The World
Upright meaning
Completion and integration. A cycle comes together, bringing a sense of achievement and readiness for what follows.
Something to consider
A chapter may be ready to close. Recognize what you have learned and finish the loose end you keep postponing before reaching for the next challenge.
What is on your mind? Begin a reading →Historical texts
Waite: the card
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.
Source: The Pictorial Key to the Tarot — A. E. Waite (1922) · Public domain
Waite: divinatory meaning
Assured success, recompense, voyage, route, emigration, flight, change of place.
Source: The Pictorial Key to the Tarot — A. E. Waite (1922) · Public domain
Waite: reversed
Inertia, fixity, stagnation, permanence.
Source: The Pictorial Key to the Tarot — A. E. Waite (1922) · Public domain
Mathers: meaning
21. The Universe.-Completion, Good Reward; R. Evil Reward, or Recompense.
Source: The Tarot: Its Occult Signification, Use in Fortune-Telling, and Method of Play — S. L. MacGregor Mathers (1888) · Public domain