The Magician: Poetry Prompts for Manifestation, Alchemy, and Craft
In Tarot, we meet The Magician when we are ready to make visible that which has been generating invisibly within our selves. The Magician asks: What will you do with the materials you've been given?
In Tarot, we meet The Magician when we are ready to make visible that which has been generating invisibly within our selves. When it's time for our dreams to become material reality, if we're willing to direct our attention to the practice of creating.
The Magician asks: What will you do with the materials you've been given?
You don't have to use everything laid before you; the trick of the Magician is having the discernment to know which to leave and which to make use of.
Astrology - Mercury
Zipping around the skies, Mercury (or Hermes) rules communication, logic, the intellect, exchange, thoughts, and technology. They are a psychopomp, traveling between worlds, carrying messages and crossing the boundaries that others can't.
Ruling the Magician, Mercury acts in their role as the patron of language & communication - aspects of life that shape the way we create, see, and interact with the world. They understand that the words we use shape the reality we experience; they bring our internal lives into external form that can be understood and felt by others.
Numerology - #1
1 is the number of leaders, new experience, individual pursuit, and the original spark of creation. From the nothing of 0 follows the something of 1. This is a number that is focused on achievement, asking what can I create with my life?
The first number of the Mind Triad (1-5-7), 1 is alight with new ideas, carrying the energy of a fresh start and craving newness in all things. It may not be great at completing projects, but it can generate new ideas faster than we can ask for them.
In its shape, 1 tells us that it connect heaven to Earth and back again. It has a strong sense of direction, knowing what it wants and how it wants to get there.
Themes & Mythology of The Magician
- Tools (Tarot suits)
- Wand - fire; desire, inspiration, action
- Cup - water; emotion, intuition, imagination
- Sword - air; thought, language, discernment
- Pentacle - earth; body, craft, material reality
- Alchemist - what are the raw materials of your life? - transformation through deliberate, intentional work
- Artist - make something - what is the difference between having something to say and making something from it?
- Lemniscate (infinity symbol) - infinite possibility must eventually take finite form
- Garden - we don’t create everything that happens to us, but we can choose what we cultivate in our lives
- Thoth - writing, language, knowledge, measurement, magic
- Prometheus - knowledge as something to be wielded, and that comes with consequences
- Daedalus - craftsman; cleverness without wisdom can become dangerous
- Loki - trickster; when is language magic and when is it deception/manipulation?
The Paradox of The Magician
Writing Prompts for The Magician
- Choose one of the four elements - fire, water, air, or earth - and write from its perspective.
- Write about something invisible becoming visible.
- Desire. Feeling. Thought. Body. Choose one and write a poem using only that doorway. What became possible when you deliberately neglected the others?
- Write a message from one version of your self to another.
Recommended Poems for The Magician
“How to Be a Poet” - Wendell Berry
“This is Just to Say” - William Carlos Williams
“Ozymandias” - Percy Bysshe Shelley
“The Fish” - Elizabeth Bishop
“The Thought-Fox” - Ted Hughes
“The Writer” - Richard Wilbur
These prompts and thoughts come from my workshop series The Labyrinth: Poetry for the Contradictions We Carry, live at Ixora Collective in Colorado Springs, CO. Join us biweekly as we journey through Tarot, astrology, mythology, and poetry, writing toward the tensions, longings, paradoxes, and transformations that shape a human life.
