Magic warrior

Legend: Arthurian Tarot 

Today's card from Legend: Arthurian is Magician, represented of course by Merlin. I like this image of Merlin, wearing his mantle of feathers and a purply-blue hooded cloak. He walks barefoot, accompanied by a wolf ('lone wolf' that Merlin is) toward a cave. The scene has strong sense of the fey, with the running water, foxgloves, and the rocks. A mysterious figure, Merlin would often appear to help Arthur during trying times, but would disappear again into his woodland realms and not be seen or heard from for years at a time.

Everybody could use a Merlin in their lives.

Ferguson's companion book, 'A Keeper of Words,' says that the Magician card means skill, wisdom, noble use of one's talents. Harmony with one's environment. Power of influence. Wise counsel. Sensitivity to unseen powers. Independent thought. Showmanship, originality, self-confidence, risk-taking, strength of will, self-discipline to complete tasks. Diplomacy. Grace under pressure.

Wow, everyone could use a Magician in their lives, too.
I wonder how I will be called upon today to use these qualities from within myself.

The Camelot Oracle card I've drawn to accompany Merlin is Gawain. What a great image this is, the ginger-haired Gawain with piercing blue eyes, holding his famous pentacle shield and all dressed in green with a huge leather belt tied up around his waist. In tarot terms, he is much like the Knight of Wands, hot-headed and impulsive and not necessarily the sharpest tack in the box. That doesn't mean he doesn't have a kind of wisdom though, and a rough-hewn integrity. In many versions of the story, it is Gawain who openly accuses the Queen and Lancelot of adultery. He is on the whole, though, quite courteous and definitely honourable. On the path to the Hermitage, Gawain's challenge to us is: 'What alternatives have you not yet considered?'

Now if I apply this question to the Magician, I must think on what alternative types of self-discipline, risk-taking, showmanship, diplomacy and grace under pressure have I not yet considered. I don't really know.

I suppose today I need to be open to opportunities to be impulsively magician-like. (But all I really want to do is get through the day and get back home. The goal of my life lately.)