XXI - The World : Re-creation & Integration
A naked feminine figure is in the centre of the card, suspended in a blue sky, in an open, dancerly gesture. There is a flowing purple sash whirled around her body, and she holds a small white baton in each hand. She is completely encircled by an oval-shaped, laurel wreath of leaves, which is decorated by red ribbon in an infinity shape. In each corner, is a figure that appears to sit or emerge from a grey cloud; a human head, an eagle's head, a lion's head, and a bull’s head.
XXI The World from the Rider Waite Smith tarot
As the last card - chronologically - in the major arcana, The World signals a significant ending. This is a major accomplishment but not necessarily of the kind we might reflexively think of i.e. success through productivity, or externally validated achievement (but it can be!).
The esoteric figures in the corners convey the 4 elements - water, air, fire and earth - corresponding to the suits of the tarot - cups, swords, wands and pentacles. So this accomplishment or ending, is one you've arrived at through some conscious integration of emotions, intellect, passion and practical action. And let’s say it - the whole image is heavily esoteric with a dreamy or dreamlike quality. So perhaps even a dream has come true.
Well done you!
What have you completed? Even the simplest or smallest of victories? How can you honour and celebrate this?
How might you give yourself credit - acknowledge this as the fruition of your capacity to work hard, and weave in wisdom and intuition.
While this significant ending needs to be given it's just time and gravitas; our lovely dancer also seems to be arriving! A new beginning.
How the figure is naked, and emerging through the oval or egg-shape, harks of a birth - or rebirth. You’ve travelled the arduous passage through the birthing canal and have (re)emerged! Voila! And perhaps this is often the case when you complete a major journey, and come out victorious. It changes you in a way that you feeeel different.
What is it like to be reborn?
How are you different from before? How have you been transformed?
You needn't fear “beginning again” though. Despite what time and calendars say - life is not linear, at least not in the grander scheme of things. It's a spiral, experienced through a never-ending cycle of life-death-rebirth. Each cycle is a weaving, where threads of wisdom and experience from the previous passage are braided into the next. Whatever grows from this ‘ending’ will have greater integrity and be fused with all the wisdom and experience of before.
Perhaps this new you simultaneously feels more comfortable in the world, and more at home within your own skin.
The figure in the world has sometimes been described as a hermaphrodite. The sash covering the genital region obscures absolute certainty of sex. Another term may be transgender, but I prefer androgyne. Equally, and also neither, masculine nor feminine. Energetically. Attitudinally. There is something inherently ‘complete’ and ‘total’ about being both-and.
How might this victory help strip you of old limitations? How might this contribute to greater integrity, openness and freedom?
What parts of you have been integrated?
While tarot is a wonderful tool for self reflection to facilitate personal change, The World may also encourage moving beyond the personal. Being a major arcana card - it holds more of the archetypal energy of anima mundi - the world soul. The idea that what is happening at the microcosmic-personal level is also reflected in the macrocosmic - collective level and vice versa. So any stripping bare, rebirthing, and completion or victory may be on a grander stage.
What’s occuring in the world that signals an ending or completion?
How might your deepening integrity and openness enable you to be active in the world, to make the world a better place to live?
In his brain tingling book the ‘The Third Unconscious’ (I’m still picking my way through this short book), philosopher Franco Beradi talks about the coming of a new age that is an : “... open future that will be shaped by our consciousness, by our political action, by our poetic imagination, and by the therapeutic activity that we'll be able to develop during this transition”.
If you were to imagine a new world for yourself and future generations, what do you envision?
This future is still largely unknown obviously, but Beradi’s take is rather more pessimistic - coming off the back of the coronavirus pandemic and the structures that started to crumble after that. Still thought provoking. If we took The World as guidance, there is perhaps more faith in what might be initiated as the “ … second unconscious appears to be coming to a close” (* see below for a brief summary of 1st and 2nd unconscious)
What’s being completed or is coming to a close in the collective? the culture? the eco-cosmology? What new thing/s are being initiated? Where do you stand?
Mendy xx
If you enjoyed this reflective practice, and would like to do more depth exploration using the tarot, consider booking an online tarot counselling session.
*Franco Beradi cautiously described a “history of the psycho-sphere of a society” as an expression of ‘the collective unconscious’. The “first unconscious” explored by Freud, was where social normality required science, family and industriousness, and a suppression of sexual drive and denial of desire - leading to neurosis. The second unconscious (now/ending) is where an acceleration of information flow, overloaded the capacity of human attention, thus ever postponing the possibility of pleasure - leading to nervous hyperstimulation, panic, depression and psychosis. The third unconscious is taking shape - we are at a tension threshold.