Meaning
Smith's World is a dancing figure draped in a violet scarf, a wand in each hand, inside an oval wreath of leaves tied with red ribbons; in the four corners are the heads of a man, an eagle, a lion and a bull, the four living creatures of Ezekiel's vision, as on the Wheel. Waite says the design is the same in every deck, and reads it as the perfection and end of the cosmos, the restored world and the soul in the state of vision; he rejects the readings that make it the initiate or the Absolute.
The Golden Dawn gave the card Tav, the last letter, glossed as cross, mark or seal, with the planet Saturn and the element Earth, and titled it the Great One of the Night of Time; Book T calls the card the Universe, as Crowley's Thoth deck does. On the order's tree it is path 32, the last and lowest. It is the one trump the French school, after Lévi, also put on Tav.
We read the card as completion: a whole thing finished and in motion, the last card before the Fool begins again. Waite's fortune-telling list for it, assured success, voyage and change of place, is quoted below as his.
In the birth cards
The World belongs to Greer's third constellation, with the Empress, 3, and the Hanged Man, 12. It is the Personality card of everyone whose total is 21, with the Empress as Soul card, on 5.9 percent of the days from 1900 to 2030, and the Hidden Factor of a 12-3 and of a single 3, on 5.2 percent.
A total of 21 occurs only for births up to 1990 and not again until 2156, so the World as a Personality card is closing with the twentieth century; for people born since, it can only be a Hidden Factor. It is the card of no sign. As a year card it comes 8 times in the 201 years from 1900 to 2100 for a 15 June birthday, and a World year is always followed by a Fool year.
History and names
The Marseille decks call it Le Monde. Its picture, a figure in a wreath with the four creatures in the corners, is, as Waite said, the same in every deck. Book T and the Thoth deck call it the Universe.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Golden Dawn title (Book T)
- “The Great One of the Night of Time” sourced
- Waite's fortune-telling list (1911), upright
- “Assured success, recompense, voyage, route, emigration, flight, change of place”, quoted as history; Waite called such meanings artificial and arbitrary sourced
- Greer's name for the constellation
- Love and Creative Imagination (1987, 2021) sourced
- Our line for the birth-card chain
- 21-3: Creation brought to completion our construction
- Second attribution (Book T)
- Earth, beside Saturn sourced
- Thoth deck name
- The Universe, XXI sourced
How the schools read it
- Game decks (15th to 18th century)
- Le Monde: a figure in a wreath with the four living creatures in the corners, much the same in every deck.
- Golden Dawn, Book T
- Tav, the cross or seal, a double letter, and the planet Saturn, with Earth; path 32, the last. Book T calls it the Universe and titles it the Great One of the Night of Time.
- Waite and Smith (1909 to 1911)
- The perfection and end of the cosmos, the restored world and the soul in the state of vision; he rejects the readings of it as the initiate or the Absolute.
- Mary K. Greer (1984 to 2021)
- In the constellation of 3 with the Empress and the Hanged Man. The Personality card of a 21-3, and the Hidden Factor of a 12-3 and of a single 3.
- Lévi and the French school (1856)
- Also on Tav, the last letter: the one trump the French and English schools put on the same letter.
- Crowley, Thoth deck (1944)
- Called the Universe, as in Book T; letter and planet unchanged.
- EsoTerrier
- Read here as completion: a whole thing finished and in motion, the last card before the Fool begins again.
Claims about it
-
The World is the goal of the Fool's Journey, the trumps' original story.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: The Fool's Journey is Eden Gray's reading of 1970. The fifteenth-century trumps were ranks in a game, not chapters of one story.
-
The World promises success or a journey abroad.
falseWhat the record shows: Those are in Waite's fortune-telling list, quoted as history.
-
Tav and Saturn are the World's ancient correspondences.
disputedWhat the record shows: They are the Golden Dawn's, from about 1888; Lévi had already put the World on Tav in 1856.
