Tarot Card No. 1: The Magician
In the Magician of the Tarot these qualities are concentrated: He is the first card of the Tarot, the Creator. He has all the symbols of the Tarot: sword, chalice, staff and star, which in turn symbolize the four elements of water, earth, fire and air. The recumbent eight above his head is the sign of eternity, infinity and eternal return. His gesture is that of Eros: the right hand raises the staff to the sky, the left balances the opposite pole to the earth. His colors are red, as a sign of energy, on white, as a sign that he uses his energy positively and creatively. He is surrounded by flowers, so he is fully in the reality of the world. In the interpretations of the Tarot, the magician represents the balancing act between the opposing poles of Eros and Logos, love and rationality. He transforms and transcends what exists, creates a new consciousness.
Eros, Hermes Trismegistos and the Magician of the Tarot are related to many cultures where similar ideas have developed: for example in the Kabbalah, where Ein-Sof, the limitless God, emerged from the union of Yesh (the existing) and Ayin (the non-existent). The dynamic unification of the opposites of Yin and Yang in the ancient Chinese philosophy belongs to this tradition of thought as well as the struggle as father of all things and motor of the eternal flow in Heraclitus.
In medieval Europe, the alchemists soon took over the role of the magician. Their attempt to obtain gold from the recombination of mundane metals and materials is the forerunner of modern scientific acts of creation, such as those in biochemistry and biogenetics today.
In the modern age, we attribute special innovative powers to the "creatives," i.e., the artists. But inventors, too, do not poke around in the waste dumps of logic in order to further deduce what has long existed there, but they create new approaches. And last but not least, we should include the founders who establish something new, be it a new religion, a new company or a new social institution.
But innovation is also a violation of the existing order of thought and its logic. That is why inventors, artists and innovators have a particularly hard time in a society that is primarily concerned with preserving the old, securing what has been achieved and predicting the future. In principle, societies are hostile to innovation. Only when they reach limits or crises do they sometimes briefly open up to innovation and allow new thoughts, new approaches and new structures. If they do not, they either face a long period of stagnation or their demise.