The Magician

Upright

Papus's first card is not a stage conjuror but the unity from which the whole deck counts — Aleph, whose hieroglyph is man himself. It is will before it has chosen an object: the active principle, the point at which something becomes possible because someone has decided it should be. The four emblems on his table are the four suits, which in Papus's reading means all four worlds are available to him and none has yet been committed to. Divinatory sense: will.

Reversed

Will without an object, or will spent on effect rather than result — the man who has all four instruments and uses them to impress. Reversed it also marks the decision endlessly deferred: potential carefully preserved as potential, because to commit it to one world would end its being possible in the other three.

Correspondences

Papus's number

1

Hebrew letter

Aleph (א)

Hieroglyph

Man — the being who wills

Septenary

First septenary (1–7), the Divine world — first term, the absolute active (Yod)

Divinatory sense

Will

In a Spread

At the commencement, the matter exists because someone willed it into being — find that person, because the reading belongs to them. In opposition, a competing will, not a competing circumstance. At equilibrium the situation holds only for as long as the will is actively applied to it. As the result, Papus is unsentimental: the outcome sits in the querent's own hands and nowhere else.