The Magician is card no. 1 in the the Major Arcana. He unpacks the Fool's knapsack and shows us that the essence of everything we need on our journey through life is already present:

 

A wand, symbolizing passion and energy.

A cup, symbolizing emotion, particularly love.

A sword, symbolizing the cutting edge of the mind and its ideas.

A coin, symbolizing worldly matters, the life we build for ourselves.

 

This is where undeveloped potential is revealed. Use it in the right way and become what you want to be - become yourself at your best, complete and at ease in the world. The Magician shows us that it is ultimately sheer willpower and imagination which controls these attributes. The combination of white lillies and red roses in the Rider Waite card is sometimes said to stand for the balance between the head (thought) and the heart (desire), which should always be maintained in developing any potential.

 

Of course, this is a journey of which we will never truly reach the end. The journey itself is the goal. The Roman philosopher Plotinus writes:

 

Go back inside yourself and look: if you do not yet see yourself as beautiful, then do as the sculptor does with a statue he wants to make beautiful; he chisels away one part, and levels off another, makes one spot smooth and another clear, until he shows forth a beautiful face on the statue. Like him, remove what is superfluous, straighten what is crooked, clean up what is dark and make it bright, and never stop sculpting your own statue, until the godlike splendor of virtue shines forth to you…. If you have become this, and seen it, and become pure and alone with yourself, with nothing now preventing you from becoming one in this way, and have nothing extraneous mixed with your self… if you see that this is what you have become, then you have become a vision.

 

A more contemporary philosopher, Bob Dylan adds:

 

The picture you have in your own mind of what you're about will come true. It's a kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self, because it's a fragile feeling, and you put it out there, then someone will kill it. It's best to keep that all inside.

 

You choose the face of the statue you're working towards. You choose the picture in your mind. Choose it carefully.