Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc
By Sarah Taylor
Welcome to The World … Or The Planet Earth or The Universe, depending on which deck you choose. I’ve been holding off on writing about The World until the time felt right. And this is it. It is also one of the cards that I feel merits two articles — one where I invite you to participate in its unfolding on these pages, and one where I work with it in more detail.
All of the 22 major arcana cards, from The Fool to today’s card, hold the key to a significant archetype — or blueprint — that we encounter within us over our lifetimes. However, The World represents an apex, where one thing ends and another enters. What started out with the Fool’s journey finds full expression here. It holds the sum total of all the other archetypes; it embodies the collective; it embodies you — or, rather, you embody it.
So, once again, my invitation to you: to sit with The World — whichever version/s of it calls to you — and discover what it reveals to you in terms of its archetype, and, if you feel so moved, how you have experienced it in your own life.
As inspiration, I am including excerpts from the accompanying texts of three of the four cards: the Xultun Tarot, the Voyager Tarot, and the Tarot of The Spirit. (If you are a regular reader, you will probably be most familiar with the Rider-Waite Smith version of the card, which I will be writing about next week.)
You can either comment below, or email me directly if you don’t want your words published (sarah (at) integratedtarot (dot) com). I’ll be waiting with anticipation.
The Xultun Tarot
Note: the Xultun Tarot is unique in that its major arcana can be joined together in five rows (one row of two cards, and the next four rows of five cards) to form a picture of the journey of the soul through its lifetime in the body. The images interact with each other, which for me emphasizes the idea of oneness and interconnectivity.
” …[L]ike the albedo needing the blood of the rubedo in the Temperate Man, the creation of the caelum [which “represents the corpus glorificationis, the glorified, incorruptible, resurrected body, the immortal soul, the residue left by the process of conscious individuation”] was not the end of the procedure. It was then mixed with honey (they joy of life that overcomes inhibition and darkness), chelidonia (a golden, four-petalled flower symbolizing the fullness of life), rosemary (the binding power of love), mercurialis (a herb associated with sexuality), the red lily (symbolizing passion), and finally the alchemist’s own blood. All this symbolized the surrendering of the whole personality, light and dark, to the new center of the personality. All that has been discovered and realized in the journey is now given over to wholeness. Along this row [the fifth, and bottom, row of cards] are a total of eight Flowering Trees growing out of the transpersonal base of the deck. In this last card the eight trees now encircle the earth indicating they have incarnated, transforming an archetypal potential in spirit into form, pattern and wholeness in matter. The Fool has now arrived at an inner certainty which makes him both completely self-reliant but also completely inter-dependent with the world around him, a state that the alchemists call the unio mentalis. So the caelum is not placed on high by itself but is mixed with plants, healing products of the earth.”
From The Tarot Codex [now The Maya Book of Life] by Jungian psychotherapist Michael Owen.
The Tarot of The Spirit
“Your whole world is in balance; you move like a dancer with every movement perfectly timed; every undertaking has paid off; your endeavours have been successful; you are at the end of a long “journey”; the world is at your feet; celebrate the great work you have done!; if you want to journey further, the time is right.
“Because you are freed through new insight, the reality of your daily life is once again in flux. Reality is forever compromised at beginnings and endings. Beginnings and endings, which are one and the same, constitute a window period. Through this window, you see past, present and future with new clarity. You understand the dynamics of the present by examining the dynamics of the past. You know what the future holds by observing the dynamics of the present. You have learned that you can change dynamics at will to achieve the effects you want. This is the divine law of cause and effect in action.
Through this magical window, you can see your steps laid out before and behind. In reviewing these steps, it appears as if you have been traversing the Earth incessantly. But where have you actually gone? It appears now that you have traveled forever, but you have gone nowhere! And yet, it is not as if you have not reached your goal. On the contrary! You have climbed the mountain diligently and revelled at the peak! You have met your goal, but, even at the very moment of victory, you are aware that the goal is not what you expected. You feel, in some ways, just like you did at the beginning. Some things have changed. Others have not.
In pondering the question of where you have gone, you will ultimately realize that the real goal is, was, and always will be, to arrive back at the beginning. The goal is to arrive at the source. And, this, however confounded it seems, is the great revelation of Key XXI, the Universe.”
From Tarot of The Spirit by Pamela Eakins.
The Voyager Tarot
Note: I am going on the assumption that the four paragraphs represent four different interpretive approaches.
“The Universe symbolizes the law of universality. You are the universe. Like the center stone, you possess within yourself a universe of possibilities. What you can see in your mind’s eye exists. Like Michaelangelo, you can sculpt anything out of yourself — a flower, a city, a god, a star.
Like the stone, you are whole and perfect; but as the uncompleted sculpture, “The Awakening Giant,” your life is an unfinished process. Always in a state of becoming, you are simultaneously completing and beginning.
The universe within is emerging as you grow more aware (diamond eye), emotionally expressive (flower), and physically regenerated (chipping away of the old stone). You are re-creating your life through death and rebirth and building for yourself a new universe of new people and places.
Your problem is where to move and what to do. You are overloaded with possibilities. Confused and indecisive, you become paralyzed. Like the stone, you become stiff and stuck, unable to change.”
From The Voyager Guidebook by James Wanless.
Interesting that Daniel thought of the Wheel of Fortune. It is interesting to compare The World to the Wheel. In RWS, both cards have the four animals in the corners, symbolizing the Tetragrammaton, the mystical symbol of the universe, as manifested in the four suits (amongst other symbolic connections). In the Wheel, you’ve got the inscrutable wheel symbol in the center, putting the immutable laws of fate spinning in the center. But in The World, the woman is in the center. This is a card about the cosmic forces as we join with them, to combine and create our Self and our body on the physical plane. All the forces of the universe join with us as we express ourselves through our existence. Crowley called this card The Universe, but I think his cards tend to take a point of view from the outside looking in. The RWS card is more properly The World, because it focuses on our point of existence, from the center looking out. This card is very much the center of the universe.
Paul Foster Case made an interesting comment about the wreath that rings around the woman. The wreath is made of leaves. The leaves are a product of nature, but the wreath was woven by human hands. It is a combination of natural forces and man’s efforts and designs, a symbol of adapting the forces of nature to our works.
shebear and Gary – thank you from my heart to yours for your contributions. I, too, am feeling the desire to create, and it is a powerful one.
I really like Michael Owen’s take above.
to me The World has a very transpersonal energy to it, as the last major arcana it is speaking to the potential contribution of the artist as prophet after having undergone the personal alchemy
I am reminded of one of my favorite Carl Jung quotes:
“Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is “man” in a higher sense— he is “collective man”— one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic forms of mankind.”
I am also reminded of the path of the artist in Rudhyar’s Culture, Crisis and Creativity. Rudhyar believed that as a transpersonal being the artist creates magical seed-forms -creative works that exert a liberating and transformative influence. The transpersonalized individual thus becomes the “prophet” of a new way of life by dramatically revealing the seed-forms of a future cycle. “The inherently creative civilizer…experiences his individuality as an Act of God through his person.”
Because I was born in the sign of Virgo, I eagerly welcomed the arrival of the sun in my natal sign, more so than usual, yesterday morning. I really felt connected to Gaia’s energy when I meditated yesterday and today and I felt *very* happy and supported by my element! This feeling was greatly enhanced after reading the two supportive blogs on PW– by Eric on Monday and Gary, Amanda and Eric on Tuesday — that practically made me cry with relief!
Early yesterday afternoon, I returned home around the time of the earthquake and noticed that my favourite ring — silver with strong, cetlic designs all round it — was no longer on my right thumb?? Nah, I thought, that can’t be, it’s always too snug a fit for it to fall off. It would never fall off? But, where is it? I looked everywhere for it. Then, I remembered I had carried home some heavy grocery bags and perhaps the handle of the bag in my right hand might have worked the ring off as I walked home? I searched and searched for it again but sadly to no avail. So then a thought struck me and I felt as if I was being given a challenge, that it was a test of sorts to see what my life values are these days. Is losing this ring going to affect you and in what way? So I went with that question and by actually being very conscious about *thinking* about it, I choose not to let myself get upset and huff and puff about its loss, because, really, all i could think about now were starving children on our planet who needed food *immediately* along with real honest-to-goodness attention from its more affluent earth family members on the planet ;-( I eventually thought that losing my emotional equilibrium for a ring, such a small inconsequential possession, just wasn’t worth getting worked up when there were more pressing things to get upset over like starvation and homelessness.
The more I thought about it as the afternoon wore on, the more I thought that if we all were to use our daily meditations these days, to concentrate mainly on the first chakra and to send thoughtful loving devotion down to mother earth who is obviously in such pain and let Sol in Virgo warm her heart after him soaking in the love of Leo these past few weeks. To meditate down through our root connections and work with the energy of Pluto, and to allow her love to flow back up and through us and out to the heavens above, showing her that we really to revere and value her worth. It would be worthwhile to stop and think whether or not we actually get to survive on this planet the way things are heading, that we are only as strong as our weakest link. Now surely is the time to waken up and tend to the sick and the dying and to change our values accordingly.
One thought I had on the astrological energies wrapped around in this awareness shift is that mars in cancer might be crying out for some form of new expression. I mean, a man-made phallic monument is shaken around by Mother Nature and it ends up being cracked along its top……or is that its tip?
I actually had the card “The World” on my desk staring out at me when I came upon this post early today. It was the first card in a three card spread 😉 Next card to come up was the 5C, which I took to mean there are new options available to me/to us, that there is a bridge between an old world order that no longer serves us, to a new one we have to start creating asap. Our Light Bridge!! The last card I pulled was the 4W — Beltane and springtime celebration of our earth and it’s bounty — symbolically representing transiting Jupiter in another earth sign Taurus. I also derived hope from that particular transit as Jupiter is my ruling planet, so i come by my optimism honestly! I feel it working with Pluto in Capricorn as it cracks open institutional behaviours that are choking the life out of us.
But it’s The World card that is central to this discussion and for sure Sarah, it is timely to bring it forward and discuss it here, today. Looking at that card just makes me feel joyous and content and whole. To see the naked woman looking light and happy, encircled with a curved victory laurel, surrounded and supported by the four elements in symbolic forms, lion/fire, bull/earth, eagle/water and boy/air (least that’s what wiki informed me!) makes me sense a shifting inwards to a more trusting, a more believing and more hoping world that is going to get us to shift this………this shit around!
I think it was Fe who said it down thread, among so many other wonderful comments today: “Let’s get to it!. Yeah. Let’s dance, create and trust, believe and hope our way forward from this moment on.
Thank you very much Sarah, and for all your wonderful insights.
I think you’ve managed to convey the subtle differences between Death and the Wheel of Fortune and The World – and if that’s gained through experience then I think that’s the most powerful affirmation of all.
I never noticed it, daniel. But what you say rings true for me – and thank you for that.
I used the word “process” a lot didn’t I. Ooops. 😉
Hello Sarah,
Up to this point, I’ve experienced the World (as it appeared in spreads) as a culmination of experience and a release whereby my life would flow with a sense of ease and blessing. That everything was easy and abundant. That the struggles would subside because the lessons of that period were rewarded with blessing.
Recently, however, a deeper sense of the card seems to be coming out. I would, for example, do a reading about a particular relationship and friendship and my process with this process, trying to glean if there were aspects I was neglecting out this process. Sometimes I would get the World in a particular placement and thought, amazing! It looks like this person and my relationship to her is all happening as it should and that good things were unfolding. But then things just fell apart, albeit with ease, but nonetheless, ended. I’m like, huh? And then I step back and think, why didn’t I get the Death Card? I could have I guess. But the process unfolded in a way that was different.
The difference was in the “feeling” of that ending. Perhaps it was that I wasn’t upset or hurt. Or better, that the process I felt with that person functioned as it should have: that it taught more about myself and how I desired something greater than myself alone. That process propelled me to a deeper level of understanding about my wishes and how I work with the abundance of the Universe.
I’m still trying to figure it out. I used to think this process I’m describing was more akin to the Wheel of Fortune. But then there is the “release” aspect. This is the character which describes the beginning of a new approach, which I think, asks me to pay attention to a new cycle that is set to begin.