The Magician

[Pen]

Robert, Ross, thanks!

Pen

[mikeh]

Well, you certainly are a Magician in the manipulation of images, Pen. So I'm wrong: the bend in the Noblet Bateleur's leg is just a bend in his leg, as Debra suggested. As for your placement of the fourth leg, your trick works best for the Vieville (below), as the man's leg and the table leg that we see are pretty close together. In fact, it might even stand on its own with three legs. But what if the Noblet's table leg is put in the place where Flornoy thought he saw a thick blue line running down the Bateleur's leg? (I don't see it in the original; but that's beside the point.) And also the Conver: couldn't the table leg be behind the Bateleur's leg there?



All I can say is, we certainly do want the table to have a fourth leg, or three legs to be placed so that the table will be stable; then the poor guy won't have to stand there all day keeping it upright. In the same way, we want our world to be stable. But we can't see past the border, we can't see things from a more informative angle; we just don't know.

[mmfilesi]

Hi friends!

Well ... I think Pen is right. Our cardmarker is incompetent ... or a brilliant genius that anticipated Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque .

incompetente.jpg (30.2 KiB) Viewed 726 times

Please look this joints impossible, these perspectives misplaced (I chose cards without thinking)

I think, we need consider this in the analysis of this deck. Simply, its not a good artist.

[Pen]

Mike, no trick, intended, promise! I just want to get as near to the truth as possible. When someone makes a statement at the beginning of a post, as with the table leg being 'mostly obscured by the Bateleur’s leg', then builds from the assumed truth of that statement with much knowledge and research, it seems to me a little like an inverted pyramid - intimidating yet somewhat unstable.

The problem in proving or disproving an idea of this kind is the little concern the makers of these images showed regarding reality and perspective.

Here’s the Vieville.
This image shows perspective lines, drawn pretty accurately from the evidence on the card. It looks as though one can see a trace of where the angle of the table corner underneath the Bateleur’s wand hand changes. In any case, the table could not surely be longer than I’ve made it, although it cannot be shorter from what we see. This table top is more level than the others.

The arrow points to what should be a front leg (rather than a middle leg), if any perspective were being applied at all, whether instinctive, from memory or by looking at surrounding objects . The trouble is that if it were a front leg, then the corresponding back leg would be where the Bateleur’s right leg is (the one on our left), although further back.

Aha! I hear Mike say. Well, that’s all well and good, the problem is that (like the Noblet), the table top would be far too long if it were. It would need two more legs at the unseen end - it doesn’t seem feasible for it to function with three even with the Bateleur’s right leg supporting it, and it would be very odd with six.

But (without the perspective lines to show what’s wrong), the image below seems acceptable and in the spirit of the drawing.

But what if the Noblet's table leg is put in the place where Flornoy thought he saw a thick blue line running down the Bateleur's leg? (I don't see it in the original; but that's beside the point.)

As with the original, if the table leg was anywhere in the area of the Bateleur’s leg, the end of the table top would have to be cropped to make sense.


Now the Conver.
The Conver, although more similar to the Noblet in drawing style than to the Vieville, poses even more difficulties with perspective, even allowing for that lack of regard shown by the card makers that I mentioned earlier. The perspective is very wrong, as you can see from the lines (I've left the lower back line out as there's no evidence to draw it from), but the arrow must must surely mark the front leg of the table. If this is so, the back leg of the table would indeed again be where the Bateleur’s left leg appears (the one on our right). The problem with this is the same as with the Noblet and the Vieville – we’d have to cut off the end of the table to make this possible.



If the table is extended, we arrive at something like the image below, with the right (on our side) back leg where the front should be and nothing making any sense.



Looking at the drawing of all three, it seems that perspective was something the artists were not overly concerned about. There’s a certain showmanship and verve to the drawings - much like the Bateleur himself. If the cards were wider and we could see all of a four-legged table (in the spirit of the drawing), how many of us would accept it at face value? I wonder…




Pen

[Pen]

Hi friends!

Well ... I think Pen is right. Our cardmarker is incompetent ... or a brilliant genius that anticipated Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque .

incompetente.jpg

Please look this joints impossible, these perspectives misplaced (I chose cards without thinking)

I think, we need consider this in the analysis of this deck. Simply, its not a good artist.

Mmfelesi, I think they were wonderfully competent at designing cards - here we all are, centuries later, still talking and obsessing about them...

Pen

[mmfilesi]

Sorry, I'm not obsessed. I only spend 21 hours a day thinking about the tarot. That's not obsession ... but mere hobby.

Great work, Pen!

[mikeh]

Pen wrote,

Looking at the drawing of all three, it seems that perspective was something the artists were not overly concerned about. There’s a certain showmanship and verve to the drawings - much like the Bateleur himself. If the cards were wider and we could see all of a four-legged table (in the spirit of the drawing), how many of us would accept it at face value? I wonder…

These are pretty weird tables. The depictions on the cards are vaguely like real tables; the ones you drew are like nothing I've ever seen.

I still think you guys are playing with me ("messing with me" would be more precise). Definitely. That's what I get for using the T-word. And the A-word ("archetype").

On the other hand, I notice that Jodorowsky anticipates Pen's creation of the fourth leg, in La Voie du Tarot. I don't have the French, but here are the English (p. 128) and Spanish versions (p. 134, but put in your own accent marks):

His table has three legs. It is conceivable that the fourth leg is located outside the card. It is by going beyond the stage of possibilities and moving into the reality of action and choice that The Magician gives concrete expression to his situation. But we can also see that the 3 is the figure of the mind, and light blue is the color of spiritual receptivity (for more on the colors, see p. 95)...

Su mesa tiene tres patas. Se puede pensar que la cuarta pata esta fuera de la carta: superando la fase de las possibilidades y entrando en la realidad de la accion, de la eleccion, es como el Mago concretara sa situation. Per tambien se puede ver que el tres es el numero del espirito, y el color azul, el de la receptividad espiritual (ver pags. 117 y ss.)...

As you see, the English has "mind" where the Spanish has "spirit"; either will do. As "spirit," presumably the reference is to the Trinity.

By "going outside the stage of possibilities" Jodorowky is referring to something he said on the previous page, introducing the card,

The Bateleur/The Magician: Beginning and Choosing. This figure contains the whole in potential: it is like the original point from which a universe emerges (see p. 59). For The Magician all is possible. He has a series of elements on the table in front of him that he can use as he pleases, and a pouch that is easily imagined to be inexhaustible, like a horn of plenty. From his table this figure acts toward the cosmos and toward spiritual life.

El Mago: Empezar y elegir. El Mago lleva el numero 1. Este numero contiene la totlidad en potenticia, es como el punto original de donde surge un universo (ver pag. 80). Para el Mago toto es posible: tiene en su mesa una serie de elementos que puede emplear a su antojo y una bolsa que podriamos imaginar inagotable, como un cuerno de la abunancia. Ese personaje actua desde su mesa hacia el cosmos, hacia la vida espiritual.

So going from the three to a fourth outside the card is one example of moving from the potentiality to a particular concrete choice.

Symbolically the move from three to four is also going from pure spirit into matter. Plato's Timaeus begins, in a sentence quoted by Jung, "One, two, three, my dear Timaeus, but where is the fourth...?" (http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html; Jung Collected Works vol 11, p. 164). Something is missing. Of the five perfect solids, the Timaeus assigns the one with four-sided faces to the element earth: "To earth, then, let us assign the cubical form; for earth is the most immoveable of the four..." Jung turns this into a principle:

Ever since the Timaeus the 'fourth' has signified 'realization,' i.e. entry into an essentially different condition, that of worldly materiality, which, it is authoritatively stated, is ruled by the prince of this world--for matter is the diametrical opposite of Spirit, and in that sense also to another spiritual being, the Devil.

Four. in the 15th-17th centuries, was the number that accounted for the whole: four directions, four qualities (hot, cold, dry, moist), four elements, four temperaments, four evangelists, four gospels. That is why Irenaeus said there could only be four gospels, and the rest false merchandise.

So yes, good move, Pen. Although I still think the move could be to a fourth leg behind his own leg. The Magician is not just a creator, he is also a revealer: rabbits in hats and, to be somewhat redundant, arcane secrets.

Jodorowsky does not pick upon the instability that I see in the three legs that we have on the card. Perhaps it goes without saying that it is that instability that moves us forward. I prefer to linger in the unstable present.

Well, I've rewritten the offending paragraph, turning it into three. Fortunately it was not at the beginning of my post, but near the end. Also, I think I made another error at the end of the paragraph that cancels out the first. Namely, when we watch the Magician, we are not purely in the world of illusion, and neither is he; the principles by which he does his tricks, physical or spiritual, are real, even though what we see may be an illusion. He works on us from both worlds, being and non-being. The world of flux in which we live is a mixture of the two. So the concluding sentence in the paragraph remains unchanged, as well as later conclusions.

Here is what I wrote originally:

Another detail that adds to my interpretation is the apparent instability of the table. It does not actually have three legs, it just looks that way, because the table leg and the Bateleur's leg are the same color. But the look of three legs, along with the bumpy ground, and on the Noblet the stream running underneath, create an atmosphere of instability. I think it is the instability of the world of illusion. The stream suggests that the table, and the Bateleur himself, is a bridge between the two worlds, the flux of becoming and the repose of being.

And my rewrite:

Added 4/28/10: A detail that colors my interpretation is a lack of clarity about how many legs the table has. At first glance, everything looks normal. But then we notice that we can only see three table-legs: the fourth is the leg of the Bateleur himself. With only three legs, positioned as they are in the picture, the table would seem to be unstable. But perhaps the fourth leg of the table is behind his leg, and we just can't see it, any of it (as Debra emphasizes). Or maybe the one we can't see is in front, on the part of the table that extends beyond the border of the picture (as Pen shows in his posts after this one). Or maybe we are mistaken in where the legs are positioned, and three legs are just fine (another suggestion of Debra's): the laws of perspective don't always apply in the world of the tarot.

So Is the table stable or unstable? We can't see beyond the frame or behind the Bateleur; we can't quite get our bearings. We don't know. Our world is like that, too. On the one hand, the sun rises predictably every morning. On the other hand, the new day brings new, unforeseen dangers. Is the world stable or unstable? It all depends on the interpretation, on how we are seeing it. Our world, in Platonic terms, is a mixture of being and non-being: the stable objects of knowledge (and their unknowable source) on the one hand, and the unstable objects of true and false belief on the other (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy_of ... vided_line). Only the world of being is wholly stable--or, in Christian non-philosophical language, the Hereafter, in which the Saints live even in this life, and to which the Bateleur may be wanting to lure us with his tricks. The stream of water put in by Noblet suggests that the table, and the Bateleur himself, is a bridge between the two worlds, the flux of becoming and the repose of being.

Jodorowky (The Way of Tarot, p. 127) notes that the Magician is the card of "beginning", where "all is possible," and of "choosing," a leap from the mind or spirit into materiality:

It is conceivable that the fourth leg is located outside the card. It is by going beyond the stage of possibilities and moving into the reality of action and choice that The Magician gives concrete expression to his situation.

It is a leap from the stasis of using his will to keep a three-legged table from falling, into choosing something that completes it, a leg for each corner. Such is the instability of the Trinity: it needs the material world to complete it, the fourness that traditionally, in the 15th-17th centuries, meant the whole: four winds, four directions, four qualities (hot, cold, dry, moist), four elements, four gospels. In this way we have the Bateleur as demiurgos, Greek for "artisan," fashioner of this very concrete and particularized world in which illusion and reality blend into one.

[mmfilesi]

Dear Mikeh I dont know if the number of legs is significant. It has four legs, because the tables have four legs. In my opinion, means nothing more. People have a head, two arms and two legs, the tables have legs, usually four.

If the table would have had anomalous numbers of legs. For example, 8 on one side and 27 on the other side, then we might think that hidden strange meaning; but four legs its normal.

I dont know ... I think all it's easier.

Regards!

[Pen]

These are pretty weird tables. The depictions on the cards are vaguely like real tables; the ones you drew are like nothing I've ever seen.

Mike I totally agree with you. These are weird tables, worthy almost of M.C. Escher, but the point is that they'd be weird tables however many legs one gave them. We accept the unfinished tables on the cards in the spirit in which they're drawn because we can't see the whole object, but having tried to demonstrate the possibilities, I can't help feeling that four legs works best and was what the makers had in mind when they drew the cards.

I still think you guys are playing with me ("messing with me" would be more precise). Definitely. That's what I get for using the T-word. And the A-word ("archetype").

Not at all - I'm completely open to all Theories Tarot, including esoteric ones, except possibly any put forward by Erik von Danniken... although, having said that ....

Thanks for the thoughts of Plato and Jodorowsky. I find it interesting that the latter considered the possibility of a fourth leg without actually trying it out, yet perhaps he considered theories more important than weighing the evidence.

From your rewrite:

With only three legs, positioned as they are in the picture, the table would seem to be unstable. But perhaps the fourth leg of the table is behind his leg, and we just can't see it, any of it (as Debra and Pen argue in their posts following this one).

Mike, so you still think that if there were a fourth leg on the Magician's table, that that's where it could be? That was the single idea that all my posts and work in Photoshop aimed to disprove. I think maybe I need a break...

Pen

[mikeh]

Pen wrote

From your rewrite:

mikeh wrote:
With only three legs, positioned as they are in the picture, the table would seem to be unstable. But perhaps the fourth leg of the table is behind his leg, and we just can't see it, any of it (as Debra and Pen argue in their posts following this one).

Mike, so you still think that if there were a fourth leg on the Magician's table, that that's where it could be? That was the single idea that all my posts and work in Photoshop aimed to disprove. I think maybe I need a break...

Well, I certainly didn't mean to say that your posts argued for a table-leg behind the bateleur's leg! I have corrected my rewrite accordingly, to say

With only three legs, positioned as they are in the picture, the table would seem to be unstable. But perhaps the fourth leg of the table is behind his leg, and we just can't see it (any of it, as Debra seems to emphasize in her posts following this one).

As I said in my April 17 post, I still don't see why it couldn't be there, positioned behind his leg, with none of it actually showing. In Noblet, it would be where the restorer, Flornoy, has drawn a vertical blue line on the Bateleur's leg, straight up and down. And a similar place for the others. I'm not saying it definitely is there. Just that it's a natural place to see it as being. That's where I naturally supposed it was. The other alternative, that it is outside the frame, never occurred to me until I saw your images.

And I agree that the table probably has four legs. not three or eight (although both are consistent with the lines and areas of color on the page). Depending on our prior experience, among other htings, some of us will put it behind the Bateleur's leg; others, out of the frame; some will even say there might be only three legs. Our perceptions differ. And in this case there is no "real table" to compare our perceptions to, not even the one drawn on the page--on the page, all we have is a bunch of lines and areas of color.

My initial mistake was using very specific lines on the card to attempt to show that there was a table leg behind the Bateleur's leg, given the laws of perspective. That was a mistake, because the lines don't show that. And the laws of perspective don't fully apply. So I won't appeal to lines, but just to what I see. What I see is that there could probably be a table leg behind the Bateleur's leg. I also see your perspective now, that there might be a table leg outside the frame--although that still seems weirder to me, despite your graphics.. How disconcerting and destabilizing.