal 8, the mathematical sign of infinity. Man is the microcosm reflected in the macrocosm. This hat traces the start of a spiral. This Arcanum represents a young man, a creature full of potential, and so this figure corresponds to every principle of activity. He comes from the invisible, since he represents the first point, emerging from nothing to take his first steps in the world. In the universe he is God, conceived as the great inspirer of everything that occurs in the cosmos; in man he is the fulcrum of individual initiative, the centre of perception, of will, of knowledge. This figure, standing before his simple work table on which a few tools are placed, indicates that each of us, with few means but only will and commitment, can achieve unimaginable things.
As the “architect” of his own fortune, the magician is creative will, the capacity for intuition. He represents one who achieves his goal through his own personal merits. The symbolism of this card is that life itself demands skill and intelligence; it works with light and shadow, performing sleight-of-hand tricks from the unconscious to super-knowledge. The Magician holds in one hand an active wand that captures cosmic forces, and in the other a receptive coin symbolising perfection, truth — but it also reveals to us that the magician does not forget his daily needs, just as in this period of restrictions this possibility is not denied to any of us.
My personal pairing for Arcanum No. I is that of Pietro Hispano, Pope John XXI, the “alchemist” Pope, crowned in the Cathedral of Viterbo on 20 September 1276. He had a large room built in the Papal Palace to use as bedroom and study. With his “magical” experiments he caused an explosion, bringing down the room’s ceiling on the night between 10 and 11 May 1277. His tomb is in the Cathedral, and he is among the few Popes mentioned by Dante in Paradise.
This card is also called “The Magician”; after all, the one who opens the game is also the one who deals the cards and performs the “magic” of conjuring up the situations that will present themselves from time to time. How many times, metaphorically, have we been told, about the choices and opportunities we have met in life, “…you played your cards well” or the opposite? Well, this card tells us that everything is potential; we must launch ourselves, take a first step towards reality. We are not separate from what surrounds us; we are aware and conscious of everything around us. To be conscious we must live only the moment, the cosmic moment, with neither past nor future, and only then do we reach the light of knowledge.
The Magician stands between the eternity and the infinity that we call the present; he is faithful to everything that is his body and his intelligence, his heart and his creative strength. The table that separates our microcosm from the macrocosm — I like to dedicate it to all the people who, before a “work table”, are making the wisest choices for our future. Let us support the figures of the doctors and all healthcare workers, as well as those of the Government and of all our closest local Administrators, united as never before to overcome this difficult moment.
Our Mayor praised the whole population for its degree of collective awareness, and this “contamination” of cleanliness — as I like to call it, of our souls too — through this “sanitisation” effort, is a tangible first step towards resolving the problem. As the Arcana teach us, healing consists in recovering the fluidity of our energies. We must increasingly acquire the power to help ourselves. Let us carry on appearing and disappearing, just as only magicians know how to do. The virus, as I told you yesterday, is invisible; it is not strong in itself, but it is we who make it so if we expose ourselves to it by making contact. Our magic will be to remain invisible — without us, it does not exist.