The Magician Archetype

Posted on | July 24, 2009 |

As I continue to investigate the Magician archetype it seems as if there may be several levels of Magician. Some people seem to start life with so much more than the rest of us. More opportunity, more contacts, more genius… it’s humbling. And truly there are some people, very able and wonderful, who started out superbly well equipped to live large lives meaningfully in this world. Churchill had superb connections that helped his genius to shine, for example, and despite his unpromising early years he was a man who, in his youth, was familiar with the dining tables of the powerful and influential - until he became one of them.

I could multiply examples.

In India they call this kind of person a mahatma, a ‘great soul’. Some people even seem to have been born like that, possessed of unusual powers. They are called ‘gifted’, and they have some special talent that shines from them.

Think of the Jesus story. Jesus’s birth was heralded by angels and signs, yet he was born a pauper. Perhaps this is a hint that we can find great souls throughout the human spectrum. Yet it’s also troublesome. What about the rest of us? Most of us weren’t born with special portents, and we were all born into different circumstances.

So here’s the nub of the matter. We can all become Magicians. And I promise you after we have done that people will be only too happy to go back and re-invent the circumstances of our birth for the added drama they can create. In the process, though, they make it seem impossible that any of the rest of us could be special, since we know our own situations were not that unusual, for the most part. And so we may lose heart if we think this way.

Now, think in metaphors. The ‘miraculous birth’ stories should not be seen as being about actual birth in a physical sense. They need to be seen as the personal rebirth - that moment when we recognize that we have something important to do in this world, that angels are on our side, and that they’ll help us to discover what it is and how we can contribute. That’s the real birth story.

So, when were you ‘born’?

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