World - Major #21

tarotbear

- now - if you had gotten him to look like Charles Atlas (or Jack Lalaine) - it might have been a great inside joke!

O.K. - I promise - I am not going to do a separate thread on all 78 cards! I am going to clump them by card number, except where separate cards have already been discussed by others...

Remember - this is why I came back to Aeclectic - to get into discussions about this wonderful and exciting deck ... so someone start discussing, already! LOL!
 

Lee

Well, here's just a little comment. The World has the only mythological reference in the entire deck, and thus might be seen as not fitting in. In fact, it and the Guides are the only cards which show the magical, the supernatural, or the mythic.

The reason I stuck with my original inspiration for this card is that I felt that the World card, by its very concept, transcends the other cards and takes a more cosmic viewpoint, as we can specifically see illustrated in many modern decks, where the dancing woman is placed in space, surrounded by stars. Thus, I felt it was appropriate to pan the camera back, as it were, from the mundane and the ordinary, so that we see a larger view.

I was also influenced by the Golden Dawn astrological attribution for this card, which is Saturn. Now, Saturn generally suggests limitations, structure, and discipline, which are not interpretations ordinarily applied nowadays to the World card. However, I was much taken with an interpretation for the World which I read in Mary Greer's Tarot for Your Self, which spoke of the card in terms of accepting and thus overcoming one's limitations, or, as I think she said, "dancing on one's limitations." The example would be a person who becomes disabled and thus unable to continue with their previous career, but who uses the situation to uncover other interests or talents which had previously lain fallow, and thus embarks on a new and even more satisfying career.

It seemed to me that the image of Atlas captures this meaning. He carries the Earth, or, one could say, his life, as a burden. Yet, he bears up under the burden and looks at us with an expression of resigned humor. To me this made a tremendously satisfying coda to the symphony of the Trumps.

-- Lee