The Magician

Moore and Gillette's Archetype

Earliest record: 1990Named in Moore and Gillette's King, Warrior, Magician, Lover (1990), ch. 7; Moore's taped seminar The Magician Within is also dated 1990.

Not an inherited scheme: the 1990 Preface says the four were first named in Moore's Chicago lectures. The 1993 sequel is subtitled Accessing the Shaman.

Moore and Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover (1990), Preface; Moore and Gillette, The Magician Within: Accessing the Shaman in the Male Psyche (Avon, 1993), as listed by Darrell Dobson, Teacher Education Quarterly (Summer 2009), references

Moore and Gillette's Magician is the mature archetype of the knower and master of technology.

More context

The Magician is the third of four archetypes of the mature masculine in Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette's King, Warrior, Magician, Lover (1990), a book of the mythopoetic men's movement. The authors say it grows out of the boyhood Precocious Child and is paired with the King (or Queen) in one of two dialectical oppositions. Its human forms, they write, include shamans, witch doctors, inventors, scientists, doctors, lawyers and technicians, since all knowledge that takes special training falls to it. They illustrate it with Imhotep, Nathan and David, and Merlin and Arthur. They say the scheme builds on Jung's archetypal Self and goes beyond it; the Jungian scholar Darrell Dobson says Moore advanced archetypal theory with its two-poled shadow.

Light

Moore and Gillette's Magician is the knower and master of technology, observant and thoughtful, able to contain and channel power.

Shadow

Two shadow poles: the Manipulator, who withholds what others need to know, and the Denying "Innocent" One, who refuses a Magician's responsibilities.

Sources4 sources

Primary source

Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, 1990, ch. 7, 'The Magician': sections 'Historical Background', 'The Magician in His Fullness', 'The Shadow Magician: The Manipulator and the Denying "Innocent" One', 'Accessing the Magician'; HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, 1990, first edition; the copy linked is the Internet Archive lending scanThe Magician as the knower and master of technology, the observing ego, containing and channelling power, the ritual elder, the shaman and the court magician. Also the two shadow poles, the Manipulator and the Denying 'Innocent' One.
the master of technology
Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, 1990, Dedication page; Preface; ch. 3, 'Boy Psychology', section 'The Structure of the Archetypes' and its asterisked footnote; HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, 1990, first edition; the copy linked is the Internet Archive lending scanThe four-archetype scheme, in which the Magician grows out of the boyhood Precocious Child and, with the King (or Queen), forms one of two dialectical oppositions (King or Queen/Magician, Lover/Warrior), and the triune structure of each archetype, fullness above and two shadow poles below. Also the authors' statement that the scheme builds on Jung's archetypal Self and his 'double quaternio' and goes beyond his work, and the dedication to Robert Bly and the Preface's note that the lecture tapes were widely influential in the men's movement.
We have gone beyond Jung in decoding the "double quaternio."

Scholarship

Darrell Dobson, Royal, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Archetypal Reflectivity and the Construction of Professional Knowledge, 2009, 'Four Archetypes of Maturity' (p. 152) and 'Magician' (pp. 154-157); note 2 (p. 161)A Jungian scholar's summary of the Magician in the same scheme: the mature Magician who puts knowledge in service of others, the active shadow the Manipulator and the passive shadow the denying Innocent One. His note 2 says Moore advances archetypal theory by giving the shadow two poles.