The mature Magician archetype is focused on problem solving, finding solutions, creativity, rational thinking, logical thinking, and creative thinking. He also finds ways to protect us in the face of danger and is an expert in going within to find the gifts of healing and transformation.
In its mature form, the Magician archetype embodies the following qualities:
He is all about creativity, thinking and problem solving. He likes specialist knowledge that requires expertise and learning to master. He may have served an apprenticeship to a master to become qualified in his specialism.
At the same time, he is master of introspection, going within to find the gifts of self-knowledge and healing.
Magician energy is seen in professions such as doctor, counselor, therapist, computer programmer, computer technology, architect, builder, scientist, writer, musician, and actor. However he is active in any profession when problems need to be solved or strategies need to be devised.
He is usually oriented towards goodness, but knows about the dark. Sometimes he is a master of the dark arts and the healing arts.
He is not so much motivated by feeling as by results. He may believe âthe ends justify the meansâ.
He tends to come online when we feel anxiety or fear, energies which signal that something is dangerous or that something needs to change in our lives.
A Magician may live to serve by moving through the world creating right order, teaching people a good way.
The mature Magician desires right order, virtue and wisdom. He seeks to provide counsel to the King, and desires to be respected for both his wisdom and his ability to advise the King. He probably sees himself as being at least as important as the King.
He may be a master of ceremony and ritual and knows about the routes to exploration of soul.
He often comes into being very early in life to protect the Kingdom (and especially the Lover archetype) from wounding, by finding strategies to stay safe in a hostile childhood environment. These include disassociation, risk management, avoidance of certain situations and behaviours.
Additional descriptive words for the Magician archetype include: advisor, counselor, seer, interpreter, articulate, available, planner, solver, objective, thoughtful, visionary, guide, Shaman. Read more about magician archetypes here.
In its purest form, the emotional wound here is âIâm bad.â This is where a lot of shame lives.
A child may be shamed for his very existence, or pick up on subtle or not-so-subtle clues that his presence in the world is not wanted or acceptable or even approved of by his parents, siblings or peers. He may be told â either overtly or covertly â that he is bad, that there is something wrong with him, that he is unlovable because of his nature. He may learn he is evil in certain religions and cults â as in the concept of original sin: âWe are all born bad and need to be saved.â
The essence here is about being shamed for who he is, the message being that the essence of who he is, is somehow defective. As a result a child learns to step out of himself to some degree, to watch his behaviour, to modify it so it suits others, so he stays safe. In this way he becomes detached, an observer in his own life, and grows his magician energy.
Alternatively, if a child lives with danger, violence, rage, manipulation, or exploitation, or for some other reason has a strong need to stay safe in an unpredictable environment, he may grow magician energy to both watch for danger and to come up with strategies to stay safe.
In the extreme, he may become hypervigilant, always on the watch, afraid to inhabit his own body. Sometimes men describe leaving their bodies during childhood (or later in life) and finding themselves watching events from a higher vantage point.
Whatever this experience represents, we can be sure it was the Magician archetype within who was seeking to keep these men safe from the knowledge and feeling of terror about what was really happening. This is one way in which the aspect of the Magician sometimes called the Risk Manager or Safety Officer can deal with trauma.
The Risk Manager or Safety Officer seeks to protect all of us by forming childhood strategies which are designed to try and keep us safe from harm. Unfortunately these strategies will persist into adulthood and can become very outdated, and therefore restrictive in living a full and rewarding life, unless they are attended to (usually by another Magician skilled in the healing arts).
