The Magician

1. THE MAGICIAN

Divinatory Meanings: Success. Triumph. Control of the environment. Somebody who has either triumph or success or control of the environment.

Yes or No: Yes.

Numerical Value: 1

Undoubtedly, of all the significant accomplishments in science and technology, none is more important in our lives than the computer. And nobody knows computers better than Bill Gates. Even as I tried to write this, I had to update my Microsoft word program and spend at least thirty minutes of my life dealing with Mr. Gate’s extremely astute marketing skills. So it is beyond any doubt that Bill Gates has somehow managed to recreate the world in his own image. This is entirely the point of the card of the Magician: using the tools given to us to create a reality to our liking.

The Magician does not need to be a philanthropist. He is simply a function of the raw power of intelligence, divinely guided to create new things. He represents overcoming obstacles and doing whatever he desires. The fulfillment of desire need not be good or evil. It is simply powerful.

To be the Magician means not to worry about the result of one’s actions insomuch as they accomplish an inner desire or create something new. Innovation cannot exist without the Magician. The greatest Magicians in history, Pythagoras, Copernicus, Michelangelo, Newton, Einstein and many others, changed our world forever. They became a function of time insomuch that the changes they made were irreversible. We can never go back to a world without laws of gravity. We can’t forget how to make the atom bomb.

The Magician’s moral ambiguity is answerable only to God, and God likes to play dice. Do we really need to know that the atom can be split? Do we really want to discover the secrets of Gasoline? Why invent flying machines if you are going to use them for murdering people from the air?

The Magician in our age is the scientist. Mostly amoral, the modern scientists are driven by desire of profit and wealth. Spiritual Science, the most important of all the schools of science, is mostly a forgotten thing of the past. The Natural Sciences are now motivated primarily by greed. Soon it will be survival. It is a cyclic problem. Kali Yuga is an age of despair, so it is logical that the Magicians in Kali Yuga have abandoned us and put on the black robes.

Dark Magic has a way of devouring her children. It is more or less inevitable that we are consumed by our magic unless we use that magic to gain wisdom about ourselves. Bill Gates, with all his wealth and power, is still a mortal man who has to sleep and eat like all of us. His benevolence is what will be most remembered about him after he passes. His accomplishments in the world of computers have propelled us to a world where the Akashic Records are available to us all. He has opened the doors to world without borders thanks to the internet. But will we have the wisdom to take advantage of this technology to really ascend into a higher level of consciousness collectively? Or will the market forces make us even more and more enslaved to our petty desires?