(The Magician; The Sorcerer)
Ideas: Symbolic of creation, creative power, the creative process, and
originary activity, the Minstrel is identified with the concept of culture
itself. The Minstrel is associated with poetry, crafts, language, song and
magic.
Powers: creation, shaping/making, transformation, enchantment, magical words
and symbols, word-powers
Visual Description: Against a red background, an androgynous being in
multicolored garb, hooded or wearing a hat and bearing a wand about which are
entwined two snakes (i.e., a caduceus), standing besides a pedestal upon
which there are a coin, a sword and a cup.
The Great Priestess
(The Great Witch; Yhera, the Queen of Heaven)
Ideas: One of the few Imagos directly associated with a divine being, the
goddess Yhera, the Great Priestess is considered to be symbolic of the
principle of Night as the Great Mother. Some claim that the Imago of the
Great Priestess, though always numbered second to the Minstrel, is in fact
the Imago of the true Creatrix, the originary source of all the other Imagos
and indeed the rest of the world. The Great Priestess is associated with the
concepts of wisdom, reflection, intuition, imagination, the mother, and
sanctuary; this Imago is emblematic of both Woman and women. Negatively, it
is associated with intolerance and the dissolution of the self.
Powers: understanding, guidance, protection, guardianship, warding,
fecundity, birth, shaping/making, magical and symbolic knowledge
Visual Description: A woman seated upon a gilded throne, bearing a
half-opened book in her right hand and two keys -- one golden, the other
silver -- in her left, before a dark, blue-black background. She wears a
crown of silver topped with a lunar crescent. The throne is located between
two marble columns, one veined blue and the other red, and behind it is
curled a sphinx.
The Empress
(The Great Queen)
Ideas: The Empress is symbolic of sovereignty, majesty, beauty, and the
sweet Ideal in both women and men. This Imago is associated positively with
persuasion, patronage and protection, fealty outside the immediate family
(the tribe, the domain), and majesty and generation in all the worlds of
existence; negatively, the Empress is associated with vanity and seduction.
Powers: command (persuasive), protection, guardianship, warding, warning,
seductive and erotic magics, magics of oath and fealty and domain
Visual Description: A woman of beauty and terror, standing in a pose of
power and majesty, smiling and with fair hair; one hand bears a sceptre of
gold, while the other rests upon the rim of a purple shield decorated with a
silver, two-headed eagle.
The Emperor
(The Divine King)
Ideas: Symbolic of power and majesty, the Emperor is closely related to the
Imago of the Empress, albeit without some of that Imago’s gentler trappings.
The Emperor is associated with the ideas of permanence, splendor, glory,
initiation and the paternal Law; negatively, it is associated with
domination, subjection and undue severity.
Powers: energy, initiation rituals (and their revealed powers), domination,
command (force)
Visual Description: A man wearing predominantly red robes seated upon a
throne, the base of which is a cube of gold. He bears in one hand a globe
and in the other a sceptre surmounted by a fleur-de-lis, and wears a crown or
helmet, the crest of which has four spikes. A black eagle, wings unfurled,
grips the throne behind his head.
The Great Priest
(The Hierophant)
Ideas: Symbolic of factual knowledge, intelligence, and reason. The Great
Priest is associated with tradition, moral law and the fabric of society,
information, philosophy, religion in its organized aspects, duty, conscience,
and the concept of proof. Negatively, this Imago is associated with all of
these things as well as tediousness, withdrawal from reality and the loss of
a sense of humor.
Powers: information-discovery, the mind
Visual Description: A man seated on a throne between two columns, one red,
the other blue; he wears white gloves, and bears a sceptre surmounted by a
triple cross. He is flanked by two kneeling disciples, both male, one
dressed in red and the other in black.
The Lovers
Ideas: The Imago of the Lovers is symbolic of union, love, and harmony as
the results of commitment. This Imago is associated with compassion and
fellowship. Negatively, the Lovers is associated with both enmeshment and
the loss of the self on the one hand, and antagonism and vindictiveness as
the results of broken commitments on the other.
Powers: attraction, harmony, union, marriage-ritual, divisiveness,
entrapment, binding magics
Visual Description: An androgynous, winged humanoid hovers behind and above
a naked human couple standing side by side. The man stands before a
fruit-bearing tree and looks at the woman; the woman stands before a tree,
about which is coiled a serpent, and looks at the winged daemon.
The Lover
(The Path; The Hermit)
Ideas: Related to the Imago of the Lovers (and sometimes confused with it),
this Imago is an allegory for the act of choosing as in and of itself a
virtue; it is less concerned with the actual object of choice than it is with
making a choice in the first place. On the positive side, this Imago is
associated with decisiveness, moral beauty, integrity, vocation, purpose and
struggle; negatively, the Lover is associated with indecisiveness,
uncertainty, temptation, passivity, and acquiescence to external pressure.
Powers: choice-making, divination, moral support, temptation, influence
Visual Description: A man clothed in green and red, standing poised between
two women, each of whom gestures for his attention.
The Chariot
(The Sword)
Ideas: Symbolic of victory and triumph in the material world, the Chariot is
associated with the concepts of skill, self-control, progress, valor, action,
movement, and the weapon as agent and device of power and success.
Powers: martial magics, weapon-magics, speed & movement, fortitude, courage,
victory-ritual
Visual Description: A youth (or alternately an androgyne) of regal bearing
in full armor, bearing a sword and riding in a chariot. The armor is
decorated with five gold studs on the breastplate and crescent moons at the
shoulders. The chariot bears the emblem of a winged globe and has red
wheels; it is drawn by two horses, one white and one red.
Justice
(Conscience)
Ideas: Symbolic of judgment, balance, equilibrium, and the “right path”, the
Imago of Justice is less concerned with any actual judicial process than it
is with the idea of inner judgment and the psychological process of
determining guilt. It is positively associated with guidance, harmony,
firmness and the upholding of (individual) behavioral codes; negatively, this
Imago is associated with pettiness, dissimulation, and extreme rigidity or
restriction.
Powers: guidance, decision-making, divination, binding-magics
Visual Description: A woman similar to the Empress (full-face, symmetrically
posed), wearing a red tunic and seated upon a throne with a golden cube for a
base. She bears a set of scales in one hand and a sword in the other, and
wears a crown with iron fleurons shaped as lance heads.
The Fates
(The Wheel of Fortune)
Ideas: This Imago, like that of the Great Priestess, is related to divine
presences which possess clear individual existence: the three Fates.
Perceived as an ambiguous Imago in terms of positive or negative
connotations (since many of the world’s cultures rebel against the notion of
predestination), the Imago of the Fates is associated with the wheel,
fatefulness, irreversibility, equilibrium, mystery and discovery, and both
the constructive and destructive potentialities of the future.
Powers: divination, becoming, change, transformation, manifestation
Visual Description: Three women -- one quite youthful, one in appearance
like the Empress, one of considerable age -- stand behind a spinning wheel
with a handle. The young woman bears a caduceus, the old one a trident; a
sphinx stands motionless behind the Empress-like figure.
Strength
Ideas: An allegory for the triumph of reason over brutality and the base impulses of life, the Imago of Strength symbolizes the mastering and harnessing (but not the destruction) of the instincts. Associated positively with strength, vigor, mastery, and command, this Imago also commonly stands for fury, rage, insensibility and the loss of reason. Powers: strength, command, berserker rage, madness Visual Description: A woman in royal garments, holding a mace or warlike sceptre in one hand by her side, while with the other she clasps a raging lion to her bosom without apparent effort.
The Hanged Man
Ideas: Associated with the Trickster in almost all cultures, the Hanged Man
is often considered the Imago of the psychopomp (the magical spirit which
guides and accompanies the spirits of the dead). It is symbolic of
self-sacrifice, mysticism, purification, magical illumination, and mastery of
the dream and otherworldly self.
Powers: levitation, dream-flight, soul-flight (discorporation), the shamanic
Visual Description: A man dressed in similar garb to the Minstrel, except in
red and white, hanging upside-down by one foot from a rope tied to a golden
crossbar which is supported by two leafless trees with a greenish-blue tinge.
In his arms he holds a half-opened bag spilling gold coins.
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