Waite-Smith — I - The Magician

Thoth Crowley/Harris — I - The Magus

Buddha Tarot — I - Asita — The Seer

The Magician evolved from the "trickster" in Renaissance decks to the loftier idealistic Magus of today. The transformation generally occured around the advent of the Golden Dawn. The Magician has become synonymous with wisdom, creative energy, activity, strength of will, vitality.

Divinatory Keywords

In Smith-Waite Style Decks

• Action • Conscious Awareness • Power • Focus 

In Buddha Tarot

• Pointing the way to improvement • Advice • Scholarship and Skill  

In Thoth or Golden Dawn Decks

• Activity • Strength of Will • Vital Energy •  Cunning •  Power • Creativity • Trickery • Impulse • Sometimes "Occult Wisdom or Power"

Archetype

Procreating masculine • Heavenly Father

Numerology

1 - Unity, yang

Letter

Beth or B

Tree of Life

Path from Kether to Binah

I Ching Attribution

I - Ch'ien - The Creative

Planet

Mercury

The Evolution of the Magus

We've come to accept as the modern-day archetype, the Waite-Smith Magician, with the "as above, so below" pose, powerful wand in the right hand as the left hand gestures to earth. On a table are the powerful instruments of the Magus — which are also the suits of the Minor Arcana.

Of course in earlier decks, we had the wide-brimmed hat of the Marseilles Juggler and the sense of a "trickster." And Later, mystically, in Thoth, the Magician becomes the ultimate expression of the Magus whose body actually forms the alchemical glyph of Mercury. In the Buddha deck, Robert Place's ingenius Buddhism themed deck, Asita the Seer becomes the honored Magician. Asita was one of the greatest seers of his time.

What links these uncommon threads? Juggler, creative and powerful magician, mystical magus and seer?  

Manifestation, whether it be manifestation of the trickster (juggler), magical practitioner (magician), cosmic mage (magus) or respected seer. Manifestation of thought, creativity and energetic will. 

From Paul Foster Case's Oracle of the Tarot (1933): 

In the Words of Arthur Edward Waite

A youthful figure in the robe of a magician, having the countenance of divine Apollo, with smile of confidence and shining eyes. Above his head is the mysterious sign of the Holy Spirit, the sign of life, like an endless cord, forming the figure 8 in a horizontal position infinity symbol. About his waist is a serpent-cincture, the serpent appearing to devour its own tail. This is familiar to most as a conventional symbol of eternity, but here it indicates more especially the eternity of attainment in the spirit. In the Magician's right hand is a wand raised towards heaven, while the left hand is pointing to the earth. This dual sign is known in very high grades of the Instituted Mysteries; it shews the descent of grace, virtue and light, drawn from things above and derived to things below. The suggestion throughout is therefore the possession and communication of the Powers and Gifts of the Spirit. On the table in front of the Magician are the symbols of the four Tarot suits, signifying the elements of natural life, which lie like counters before the adept, and he adapts them as he wills. Beneath are roses and lilies, the flos campi and lilium convallium, changed into garden flowers, to shew the culture of aspiration. This card signifies the divine motive in man, reflecting God, the will in the liberation of its union with that which is above. It is also the unity of individual being on all planes, and in a very high sense it is thought, in the fixation thereof. With further reference to what I have called the sign of life and its connexion with the number 8, it may be remembered that Christian Gnosticism speaks of rebirth in Christ as a change "unto the Ogdoad." The mystic number is termed Jerusalem above, the Land flowing with Milk and Honey, the Holy Spirit and the Land of the Lord. According to Martinism, 8 is the number of Christ.