Symbolically speaking, the Magician, or Magus, (typically in the guise of an ancient Wise One) initiates a transformational, alchemical process in the world or, more to our purposes here, in the psyche of someone on their pilgrimage to a more “heroic” or authentic life. They do this by articulating the Word, the Logos, that manifests those alchemical processes in the world, or in the consciousness of everyday life—and sometimes even in the form of “the word made flesh.”

When the Trickster is at work, you don’t always know you were being tested until it’s too late.

every initiation on the Path is a kind of death and renewal, a doorway that once marked a limit, the horizon of what we knew or believed.