The World
Secret whisperThe dance closes the circle; every ending is the shape of a beginning.
Upright meaning
Upright keywordscompletion, fulfilment, wholeness, travel
A cycle is complete. Celebrate what you have achieved and who you have become — you are ready for the next, larger journey.
Reversed meaning
Reversed keywordsincompletion, delays, loose ends, shortcuts
Something is nearly finished, but not quite. Tie up the loose ends before you move on, and resist the urge to skip the last step.
Major Arcana
The twenty-two trumps describe the great passages of a life, the Fool’s journey from innocence to wholeness. When they appear, the matter at hand is larger than daily events.
In Waite’s own words (1910)
From A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, public domain. Original English text.
Divinatory meaning: Assured success, recompense, voyage, route, emigration, flight, change of place.
Reversed: Inertia, fixity, stagnation, permanence.
The picture
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.
