from Meditations on the Tarot: Juggling Analogiessynthesizing with the unconscious; vision without effort

The practice of analogy on the intellectual plane of consciousness does not, in fact, demand any effort; either one perceives ("sees") analogous correspondences or one docs not perceive or "see" them. Just as the magician or juggler has had to train and work for a long time before attaining the ability of concentration without effort, similarly he who makes use of the method of analogy on the intellectual plane must have worked much —i.e. to have acquired long experience and to have accumulated the teachings which it requires — before attaining the faculty of immediate perception of analogous correspondences, before becoming a "magician" or "juggler" who makes use of the analogy of beings and of things without effort as in a game.

The Magician represents the man who has attained harmony and equilibrium between the spontaneity of the unconscious (in the sense given to it by C. G. Jung) and the deliberate action of the conscious (in the sense of "I" or ego consciousness). His state of consciousness is the synthesis of the conscious and the unconscious —of creative spontaneity and deliberately executed activity. It is the state of consciousness that the psychological school of C. G. Jung calls "individuation", or "synthesis of the conscious and unconscious elements in the personality", or "synthesis of the self." This synthesis renders possible concentration without effort and intellectual vision without effort, which are the practical and theoretical aspects of all fruitfulness in both practical and intellectual realms.

from The Magician