Magic happens when we do the unexpected. Magic happens when we make a change happen that takes others by surprise. Why is that? Because they did not expect it.
In the earliest tarot decks, the magician is a slight of hand magician, the entertainer, the stage magician. The image here is from the Tarot de Marseilles, which is what Le Bateleur means, a street performer.
The performer lives by his wits. Yes, they perfect tricks to fool the audience and that makes for great entertainment. Think about that for a moment. They share a link with today's stage magicians. All these magicians get your attention one way, with their words, their humor, their misdirection, getting you to look at one thing while they are doing another, resulting in amazing surprises. Things happen that the audience does not expect.
Have you ever witnessed a magician with a deck of playing cards right in front of you who can make cards appear or disappear right in front of you and you have no idea how it happened? That is how good they are. You can be within arm's reach with your eyes wide open and not know what happened. That is one kind of magic.
Another kind of magic happens when someone who is more of a shaman creates change that we cannot figure out. The card below illustrating that is from the Old Path Tarot. Shamans could use simple tools like sound from drums, rattles and bells to transform consciousness through our feelings. We could see feel those vibrations in our bodies, but we did not know what happened. That kind of magician is getting our attention with a subconscious level of recognition.
That kind of magician would pick up signs from animals and nature and communicate messages to us with symbols. That kind of magician could communicate with plants and knew which plants we could burn or ingest to help us recognize changes. These messages from nature, through the shaman could help us heal and gain insight into our selves.
Even to this day, with our great abilities in science, we do not know how or why they constructed things like stone circles, although we suspect links, like connections to constellations of stars. It was a kind of communication between the universe and us that the magician facilitated and today we have theories about it. But think about it. Although we do not really understand it all, ancient people put a great amount of labor into those constructions. Would they work that hard for no reason?
When you look at today's Farmer's Almanacs, you still find the ancient connections between astronomy and astrology. They pay attention to moon cycles and planetary changes for not only planting our food crops and going fishing or launching voyages, but also staring new business, ending old business and taking care of our selves.
Today, we can still get messages from nature, and still find healing and peace of mind through nature. The shaman's tools were extremely simple. Dressing in certain kinds of furs not only kept us warm, they also conveyed energies to us. Warriors wore one kind of skin, fur, feathers and amulets while healers and seers wore a different kinds of skins, fur, feathers and amulets. People were pictured with certain kinds of animals to convey certain messages.
The second magician is also casting runes, which are an abstract set of symbols thousands of years older than cards, which still contains the sames kinds of meanings that they did to our ancestors. How powerful is it that those symbols have remained consistent through millennia?
How powerful is it that the first musical instruments that humans developed were drums, rattles and simple flutes and wind instruments, and those are still catalysts for change for us today? How powerful is it that our ancestors found that the aroma of certain burning certain plants could shift our feelings and consciousness and that we still relate to the same ones today? How powerful is it that ingesting certain plants could bring about changes in health and consciousness back then and still today?
The most concise definition of magic is change according to will. We discovered ways to make change and then we used them deliberately.
So what is the link between the stage magician and the shaman? Change according to will.
Both use materials that are hidden in plain sight.
There is magic all around us. We just have to open our eyes to it and use it.
We all have the ability to be magicians and our magic can take us by surprise.
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Have a wonderful day!
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