I. THE MAGICIAN: Shakespeare

I am the quintessential actor, the quintessential playwright.

I distill. I synthesize the pieces into a masterpiece.

I do have magician images in my stash. I am fascinated by the traditional adept imagery of the Magician. I particularly am drawn to the turn-of-the-century magicians (so beautifully captured in movies like The Prestige and The Illusionist), and that combination of occultism and mass entertainment. Which brings me to this Community card for William Shakespeare. Whether you think he was a man or a committee, he earns this placement for his knowledge of alchemy and use of alchemical language, while keeping the groundlings amused with spectacle and broad comedy. Scholars love to see magician Prospero in The Tempest as Shakespeare's stand-in. At the end of this, Shakespeare’s last play, Prospero throws his grimoire into the ocean, and that is supposed to symbolize the playwright giving up the theatre. I always thought that bit was a little too pat and opportunistic. I seem to remember that literary criticism is similar to tarot, about pattern making and association :)

Rachel Pollack in 78 Degrees of Wisdom sees the Magician as a channel or conduit, drawing power from above to below. Which also is a good way of looking at Shakespeare. None of the stories he told were new, he was just really good at taking popular culture and transforming it into something deep, and vice versa. Highly mysterious, a genius in his socioeconomic class, he defied all the expectations of his education. There are plenty of people who think he couldn’t possibly be one person or that brilliant, that the canon is the work of several people, or a pseudonym for some upper-class twit. Possibly it’s a case of educated people not giving credit to genius when it strikes without prejudice in a generation.

I have invoked the Magician in my theatre directing, particularly. Directing is kind of like juggling, which is another name for this card.