Hello, good people of the internet, and welcome back to The Forty Servants in Theory and Practice, a series where I have a deeper look into the philosophy, use, and evolution of the Magick and Divination system: The Forty Servants.
Each entry will focus on one Servant at a time, offering background insight, design history, divination reflections, shadow aspects, magical applications, and how my personal understanding of each has shifted or deepened over the years.
If you know nothing about The Forty Servants, then have a look at this link HERE. You can start using The Forty Servants straight away, as there are totally free resources available at that link that give you access to everything the system has to offer. You can start working with the Servant today without having to open your wallet or sign up, or anything other than read some web pages.
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So, let’s go…
THE GURU
“The Guru shows us how to practically apply any knowledge we have gained. He encourages us to always try to implement the lessons learned from our spiritual insights into our day to day lives.”
ARTWORK
The artwork for The Guru started life as a pin-up I did for an Irish small press horror comics anthology, and for the life of me I cannot remember what the anthology was called. I’ve looked for my copy of it more than once, and it has never turned up, though I know it’s on my bookshelves somewhere. The pin-up was of the main character from one of the stories in the comic, and I’d love to be able to tell you who he was or what happened to him, but that’s gone too. Ah well.
Originally the art was black and white with grey shading on a plain black background. When I worked on the art for the deck I added the colour, and put the symbols in behind him.
The symbols aren’t anything in particular. I wasn’t encoding anything, though maybe I should have. I wanted the stars to feel more showbizy than esoteric, as I was after more of a circus poster feel than your standard type of occult line drawing image from a grimoire. There’s a bit of a circus master, or a “master of ceremonies” thing going on with The Guru that I wanted to push a bit, and to be honest, I’m not sure it comes across unless someone points at it, which I am now doing, I guess.
The other thing I had in my head, which definitely doesn’t come across, is that he’s standing in some sort of old abandoned building. All those magick symbols are painted on the wall behind him from a previous era, by occultists who are long gone. In my mind the room is actually very dark, and he’s been lit artificially, like the “photographer” has set up a light for him. There’s dust hanging in the air and the rest of the building is derelict and run down. That’s the sort of vibe I get from it.
A few people over the years have told me he looks like Adrien Brody, and I can see it, but it was in no way intentional. I may have used some sort of photo reference, though it’s more likely I used a 3D model, as I was using a program called Daz3D quite a lot around the time this was originally drawn, the same way I did for The Master.
Finally, one thing that I only noticed going back through the files for the deck. At one very early stage I was calling him “The Magician”. Which is funny, because The Witch was also originally called The Magician, but ultimately that label didn’t suit either of them.
THE SIGIL
To me, the sigil is a series of flames. As far as I can recall this was one of the sigils that just came out in a sort of automatic writing way, where I let the pen move and drew whatever turned up. But the flames really suit him. Fire is something in action. It’s something doing something, which is about as good a picture of The Guru as I could have designed on purpose.
My main use for this sigil is to draw it on my office door when I am in need of knowing how to do something. I guess I use it a bit like the Bat Signal, or a candle in the window to show that I need help. That has worked well for me.
If you find yourself being asked for advice or spiritual counsel, and you have no idea what to say, or you’re put on the spot and completely lost for an answer, you can use the sigil to invoke The Guru into yourself and let his wisdom and guidance come through you.
Another idea to try is to draw it on the back of your hands before you sit down to practise something, or have it in your pocket before you have to do the skill in front of other people, so that nerves don’t take over and make you less effective.
Sigil Quick Uses: Learning a new practical skill, converting theory into practice, performing a skill under pressure, mentoring or advising others, making a study session stick.
DIVINATION
When The Guru turns up in a reading, the most straightforward meaning is that a mentor, teacher or guide has come into your life, is just about to, or that you need to seek one out. It usually points to a one-to-one relationship rather than a class or a course, though it doesn’t rule that out. And it’s worth saying that this isn’t always a man, in the same way that none of the gendered Servants are strictly denoting a man or a woman in your life.
And make sure you don’t dismiss the teacher because of how they look or how they behave. In my experience The Guru rarely arrives looking like your standard cliché-looking guru dressed all in robes and beads. He’s the auld fella at work who’s been doing the job for thirty years and can’t explain any of it in words but will show you in about four seconds. He’s a YouTube video made by a kid from the other side of the world. He’s a person twenty years younger than you, or somebody whose opinions on everything else you find fairly objectionable. Sometimes the best bit of practical wisdom you’ll get all year comes from a person you dislike on many levels.
But the broader reading, and the one I think is more useful most of the time, is that The Guru is the Servant of practical action. He turns up when you already have the information, training, or skills but have not acted on it. So when he shows up in a reading ask yourself: what do I already know that I’m not using? What knowledge am I not applying? What have I been treating as a subject to study when it’s actually a thing to go and do?
The Guru is telling you to actually do something rather than talk or think about it. There is no further information, training or insight needed. You already are equipped to do what needs to be done, you just have to get up and do it.
This is also where the crossover between him and The Librarian matters, and the two of them sometimes get mixed up or confused. Simply put: The Librarian is knowing; The Guru is doing.
The Guru is all about taking all the things we know, all the ideas in our heads, and all the theory we have learned and actually using them practically in our day-to-day lives. He has a mantra in the Grimoire of The Forty Servants that I still think is the best summary of him: it’s of no use unless you can use it.
SHADOW REVERSAL
Reversals in The Forty Servants don’t signify the opposite of the normal energy of the Servant, but more a dysfunctional version of it, or a detrimental misuse or misunderstanding of the qualities.
The obvious shadow here is the bad teacher, and I assume we all have complicated feelings about the word “guru” for exactly this reason. Reversed, this is misinformation and leading people astray. It’s the person who has collected followers rather than students. Students are meant to leave the teacher eventually, while followers are meant to stay. Are you being taught, or are you being kept? Is this person making you more capable, or more dependent on them?
Close behind that is being trapped in dogma and not recognising the evolving nature of wisdom. This is the practitioner who learned one system a long time ago and has refused to update anything since, and now defends it rather than uses it. This happens to the best of us.
The reversed Guru can often imply that you are simply not applying what you have learned. Imposter syndrome can be a big player here. You won’t teach because you don’t feel qualified, you won’t act because you’re still preparing, and preparing feels productive so it’s very hard to spot as avoidance.
Are you genuinely not ready, or have you been ready for a while and found the readiness more comfortable than the doing? Are you keeping everything you learn at the level of interesting rather than letting it change how you actually live?
MAGICK
The Guru is the Servant for anything to do with skill, practical instruction and getting knowledge out of your head and into your hands. He shows you how, not why.
As with all of the Servants, the core method of doing magick with them is very simple. Put the card or the sigil in front of you and talk to The Guru out loud, like he’s a person standing in the room with you. Tell him the skill you’re trying to learn, or the concept you can’t get to work in your actual life, or the subject that you are struggling with moving from theory to application with, and specifically ask that it be explained or revealed to you in practical and useful terms.
You suddenly realise that there is a step you’d been skipping, or that you have the order of operations wrong. Somebody might out of nowhere show you how it’s done, or characters in a TV show you are watching will discuss the idea and give you the key you have been missing.
If you have ever found yourself a bit lost on what to do next after reading all the books, watching all the lectures, listening to all the podcasts, etc. and don’t know exactly how to take all this information and haul it down to the bank—which is a very easy place to end up in magick and occultism especially—then ask the Guru to help you with that. This is the exact thing he is for. Taking the ideas and knowledge of the intellect and transferring them to the real world where they are actually useable. So any magick that involves switching from knowledge to movement is his speciality.
He’s also the one to go to when your magick practice itself is what’s stuck. Tell him where it’s gone stale and ask for the next practical step. Usually it’s the bit you already know you’ve been skipping.
An offering idea for The Guru that you can try is to do it the other way round from how we usually do offerings. In the Indian tradition a student gives their teacher a gift called dakshina, at the end of the learning period rather than the start. Meaning, you’re not paying to be taught, you’re giving something afterwards for teaching you already received. So, ask the Guru for the practical steps, go and do the thing, and make the offering when it’s done and not before. If you never get around to doing it, he never gets paid, which means his advice has to actually work for him to get his offering. But go with what feels right for you on offerings. I tend to light a candle or incense before anyway, and then tell him he’ll get a further offering at the end if it works out.
SERVANT COMBINATIONS
The Guru with The Librarian and The Father is the full teaching set, and it’s the combination I’d use for starting any new area of study. The Librarian helps you with the theory, The Guru then gives you the practical real-world steps, and The Father sits with you and advises you on how to emotionally handle the result of this. Knowledge - Action - Assimilation.
The Guru and The Witch are a great pairing for anyone whose magickal practice is mostly a reading habit. This is the direct antidote to the armchair magician. The Witch shows you the magick and The Guru shows you how to use it.
The Guru and The Idea work well together for anything creative that has stalled after the exciting part. The Idea brings the inspiration, and The Guru helps you practically manifest it into the world.
And that’s it for this time, I hope you got something good from it. If you’d like to chat about it, you can leave a comment below, or come find me on Bluesky, though I’m not terribly active over there.
If you would like to support this series and the rest of the stuff I do, then please consider a paid Patreon Membership, buying me a coffee, or sending a PayPal donation! All amounts, even very small ones, all really, really help to keep the engine running here.
So, until next time,
MAY YOUR BEST DAYS BE AHEAD!
Tommie