The World Tarot Card Meaning

“Completing this cycle.”

The World represents the successful completion of a life cycle.

This card encourages you to finish what you’ve started. The old is being completed, and loose ends are now being tied up. When the World appears, you are crossing an important threshold. The World symbolizes that you aren’t just completing a chapter of your life, but an entire volume. This card also rules important rites of passage. Magical new possibilities are opening to you now. Take a deep breath, summon your courage and boldly cross the finish line.

What are you working on finishing?

What world have you been creating for yourself? Are you aware of new opportunities currently opening to you?

The World card is the zenith of the Major Arcana. The figure depicted on the World card has faced all the wonders and perils of the previous twenty-one cards. This image depicts her graduation. To mark this rite of passage she has been given not just one white magical wand, but two. The two wands symbolize total empowerment, perspective, and mastery. The right hand symbolizes assertive, outwardly directed energy. This is the hand the Magician uses to hold his white wand. The left-hand symbolizes receptive energy, directed inward. The wands symbolize that the figure on the World card has mastered both the active and passive parts of her psyche, the left and the right brain. She can give and she can receive.

The figure on the World card is a powerful Sorceress and knows it. Some tarot readers view her as a hermaphrodite who has synthesized the polarities of both sexes, becoming enlightened. This could be the case as her genitalia is obscured. Her left leg is bent behind her right, just like the Hanged Man. This shows that the sorceress has achieved all that she has sacrificed for. She is not afraid of her future because she sees herself in the context of the Universal. She is past fear of death, having faced it, along with her shadows to be born anew. She is aligned with her spirit’s authentic purpose. She knows who she is.

The World reminds you that you can create miraculous changes in your life when you remember your Self.

Only by honoring your whole journey, with all its losses, successes, and disappointments, will you be able to accept wholeness. The sorceress on this card can send her energy out into the world to affect change, just like the Magician. They both hold magical, white wands in their right hand. However, this Sorceress has also done her inner work. The wand in the left-hand symbolizes her mastery of the unseen, darker pathways on her journey. Acceptance of her entire path opens her to receiving. Not just the joyful, successful times, but the hard times as well.

Think back on your life’s journey. What hills and valleys did you pass through to arrive at this moment? Breath in the magnitude of your presence and perseverance! If you are here, you still have new purpose, and new work to do.

The World encourages you to finish whatever process you are completing. Completion can be frightening. It requires you to commit yourself to unknowable new experiences. When the World appears, allow yourself to feel excited about this rite of passage! Be proud of your accomplishments and your total journey. You now know thyself…and through you, the Universe is conscious of a precious part of Itself too. There is powerful magic in remembering that you are infinite and limitless.