On Spring – Ostara – My Tarot card of the day is The World.  I felt on top of the world today.  Spring is really here and life is beautiful!

The World card is the last of the major arcana and likewise brings a close to the paths that were previously chosen.  It represents the completion of a cycle and acknowledgement of the wisdom gained from our total experience.  The World represents the celebration of a long and insightful life, one full of love and despair.  The experiences of the physical are now entwined in the spirit binding us together with both God and Goddess and our true selves.  The World also represents the wonder and beauty of seeing who we truly are and how important our spirit really is in the larger scheme of things.  When the World makes itself known in the tarot deck you can be completely sure that true self-awareness and love of Life has been found.  The World encompasses peace, perfection, love, honor, and grace.  Everything that we have strived to accomplish now comes into being.  We become one with the self and with the All-Life.

The World

What has traditionally been known as the World card points to the presiding intelligence, called “Sophia,” or Wisdom, which upholds life on this and all worlds. A more precise title for this card might be “the Soul of the World,” also applicable as a symbol of personal empowerment and freedom. In most Tarot decks it is a female figure that has become our standard World image. She originates in Hebrew, Gnostic and Alchemical lore, and stands between heaven and earth as the Cosmic Mother of Souls, the Wife of God and our protector from the karmic forces we have set loose upon the Earth in our immaturity and ignorance.

Where the Empress energy secures and fertilizes our terrestrial lives, the goddess of The World invites us into cosmic citizenship — once we come to realize our soul’s potential for it. Just as the Chariot stands for success in achieving a separate Self, and Temperance represents achievement of mental and moral health, the World card announces the awakening of the soul’s Immortal Being, accomplished without the necessity of dying.

This card, like the Sun, is reputed to have no negative meaning no matter where or how it appears. If the Hermetic axiom is “Know Thyself”, this image represents what becomes known when the true nature of Self is followed to creative freedom and its ultimate realization.

The World’s Meaning

The World is an indicator of a major and inexorable change, of tectonic breadth. This change represents a chance for you to bring about a desirable end to the Old and a good beginning to the New. It is indicative of growing maturity, a sense of inner balance and deeper understanding. It suggests that you may be approaching a more final sense of identity, and the security in the self that comes with age. It also represents the falling away of boundaries, sometimes in the effusive sense of the spiritual, but sometimes in a purely physical sense, indicating travels or journeys in the future.

The World Tarot Card

Do you feel fulfilled? Have you completed a grand project exactly as you had planned? Are you reaping the benefits from your labor and beginning to live your dreams? Do you feel in control of a relationship that is mutually beneficial to the both of you? Has that joining together created wholeness in your life that you longed for? If these and other feelings of involvement and completion dominate your life, expect to see the highest numbered Tarot card of them all appear in your reading: The World.

Floating in the center of a blue sky is a nude woman, wrapped in a scarf that covers her pelvis and flaps behind her shoulders and below her feet. She holds a baton in each hand and has her hair braided tight and bejeweled. A luscious laurel wreath crown surrounds her, its green leaves wrapped at the top and bottom by a red cloth band. In each of the four corners of the card is a portrait. A man in the upper left looks in profile over at an eagle that returns the gaze. In the lower left a bull and across from him is a lion, both staring your way. Each of these is illustrated with a billowy light-colored cloud as their backing.

The woman is dancing in the abandonment of complete victory, surrounded by a victor’s crown. The wreath is the equivalent of a trophy: in ancient times, chariot race winners would be crowned with the laurel. The lack of any solid ground on a card called “The World” might seem ironic, but the illustration depicts the feeling that you get when you have conquered your world. The four faces in the clouds represent the fixed signs of the zodiac (Aquarius the Water-bearer in the upper left, Scorpio’s higher status as an eagle in the upper right, the Taurus bull in the lower left and the Leo lion in the lower right) and relate to similar depictions on the Wheel of Fortune card. But whereas they are depicted as golden statues on that card, here they are made much more personal with distinct, lifelike portraits. From an illustration of random chance that the Wheel of Fortune foretells, The World card confirms that the highest achievements are being met.

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