THE WORLD - TAROT

Hello All,

I find at last I am on the final card of the Major Arcana, the last of the Tarot Trumps and it has only taken me from last Summer to write them all!  I said from the very beginning that I could only do them when I had a 'window' but Im really pleased that I have managed to get to the last card. I have not yet decided whether to write more on this series as I felt that I wanted to give initially just a viewpoint on how I felt (philosophically) that Tarot was our Life Journey. How it plays a part. I hope somehow I have managed to convey that even if in brief terms.  I may expand this series but I better not make that promise right now with many Missing Cases pending. I will let you know what time I have and whether Im going to talk about Reversals and Pip Cards of the Suits. In the interim period, if you have not read my series so far you can find it on the link below.

TAROT - THE JOURNEY OF LIFE EXPLORATORY


Meanwhile, lets look at the beautiful World Card, otherwise known to me as the FOUR SEASONS. Every year we have four seasons Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter and we pass through each of these in our journey through the year and each year through our lives. 

Our life is one huge lesson of learning - we have failures and success on the way, pitfalls and ladders of hope and inspiration, emotions of tears and equally laughter, those we meet love and their passings, those who age with us, memories to look back on and things to look forward to because each step will incorporate some of that and more.

The World is the end of the Journey of Life. Not the end of us, but a symbol that we have travelled a long road and LEARNT many LESSONS . Not the end of us and not the end of the road particularly because when we get to the WORLD we are considered that we should at least BE more Worldly but as its a circle, its a cycle and things begin again. We take what we have learnt and we carry it forward. This is the reason for the Fool having a ZERO on it. It neither belongs at the beginning of Tarot and nor does it belong at the end because we are on a CYCLICAL motion in life. Unless we pass on we go on and on and on and on until we do. Learning on the way, using our journey as a guide to avoid what does us no good, to use whatever experiences we have had and keep renewing our journey and in some respects living our Karma.

For some the WORLD card is really the JOURNEY itself as is the FOOL card, we get to the World and go around again as we would setting off as the Fool card for the first time.   Its not so complicated to understand that when this card turns up in the reading it could actually represent trips/travel and goals perhaps that someone might have wished to achieve.

When we get to the World card we also take a good look around us - theoretically we are complete, we 'did it' and we then go on a fresh journey perhaps WITH all that experience in mind.  I like to think that the World card actually stands for the paradise of Earth itself. That we go through life possibly blinkered in some respects.

Have you ever thought about life today?  it will depend much on your age because of course in the 'old days' we didnt have the technology we have now.  It was very much a 'make do and mend' type of existence. If someone had a television it was very likely that some of the neighbours would gather round and watch it - people after the wars were very community minded. They would share in a way that a lot of people could benefit because in the hard times of losing houses under bombs, losing loved ones, people reached out to each other and a sense of humanity was very strong indeed. It was all for one and one for all.   Does it mean that life is terrible now then? no.  Today, that lingering past is still very much the fabric of society but of course as time marches on, hardships of the past are often forgotten. Technology is amazing and people today have so many gadgets and so much labour saving devices that it really could not be compared to 'yesterday' where you might find your mother outside putting clothes through a wringer! and we are talking about in the Winter days as well as other seasons.

Today the 'World is our oyster' in many respects. Everybody is CONNECTED even if it is through the internet. We dont need to stand outside a phone box waiting for 'Maggie to finish chatting over an hour to her mum' while we stand out in the freezing cold hoping to goodness she would just shut up and give us the phone!  No we have it easy. Even children have mobiles so that their parents can keep a tab on them. I dont need to reel off all the virtues of technology today really, but there is one thing we should take note of. THE WORLD CARD!  it is EARTH it has animals on it, its beautiful, it has music on it, travel on it. Every planet has its own musical sound, our Earth is full of animals, vegetation, mountains, plains, oceans and of course people. But because this is the WORLD card and I want to draw you to the EARTH qualities - I want to remind you that we often do not NOTICE how lovely the world is because we have come such a long way in our Journey of evolvement and because gadgets have taken over to a degree that perhaps..........we dont always notice the beauty around us.

Remember the lady on this card is NAKED? Well not really Naked she has a kind of sash. If she had been naked she would have been noticed right away ..am I right? but she has SOME clothing on so she is noticed but NOT as much as she would have been if she was with nothing at all. So perhaps in this world we do not notice ALL the beauty of the earth because firstly we dont see it in its entirety. Not everyone after all gets to travel the WHOLE world and see EVERY bit - yes on the internet but in reality we do not.  The lady in this card holds two sticks. We can see the whole world through an IPHONE ? yes we could but WE DONT GET TO SEE THE ENTIRE WORLD.  The beautiful world is there though. If we just explore the bit of world that we live in within reason we can learn a lot. What really happens today however, is, that many people do not notice how lovely the world really is maybe because their lives are so busy, or because they are always looking at their phones? do many people actually notice the trees, how lovely they are, how they change colour, or what the sky is doing?

You see the WORLD goes around and around, the Earth spins day to night, on and on, through seasons, through years it is ever beautiful and yet it is not always noticed. This card to me has a spiritual quality. The appreciation of the WORLD.    Maybe when we get to the World card we actually DO notice how important the Earth is? maybe we have learnt such a lot and we realise what is valuable to us and what really is not. Maybe we want to start to incorporate our appreciation OF the World in our lives.   The Journey of Life is a learning curve. We either learn from it and grow wise and learn how to travel in it with wisdom or we start out again or repeat cyclical mistakes with the Fool as we fall right over that cliff!  well the Dog tried to warn us but if we didnt learn.......

There are so many philosophical thoughts to the World Card - each of us might have our own. I think of it as the Paradise Earth and appreciation of that and the realisation that no matter what happens to us we have been given the gift of life to live on this immensely lovely planet. That we can learn about it too and we can set out to protect it because we did at last NOTICE IT and not take it for granted perhaps. Maybe we do become all good humanitarians, that we all appreciate the animals, the vegetation and seek to protect what is important because we learnt that on our journey.

Maybe we learnt that being ignorant of Planet Earth was foolish, that it goes around only if we look after it if we take note of it and set out to be environmentally kind to it?   some people may not know this until the end of their lives, some people might learn it sooner and set out on that Journey again in the Fool card with the aim to make a difference. The great thing is WE CAN ALL MAKE A DIFFERENCE, young old, all races and all peoples because we are the inhabitants. The World card shows one person but that one person is YOU. Its YOU that can make that difference. Uncover the beauty with your eyes but NEVER TAKE AWAY THAT SASH because that Sash is also the protection of the Earth. Maybe it stands for its minerals or oils? if we take too much? then what happens? so you see there are many ways to think about this card. Its what you feel it means to you personally but you need your attention drawn to it in the first place.

I hope this series has helped you to do that. Remember the lady in the World card has two drumsticks - she 'beats to the sound of her own drum' - that is you too, you will move forward and have your own idea about your life BY the experiences that you have taken on board. People always do what they think is right dont they? but hopefully they will do that bearing in mind what they learnt on the way.

I hope that you enjoyed my Journey of Life overviews up until now. Im sure there are many things yet I can add to the cards that I have posted but the main objective was simply how to project them as we take each step into each Lesson in our lives. Please check back and see any expansions I make and I will let you know if I will be looking at other aspects of the deck as a whole.

Thank you for reading

TAROT - THE JOURNEY OF LIFE EXPLORATORY

Empathy.