Pamela Colman Smith · RWS deck
The Major Arcana
The Magician
- Hebrew Letter
- RESH
- Element
- MERCURY
- Path
- Hod ↔ Yesod
- Polarity
- Clarity / Distortion
Upright · Clarity
The message coming down matches the message going out. Nothing is lost or added in the channel — what's received above is exactly what gets built below, communication doing its actual job.
Reversed · Distortion
Communication becomes warped somewhere between thought and expression. This can either be internally, such as formulating thoughts, or externally when translating thought to speech. What comes out the lowered hand no longer matches what the raised hand took in. It is not always a lie, sometimes it's just noise where there should be a clean line.
The image
A figure stands at a table bearing the four suit-tools: a wand, a cup, a sword, a pentacle. One hand is raised toward an infinity symbol overhead, the other pointing down to the ground. Roses and lilies border the scene.
Resh's path runs from Hod, the mind that forms and communicates, to Yesod, the foundation everything actually gets built on. The raised hand receives; the lowered hand transmits. Whatever passes between them either arrives at the ground exactly as it was received, or it doesn't.
Learn how to read The Magician in a spread
This page shows you what The Magician means. Knowing how to read it — how it shifts next to the other cards, what the reversal is really telling you, and how to turn a spread into a clear answer — is what the RWS Decoded course and book teach, card by card.
