The Wild Unknown Tarot - The World XXI

Sulis

I need some help with this one!!!

Against a dark and starry sky is a circle. The outer layer of the circle has a pattern of rainbow coloured stripes.. Directly below that is a layer or what looks like snake skin with blossoms coming from it and reaching through the darkness towards a white centre...

I have absolutely no clue as to what this image is meant to be. Is it some sort of black hole?

The World is the end of the journey. It shows the final destination, the place where all things become One. It's the sum of everything, the Universe, the creative force, the source...

It's number XXI reduces down to III so it's related numerically to The Empress III and The Hanged Man XII.

It says to me that things are as they should be and in a reading it often shows the end of something that is meant to end or the chance of lasting success in whatever the reading is about and the need to move onto the next phase of life..

So what does this image mean?

Come on Wild Unknown Tarot lovers, please help!
 

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Calcifer

Um.

The human spirit, who's natural home is the cosmos, filters through your "snakeskin (same image from the Ace of Cups), which is entanglement with the "material/natural" world (flowers). The white hole in the centre is the manifestation of the spirit - endlessly completing its journey (the white hole is yet another star - as depicted in the outermost borders).

Spirit going to matter, back to spirit, back to matter. In other words, "the divine cycle".

Insofar as divination goes, I've seen no reason to deviate from the traditional RWS translations, at least in relation to daily life. As I read with reversals, upright = things are going to change for the better, reversed = things are going to take a negative turn.

I'm still not connecting with the chain/snake imagery, but intertwined like that, I'm leaning toward something esoteric like in my first paragraph... not the roulette wheel in RWS.

Of course, I may be so full of it that I'm leaving tracks...lol.

Michael
 

Sulis

Calcifer said:
Spirit going to matter, back to spirit, back to matter. In other words, "the divine cycle"

YES!
Thank you. This is exactly what I wanted and I think you've nailed it too :).
Your help is VERY much appreciated :D.

Did you mean the Ace of Cups when you said 8?
 

Calcifer

Er, yes. Ooops. Trying to multi-task here.... and not doing well. Nothing like some sleep deprivation to muddy the waters...lol

M
 

Karrma

And snakeskin is shedding the old skin for regeneration, as well as blooming flowers regenerating life also.

What I have not quite figured out is the outermost circle, looks like a circle of piano keys to me.
 

Calcifer

My. my.. thank you Karrma. That's what I needed to hear (re. shedding skin).

The colors... maybe signs of the zodiac, the path the spirit enters the world from ? When I have time, I might count the number of color permutations...

Anyway, cool perception there :)

M
 

Sulis

And snakeskin is shedding the old skin for regeneration, as well as blooming flowers regenerating life also.

What I have not quite figured out is the outermost circle, looks like a circle of piano keys to me.

Yes again!

Snakeskin - regeneration and blossom - new life...
And the blossom is coming from the snakeskin so shedding the old and nurturing the new..

Thank you :D.
 

Starshower

Brilliant, Calcifer - thank you!

Snakes in many cultures = wisdom; besides the snake swallowing its tail = eternity ... the cycle of birth, growth, death & rebirth ... shedding the old skin & being reborn from within it. The eternal cycle, as described above. :)

I see the light / white / day at the bottom of the card & dark / black / night at the top as being fully integrated in the middle circle. So it could mean many kinds of integration - the conscious & the unconscious perhaps; or our rational, daytime left-brain & our dreaming, intuitive right-brain.

The colours, according to Goethe's Colour Theory, appear where darkness meets light. Simply putting pure white light through a clear prism against a white wall with no imperfections or bumps or edges shows no colours at all - despite what ignorant teachers sometimes say. Try it! Goethe did - and found Newton to be quite wrong.
The colours weren't 'contained in' the Light alone - they burst forth where the Light met less-light, & were brighter still where light meets darkness!
(Think of an engagement ring where the diamond sparkles much brighter with colours in candlelight among shadows than in broad daylight with less light/dark contrast!)

The refraction of light into colours only occurs on edges (like a bevelled mirror; or if you hold a prism up & look at a dark window-frame on a bright day) - where light meets lack-of-light. A flaw or slightly darker patch of wall is where you would see colours in a white room. Best of all, they appear beautifully against the darker the edges of the window-frame, and only palely or not at all on the plain wall.
{I have an issue with Pink Floyd! ;) }
Some people see much spiritual / esoteric meaning in the fact that dark + light = all the colours we see.
Between total black Nothingness & pure white explosion of Everythingness lies our whole world of variety & colour (literally & symbolically.)

Ok, too much. Sorry! I'll shut up & retreat. But that's how I see this card. :)

(This theory was followed by Steiner & also by the famous & prolific English painter Turner. There's an exhibition with quotations & explanations of this on the top floor of the Clore Gallery extension to the Tate in London, as it had such a huge impact on Turner's artwork, besides on that taught in Anthroposophical Steiner schools.)
 

Sulis

Thanks for that Starshower, I think you've nailed it too. I especially like this bit:
Starshower said:
I see the light / white / day at the bottom of the card & dark / black / night at the top as being fully integrated in the middle circle. So it could mean many kinds of integration - the conscious & the unconscious perhaps; or our rational, daytime left-brain & our dreaming, intuitive right-brain.

I'm very happy :).

I've pulled this card a couple of times and just gone on my understanding of The World card as an archetype but I really like to know what symbolism I'm looking at, what the image actually means etc so this thread has been a huge help for me..
 

DaisyDragonfly

When I see this card I feel like I'm seeing the World from a very long way away. Like how an omniscient eye of the universe might see our world, with the energies and the lights of billions of spirits and lives beaming out.

The pale blue dot of Carl Sagan, you know? When you're far enough away from the world that you don't see individuals and independence; you see life, the collective, working together to keep itself going. It's scary and it's beautiful because the idea is so big, but it's made so small when seen from such a long way away. The ultimate perspective that frightens you right up to the moment you get it, but when you get it you're filled with peace that just won't shift.

Peace, because everything is in its right place. Your life when it assumes its proper proportions. The peace you get in deep meditation, or deep prayer, or whatever you do to quiet the mind and let yourself just be. It's the end of one journey, the journey where you're trying to satisfy ego, but the start of another, when you're honoring that great gestalt by being the best part of it you can be.