Meaning and interpretation Bateleur / Magician

In the Middle Ages, the bateleur was a juggler of no particular character. In the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, entertainers were in great honor, either in public squares or in castles. By a generic name, these public entertainers were called jugglers. They were nomadic, sometimes accompanying trouvères or troubadours, sometimes going it alone. The bateleurs were more especially accustomed to making the crowd laugh on the trestles. They were, in a way, tricksters and even animal trainers, what we today call fairground artists. Jugglers were an indispensable part of public celebrations, as well as the great feasts of the lords. The word basteleur seems to have originated around the 13th century, but the origin of jugglers and bateleurs is the same as that of the crowd's taste for fairground shows. Born on French soil, they were direct descendants of Greek and Latin decadence.

It's really interesting that some early versions of the Bateleur featured a man in a jester's costume. Opposite, a bonnet with bells. Note that the Rosenwald sheet is missing a representation of the Fool's card. So, if Le Bateleur, we don't know what representation was given to Le Fou. It's quite possible that the card depicted a defrocked man who was truly mad, which a jester is not.

That said, on Cary's sheet, Le Bateleur doesn't have the attributes of the Jester. It seems that from the outset, the Tarot's Bateleur was not really seen as an entertainer, but more as a prestidigitator, emphasizing his ability to manipulate the objects in front of him. And this agility was all the more symbolic given that on the Visconti tarot card, the 4 objects denier, bâton, couteau, coupe - linked to the 4 Elements - are undoubtedly to be found.

With the Tarot anonyme de Paris, the form is far from definitive. We see yet another representation of the Bateleur.

The R-W-S Tarot has the merit of explicitly showing the objects on the table as representations of the 4 Latin signs of the tarot: deniers (precisely pentacles), sticks, swords and cups. He awkwardly adds an ouroboros to the belt, evoking the cyclical nature of life. I'd have understood the use of such a symbol on the Wheel of Fortune or World cards. But with the Bateleur, when we're at the beginning of everything, when everything remains to be done, why talk about the cyclical nature of the path ? But it's true that Waite sees this symbol more as "a sign of eternity", as he puts it, adding to my perplexity.

The card focuses on the fact that the traveler has true, infinite, magical power ; if he wants, he can achieve his full potential. It underlines the importance of persuasive communication and the mastery of words to positively influence one's environment.

The awakening of the apprentice: the potential within reach

• Le Bateleur/The Magician represents the beginning, offering new opportunities and promising potential for the consultant.
• This card encourages you to use your creative talents and your will to express your ideas in the material world.
• Le Bateleur/The Magician is the symbol of bold action, encouraging initiative and seizing opportunities.
• This card marks the beginning of an intellectual and spiritual journey, inviting the consultant to engage in continuous learning in order to evolve.
• Le Bateleur/The Magician encourages you to remain open to new information and to seize learning opportunities as they arise in life.
• It symbolises self-confidence and belief in one's own personal power to achieve one's aspirations and succeed in one's endeavours.

Le Bateleur is not a magician ! He doesn't do magic, he's a prestidigitator, to put it plainly: he's a person who, through skill, manipulation and trickery, produces magical illusions by making objects disappear, appear, change place or appearance. You could call him a conjurer or an illusionist. First of all, producing illusions is not what the French master craftmen of the Renaissance remembered. In the first stage of the spiritual journey, these scholars wanted to show that this adventure was for everyone, because the Bateleur comes from the lower classes, and is even rather poor. The Bateleur is itinerant by nature, a perfect social role to suggest the idea of journey. Last but not least, the Bateleur is very agile, and it takes a lot of agility to learn to master the 4 Elements. These, then, are the 3 essential aspects of the bateleur's craft, as retained by the master craftmen. He's not a magician, in the sense that he has no magical powers, he doesn't perform miracles, even making illusions goes beyond the initial concepts of the card. He's not a magician, because he's not part of an elite, he hasn't received any secret knowledge. Worse still, he still has a lot to learn, whereas the title of magician implies that he has mastered his art. His goal isn't to link or connect Heaven and Earth, as shown by his gestures on the R-W-S card. No, his goal is to become himself, to become One, to find his place in the world, as the last card of the journey so clearly shows : The World.

Many Tarot enthusiasts see the wavy shape of the Bateleur's hat as a lemniscate in disguise, i.e. the symbol of infinity. I must debunk this fantasy and return to the reality of the time. Among French master craftmen, there were some great scholars, Jean Noblet being one of them. Jean Dodal also passed on subtleties and a strikingly personal interpretation in his tarot. But Jacques Vieiville, a contemporary of Jean Noblet, engraved his tarot with numerous French mistakes. The Académie Française was founded in 1634 with the initial aim of unifying the spelling and grammatical rules of the French language. While 16 years after the creation of the Académie, Jean Noblet showed a real mastery of "canonized" French, Jacques Vieiville still wrote in approximate French. What's more, the engraving of his tarot is less precise and qualitative than Noblet's. In short, some French master craftmen were scholars, but most were artisans with little education beyond learning their craft. And from the beginning of the 18th century, i.e. very soon after the "standardization" of the French tarot tradition (which would much later become known as the "Tarot de Marseille"), master craftmen would give way to merchants, purchasing molds or having them identically reproduced. By the early 18th century, traditional French tarot was no longer a deck of playing cards with a spiritual message ; it had become a deck of playing cards, plain and simple, sold by the thousands for export - in short, it had become a commercial item.

In this context, only master craftmen such as Jean Noblet or Jean Dodal could have placed a lemniscate on the Bateleur's card. And if they had, they wouldn't have hidden it discreetly in the man's hat. Firstly, because the target of these master craftmen was the "real" people, the "low" people, mostly illiterate or illiterate, not familiar with the infinity symbol. And when Noblet or Dodal have something to say, they say it clearly: Noblet's LL du Bateleur is not a fault, but a clear indication that he has been initiated by his master. Similarly, Dodal puts a '4' on L'Empereur's card, to signify that he too has been initiated by his master. So if Noblet and Dodal had wanted to include the infinity symbol, they would have engraved it as is. In short, to see a lemniscate in the Bateleur's hat is a pure fantasy of modern times.

Come on, let's forget the initial perspective of the French master craftmen. Is Waite right to ask Pamela Smith to draw the infinity symbol above the magician's head? Waite writes in his book 'The Pictorial Key To The Tarot' that the lemniscate is the sign of the Holy Spirit, the sign of life, or in reference to Martinism, 8 is the number of Christ. Well, let's face it, the day Waite wrote those words, he'd really been smoking or maybe just drinking... I'd stick to the usual interpretation I read: "The lemniscate evokes that the magician has an infinite potential for realization" or "The lemniscate evokes that the magician has an potential for infinite realization". Now that's more convincing. Yes, this card does indeed speak of "potential". But what's "infinite potential" or "infinite realization"? Because here, in concrete terms, we're talking about simply finding one's place in the world, not ascending to Heaven or reaching the afterlife. Where's the infinite ?

I'm going to be straightforward : make it easy for yourself to understand this card, forget the infinity symbol !