The World
The World is completion and integration: a cycle fulfilled, a journey accomplished, and the self in harmonious dance with the whole.
Major Arcana XXI
Upright keywords
- completion
- fulfillment
- integration
- accomplishment
- wholeness
- travel
Meaning when upright
The World shows a dancer within a great wreath, surrounded by the four living creatures, a picture of wholeness and cosmic harmony. It signals the successful completion of a major cycle: a goal reached, a lesson integrated, a chapter brought to a satisfying close. Waite's meanings are assured success and recompense, along with voyage, emigration, flight, and change of place, so travel and wider horizons are also favored. Enjoy the achievement, knowing that every completion is also the threshold of a new beginning.
On the card
- dancing figure draped in a violet sash
- The soul in harmonious movement; freedom and joy within the whole.
- two wands, one in each hand
- Mastery of both active and receptive forces; the Magician's single wand now doubled and balanced.
- great oval wreath of leaves
- Victory, success, and the completed cycle enclosing the dancer.
- red ribbons binding the wreath at top and bottom
- Their crossed loops recall the lemniscate: infinity and the continuity of cycles.
- angel, eagle, bull, and lion in the four corners
- The four Living Creatures of the Wheel of Fortune and the fixed signs, now at rest: all four elements in harmony.
- the dancer's crossed legs
- An echo of the Hanged Man's posture, now upright and free: surrender transformed into fulfillment.
- clouds and open blue sky
- The cosmic setting of the completed journey; Waite's rapture of the universe when it understands itself in God.
In Waite’s words
As this final message of the Major Trumps is unchanged—and indeed unchangeable—in respect of its design, it has been partly described already regarding its deeper sense. It represents also the perfection and end of the Cosmos, the secret which is within it, the rapture of the universe when it understands itself in God. It is further the state of the soul in the consciousness of Divine Vision, reflected from the self-knowing spirit. But these meanings are without prejudice to that which I have said concerning it on the material side.
It has more than one message on the macrocosmic side and is, for example, the state of the restored world when the law of manifestation shall have been carried to the highest degree of natural perfection. But it is perhaps more especially a story of the past, referring to that day when all was declared to be good, when the morning stars sang together and all the Sons of God shouted for joy. One of the worst explanations concerning it is that the figure symbolizes the Magus when he has reached the highest degree of initiation; another account says that it represents the absolute, which is ridiculous. The figure has been said to stand for Truth, which is, however, more properly allocated to the seventeenth card. Lastly, it has been called the Crown of the Magi.
- Divinatory meaning
Assured success, recompense, voyage, route, emigration, flight, change of place.
- Reversed
Inertia, fixity, stagnation, permanence.
Correspondences
- Element
- Earth
- Astrology
- Saturn
- Hebrew letter
- Tav (ת)
- Path on the Tree of Life
- Path 32: Yesod – Malkuth
- Number
- Twenty-one (2 + 1 = 3) raises the Empress's creative fullness to cosmic scale; as the last trump it completes the journey and opens the way back to the Fool's zero.
To reflect on
- What cycle in my life is ready to be completed and celebrated?
- What have I integrated along the way?
- What loose ends still need tying up before I begin again?
In your readings
Hasn’t appeared in your readings yet.
Ask about this card
Marguerite, the traditionalist, answers from Waite’s text, what is drawn on the card and its correspondences. You can choose another reader in settings.