The Magician (The Alchemist)
A larger Pacific striped octopus stands before an altar of scallop shells. It wields a wand of coral before a giant carved pearl, a tunicate and a spiral shell. Behind the octopus a ghostly green monkey screeches in alarm.
Symbolism of the Magician
The magician uses their craft and their consciousness to remake reality. They are an ‘active agent’ on the world and often represent the ‘querent’ in Tarot card readings.
In the Thoth deck the Magician or Magus is depicted as the god Mercury, a divine messenger. He takes this from the french title of Le Bateleur, meaning bearer of the baton or wand. Mercury bears the wand or the will of the divine from the spiritual realm into the material realm, as a magician takes abstract ideas and makes them concrete.
The Magician, Smith-Waite deck.
Le Bateleur, Marseilles deck.
The Octopolis Interpretation
In classical tarot the Magician is displayed with ritual tools: wand, sword, cup and disc. In Octopolis, their analogues are branch, shell, siphon and pearl. I'll talk more about my reasons for choosing those items in a later post.
The altar that I place these elements on is made of scallop shells, which has its own symbolic meaning: the real life Octopolis, where gloomy octopuses live in loose colonies, was built with the discarded scallop shells of the octopuses that lived there previously. In the lore of Octopolis, the slow accretion of scallop is analogous with the development of conscious symbolic thought. And symbols, of course, are the foundation of magic itself!
A photo of Octopolis or Octlantis, by Peter Godfrey Smith. 2023.
Magician or Alchemist?
The world of Octopolis is preindustrial and not centralized enough to have distinct disciplines of educated individuals, so they use the word “Alchemist” for scientists, philosophers, and thinkers of all types. This reflects the development of language in our own cultural history: originally magicians were just alchemists and did not distinguish between magical manipulation of reality and actual science. So I think it's an appropriate return to form.
The Harlequin Octopus
Larger Pacific striped octopus, illustration by Arcadio Rodaniche.
For the subject of the magician I chose the harlequin or larger Pacific striped octopus. I think this octopus has a beautiful hypnotic pattern, and more importantly it's one of the few octopuses in the real world to socialize with one another, and therefore a foundational inspiration for Octopolis.
I also like that this octopus has a beautiful hypnotic pattern, into which I can incorporate the classic 'infinity' symbol.
The Monkey on our Collective Backs
You may be wondering about the monkey floating in the background here. Well, for one thing, I wanted the magician to be doing some magic. Octopolis doesn't have fantastic physics or ghosts in the literal sense, but this is a fantastical representation of a magician as a citizen of Octopolis might perceive them, so including a bit of magic in these depictions doesn’t affect that. I’m illustrating the mental map of on octopus, not their literal world.
The Magus, Thoth deck. Note the monkey in the bottom right.
I was further inspired by the Thoth deck, which has a monkey floating underneath the figure of Mercury. It's described as the 'ape of thoth' and is supposed to represent the 'distortion of truth inherent in form' which i understand to mean that there is always some kind of imperfection in the real world, only ideas are perfect. Crowley writes: Manifestation implies illusion.
So is the Alchemist conjuring the monkey? If so, they don't seem to be paying much attention to it. It seems the monkey is an observer, and a bit alarmed to find itself underwater.
In a certain sense we're the monkey. We're primates from the far past watching these aliens of the future transmute reality. The monkey is screeching but they're just a powerless ghost, just as we will be when this planet shakes us off like a bad cold.
Right now humanity is the Magician. The power we have as humans right now, to literally bend reality, is a gift we're abusing and squandering at the expense of incalculable natural wonder. It's a gift we take for granted, and risk losing forever. Octopolis is a story about that loss, and why I've chosen to depict in this card the baton, handed off to another magus.