The Rider-Waite Magician

Following on from my previous post on the Magician card of the Tarot, this post will look at some of the specific features of the Rider-Waite version of the card, by far the most influential in the English-speaking world.

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The sign of the Holy Spirit

Four of the Rider-Waite cards (the Magician, Strength, the World, and the Two of Pentacles) feature the lemniscate or infinity sign — derived, in every case, from features suggestive of that shape in the corresponding Tarot de Marseille cards. In the case of the Magician and Strength, the central figures in the Marseille cards are wearing wide-brimmed hats with a lemniscate-like shape. Waite got rid of the hats and replaced them with floating infinity signs.

In his book The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Waite has this to say about the Magician’s bent halo.

Above his head is the mysterious sign of the Holy Spirit, the sign of life, like an endless cord, forming the figure 8 in a horizontal position. [. . .] With further reference to what I have called the sign of life and its connexion with the number 8, it may be remembered that Christian Gnosticism speaks of rebirth in Christ as a change “unto the Ogdoad.” The mystic number is termed Jerusalem above, the Land flowing with Milk and Honey, the Holy Spirit and the Land of the Lord. According to Martinism, 8 is the number of Christ.

The implication that the sideways figure-eight has a traditional religious significance outside its use in mathematical notation has been hard for me to confirm. The Wikipedia article “Infinity symbol” (qv) asserts that “The shape of a sideways figure eight has a long pedigree; for instance, it appears in the cross of Saint Boniface, wrapped around the bars of a Latin cross.” The source cited for this is John D. Barrow’s Cosmic Imagery, which has the following on page 339.

The infinity sign has a dual resonance. It combines the mystic attraction of the great unknown and unknowable with the cold precision of mathematics and the desire to describe the unimaginable. The ribbon like figure-eight on its side is an ancient symbol, a shadow of the ancient ourobos [sic] symbol of the snake eating its tail.

It provided the mysterious cross of St Boniface in early Christian tradition, but its entrance into the symbolic world of mathematics did not occur until 1655. That distinction fell to the Oxford mathematician John Wallis. . . .

Barrow’s endnote for this passage cites only Wallis’s treatise De sectionibus conicis, which says nothing about St. Boniface or about the symbol’s alleged antiquity. (Wallis says nothing at all about the symbol he has introduced, beyond the parenthetical explanation that “esto enim ∞ nota numeri infiniti.”)

I have scoured the Internet in vain for any image of the “cross of Saint Boniface.” (That saint’s special symbol appears to be a sword stuck through a book, not a cross of any description.) Whoever wrote the Wikipedia article added details (“wrapped around the bars of a Latin cross”) not mentioned by Barrow, suggesting some independent knowledge of this cross. However, all I’ve been able to find is a novel by Robert Waters called The Cross of St. Boniface, the cover of which shows an icon of that saint holding an ordinary, lemniscate-free cross. I’ve even tried contacting Barrow himself, but he wrote the book 10 years ago and understandably no longer has all his references at his fingertips. As for the ouroboros symbol, it has traditionally always been circular, with the lemniscate-shaped variant appearing only after that shape had been established as the mathematical sign for infinity. For now, based on what I have (not) been able to find, my tentative conclusion is that the sideways figure-eight is not an ancient symbol, that Wallis introduced a new symbol rather than repurposing an old one, and that the use of it to represent “life” or the “Holy Spirit” is an innovation of Waite’s own.

[UPDATE: I have since discovered that Waite got the idea from Éliphas Lévi, as shown here.]

The number eight (which was not at that time represented by a figure eight) was indeed associated by the Gnostics with their idea of Holy Spirit, as Waite says. According to Irenaeus (Against Heresies I. v. 2-3), they believed that the Demiurge had created the “seven heavens” — meaning geocentric cosmology’s seven concentric “planetary” spheres of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; each ruled by a planetary intelligence called an Archon — “and on this account they term him Hebdomas” (meaning a group of seven, or something with seven parts).  This Demiurge is the son of the goddess Sophia or Achamoth, who occupies the next higher sphere — the eighth, that of the fixed stars — and who on that account is called Ogdoad (meaning a group of eight). Sophia was the Gnostic version of the Holy Ghost, a member of their Trinity, and was seen as Christ’s female counterpart. Irenaeus reports that “this mother they also call Ogdoad, Sophia, Terra, Jerusalem, Holy Spirit, and, with a masculine reference, Lord.”

(Waite also mentions that 8 is the number of Christ “according to Martinism” — that is, the Hermetic system of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin — but the logic behind this identification is opaque. In his book The Life of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, the Unknown Philosopher, and the Substance of his Transcendental Doctrine, Waite explains that Christ’s “soul invests him with the number 4, his divine being bears the number 1, his body the number 3,” from which it follows that “in his essential elements his number is 8.”)

Waite says that his lemniscate is intended as “the mysterious sign of the Holy Spirit” — but of course the universal sign of the Holy Spirit is the dove, and the question arises as to why Waite did not use it, preferring instead the serpent-like lemniscate. (The connection with the ouroboros has already been mentioned, and indeed an ouroboros also appears explicitly on the card. In LaVeyan Satanism, the lemniscate represents the serpent Leviathan.) Tomberg in his Meditations comments on the unfortunate tendency of occultists, even Christian occultists, to emphasize the serpent at the expense of the dove, and Waite, his Ace of Cups notwithstanding, would appear to be no exception.

Or perhaps things, are not so simple. Close inspection reveals that the Magician card does feature the dove, though in a tiny, barely-noticeable detail.

Clockwise from top left: (1) detail of the Magician’s table, (2) Ace of Cups, (3) the M in “Magician,” (4) the W in “World.”

The front edge of the Magician’s table features a series of three carvings. The first appears to be ocean waves, the second is unrecognizable, and the third is a bird in flight. Comparing it with the bird on the Ace of Cups, which clearly represents the dove of the Holy Spirit, we see that they are almost identical in shape. The cup-shaped capital of the table leg just below the Magician’s bird reinforces the connection. While the dove on the Ace of Cups is white and flies downward, the Magician’s dove is red and flies upward. An additional detail from the Ace of Cups seems to confirm that this inversion is intentional and significant. The cup bears the letter W, which I had always assumed stood for Waite (in keeping with the common practice of cardmakers including their initials on one of the cards, though the Chariot is the more usual choice), or perhaps for Water (the element represented by the suit of Cups). Comparing the W on the cup with the lettering on the other cards, though, we can see that it is not actually a W at all, but an inverted M as in “Magician.” I have to assume that these parallels and contrasts are intentional, and are perhaps echoed in the contrasting red and white of the roses and lilies, and indeed of the Magician’s clothing. A red bird flying upwards (from a capital that is as flame-like as cup-like in its design) suggest the phoenix — a bird paired with the dove in Shakespeare’s poem The Phoenix and the Turtle.

The Holy Spirit is associated with the dove because of its descent upon Christ in that form on the occasion of his baptism — echoing two Old Testament events. In the first chapter of Genesis, at the beginning of Creation, the Spirit of God hovers over the face of the waters. Later, in Genesis 8:8, Noah releases from the ark a dove, which flies about over the waters of the flooded earth and, finding nowhere to rest, returns to the ark. In the Gospels, the Spirit of God in the form of a dove again hovers over the waters — this time, the baptismal waters of the Jordan — alluding to the Flood as the symbolic baptism of the earth, and to baptism as a new Creation. The First Epistle of Peter ties together the Flood, baptism — and, interestingly, the number eight — mentioning Noah’s ark “wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water — the like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us” (1 Peter 3:20-21). The word translated as figure here is more properly “antitype” — not a numerical figure, much less a shape (as in “figure-eight”) — but the writer still seems to be associating the number eight with both the Flood and baptism — and thus, implicitly, with the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. Mormons sometimes cite this passage in support of their practice of baptizing children at the age of eight, but baptism on the eighth day (as later advocated in the time of St. Cyprian) seems likelier to me, since baptism replaced circumcision, which was performed on the eighth day. At any rate, the number eight must have had some obvious connection to baptism in the author’s mind.

As mentioned above, several other Rider-Waite cards besides the Magician bear the lemniscate. All of these have their less-explicit precursors in the Tarot de Marseille, but the most striking is the Two of Coins (whence Waite’s Pentacles were derived). The open figure-eight with the two coins is suggestive of the Chinese yin-yang symbol.

The Two of Coins from a Tarot de Marseille, left; and a Chinese Tai Chi Bagua symbol (太極八卦圖), right.

The yin-yang symbol is typically shown surrounded by the eight trigrams, so here we have another link, developed without the influence of Arabic numerals, between a lemniscate-like shape and the number eight.

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Roses and lilies

The roses and lilies with which the Magician is surrounded are another innovation of Waite’s. The Pictorial Key explains, “Beneath are roses and lilies, the flos campi and lilium convallium, changed into garden flowers, to shew the culture of aspiration.”

The reference is to the Song of Solomon 2:1 — “Ego flos campi, et lilium convallium”  (“I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys”). Although he quotes the Vulgate, Waite must have had the English version in mind, since there are no roses in the Latin. “Flos campi” simply means “flower of the field,” and scholars agree that the original Hebrew refers to some other flower than the rose, with “crocus” being a popular alternative translation.

At first I read Waite’s explanation as meaning that the (mystical) Rose of Sharon and Lily of the Valleys had been changed into (common) garden flowers, but on second thought I think a more likely reading is that (wild) flowers of the field have been changed into (carefully cultivated) garden flowers. (This is evident from his reference to “the culture of aspiration,” which refers to horticulture rather than to “culture” in the sociological sense.) The original meaning of Song 2:1 seems to be that the bride, having been praised for her beauty, is modestly protesting, “I’m just a common wildflower, of no special beauty,” to which the groom, taking her reference to lilies and turning it into another compliment, replies, “As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.”

What did the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys mean to Waite? I could have sworn that they appeared in the Litany of the Blessed Virgin as symbolical titles of that personage, but that turns out to have been a hallucination of memory. (The Litany does say “Mystical rose, pray for us,” which is probably where I got that idea.) A cursory search of Bible commentaries shows that most older commentaries identify the two flowers as symbols of Christ himself, while more recent ones generally begin by saying that, contrary to popular belief, they are nothing of the kind — either (depending on how traditional the commentator is) because it is the groom who represents Christ, while the bride stands for the Church; or because the Song of Solomon is simply a love poem with no hidden theological meaning. At any rate, while the specifics may be rather unclear, we can assume that Waite meant by the biblical quotation to invest the Magician’s flowers with sacred significance.

Besides the Song of Solomon, another biblical passage that seems relevant is Matthew 6:28-30, which also mentions lilies as flowers of the field and even refers to Solomon.

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

The emphasis here is on how the lilies just grow, by the grace of God, without any effort on their part. The Magician, with his “garden flowers” and “culture of aspiration,” represents the addition of conscious will to that process. The Magician has accepted the Adamic task of “dressing the garden and keeping it” — neither passively accepting the situation in which he finds himself, nor replacing it with something wholly artificial, but rather adding conscious direction to a natural process, working as a co-creator with Nature or God.

“Rose” is, as mentioned above, a mistranslation of Waite’s biblical source (as he himself seems to recognize by quoting the rose-less Vulgate), but the error is, as so often, an inspired one. No other pair of flowers would have been as apt as the white lily and the red rose. Occult “correspondences” readily suggest themselves — Moon and Sun, silver and gold (red is, confusingly, the color of gold in alchemy), albedo and rubedo, Chesed and Gevurah (see below) — and the two flowers have often been paired by poets, including Waite’s associate Yeats, whose poem “The Travail of Passion” ends with “Lilies of death-pale hope, roses of passionate dream.”

The lower part of the Rider-Waite Ace of Pentacles. Above is a floating hand bearing the pentacle.

A garden with roses and lilies also appears on the Rider-Waite Ace of Pentacles, though I’m not sure what light that sheds on their meaning in the Magician, except perhaps to suggest that the Magician is standing in an arch or doorway made of roses, through which runs a path leading from the garden to the mountains. Again I am reminded of Yeats’s “The Travail of Passion,” which begins with the lines, “When the flaming lute-thronged angelic door is wide; / When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay; . . .” The arch of roses could be this flaming door.

Given the presence of the dove from the Ace of Cups and the flowers from the Ace of Pentacles, I searched the Magician for allusions to the other two aces but found nothing — aside from the obvious suit-symbols on the table, of course!

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The sower soweth the word

About a week after writing my previous post on the Magician, in which I noted the similarity of the Rider-Waite Magician’s wand to the “Fire Wand” of Yeats and to the Chinese “Wenchang pen” (a stylized wooden sculpture of a calligraphy brush, a common feng-shui accessory), I had a dream clearly inspired by it. In the dream, I was walking around out-of-doors, carrying a very long Wenchang pen — perhaps four or five feet in length — and trying to find a suitable place to use it. (I had no very clear idea of what “using” it would involve, but vaguely pictured myself prancing around sort of brandishing it like a Maenad’s thyrsus.) After passing over various plots of land as too rocky, too overgrown, etc., I finally found the perfect place — a room-sized patch of pure, clean sand with no trace of stones, vegetation, or organic material. Having thought to myself, This is the perfect place, I awoke.

I woke up with a line from the Gospel of Mark in my head: “The sower soweth the word” — hence the otherwise bizarre search for appropriate ground on which to use a pen. Interestingly, there is no sandy ground in the parable of the sower. He sows by the roadside, on stony ground, and among thorns — all places I carefully avoided in the dream. But I didn’t choose “good ground” either. All in all, I took the dream as being a negative appraisal of the post on the Magician itself. I had deliberately sown my words in a field (the unpromising, seemingly “sterile” field of commentary on card-game iconography!) in which they would be sure not to bring forth fruit.

This interpretation turned out not to be correct. Shortly after the dream, I began reading (on the strength of a recommendation from Bruce Charlton) the Miscellaneous Remarks of Novalis and found that he opens with this motto: “Friends, the soil is poor, we must scatter seed abundantly for even a modest harvest.” This struck me as a pretty explicit riposte to my interpretation of my dream. Where I had thought that perhaps I shouldn’t be wasting my time sowing in such poor soil, Novalis (and the synchronicity fairies) came back with, “the soil is poor, we must scatter seed abundantly.”

It also occurred to me that at the end of the dream I had all but quoted Brigham Young, who famously declared “This is the place” upon finding the patch of barren desert that would later become Salt Lake City. Latter-day Saints are fond of quoting Isaiah with reference to that transformation: “the desert shall blossom as the rose.” I looked up the source of that quotation.

The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God (Isaiah 35:1-2).

It will not only blossom “as the rose” but be given “the excellency of . . . Sharon” — alluding to the same biblical flower referenced by Waite in his notes on his Magician. This verse and the one in the Song of Solomon are the only two uses of rose as a noun in the whole Bible, translating the same Hebrew word in each case. (Note also the use of the word abundantly, echoing Novalis.) On the Rider-Waite Magician card, too, roses blossom against a yellow background suggestive of a desert. (The bright yellow background is one of this card’s most striking features, and is surely part of what makes it so iconic.)

“The sower soweth the word.” To write is to sow. Only in his Rider-Waite incarnation does the Magician appear as both writer and sower. In my comments on the Italian Bagatto in the previous post I speculated about the possible meaning of his double-headed pen. Did it imply that he was “writing” on earth and heaven simultaneously? (“That in all your recordings it may be recorded in heaven.”) Waite’s Magician also bears a wand in the form of a double-headed pen. He holds it with one end pointing down to the earth, where roses spring forth, and the other pointing up to heaven, where roses also spring forth. (Roses appear both above and below the Magician, but lilies only below, suggesting that they have a different origin — “for the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself,” and “he knoweth not how.”)

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Din and the sephirothic pillars

The capital of the visible table leg, which I described above as being both cup-like and flame-like, also seems to have the letters “DIN” written on it. It doesn’t exactly jump out at the viewer, but — based on the parallel case of the Temperance card, where the Tetragrammaton is hidden in the folds of the angel’s robe — I think we can assume it is deliberate.

In Kabbalah, Din (“judgment” or “severity”) is an alternative name for the fifth Sephirah, more commonly known as Gevurah (“strength”). Besides being an individual sephirah, Din characterizes the whole left pillar of the Sephirothic tree, the pillar of Severity. The right pillar, in contrast, has the character of Chesed, or mercy. Din is associated with the color red, and Chesed with white. (At least, that is what George Robinson’s Essential Judaism says; many alternative color schemes seem to exist.)

The red dove flies upward from a red pillar labeled Din. By implication, the corresponding white dove which flies downward (on the Ace of Cups) has to do with the pillar of Chesed. This fits remarkably well with Valentin Tomberg’s comments on the two pillars, in his letter on “The Pope” in Meditations on the Tarot.

The two sides of the Cabbala — the “right” side and the “left” side — and the two columns of the Sephiroth Tree, the pillar of Mercy and that of Severity, and similarly the two pillars of the Temple of Solomon, Jachin and Boaz, correspond exactly to the two columns of prayer and benediction on this Card. Because it is Severity which stimulates prayer and it is Mercy which blesses. [. . .] These two elements [prayer and benediction] manifest themselves in all domains of the inner life — mind, heart and will. Thus a relevant problem for the mind, which is not due to curiosity or intellectual collectionism, but rather to the thirst for truth, is fundamentally a prayer. And the illumination by which it may be followed is the corresponding benediction or grace. True suffering, also, is fundamentally always a prayer. And the consolation, peace and joy which can follow are the effects of the benediction corresponding to it.

True effort of the will, i.e. one hundred percent effort, true work, is also a prayer. When it is intellectual work, it is prayer: Hallowed by thy name. When it is creative effort, it is prayer: Thy kingdom come. When it is work with a view to supplying for the material needs of life, it is prayer: Give us this day our daily bread. And all these forms of prayer in the language of work have their corresponding benedictions or graces.

Tomberg associates the pillar of Severity (Din, red) with prayers rising from earth to heaven (the dove flying upward) and the pillar of Mercy (Gevurah, white) with blessings descending from heaven to earth (the dove flying downward). The Magician, it would seem, represents both of these — with his red robe and white tunic, red roses and white lilies, one hand raised to heaven and the other pointing to the earth. (This dual hand sign, according to Waite, “shews the descent of grace, virtue and light, drawn from things above and derived to things below.”) But the explicit presence of the red pillar of Din would seem to identify the Magician more closely with that side of things. If we accept Tomberg’s analysis, that the pillar of Severity corresponds to prayer — and that problems, suffering, and work are all forms of prayer — this is appropriate, since the Magician certainly represents work or activity.