Stepping into Our Power: The World Card in the Tarot

(Based on the representations found on the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.)

Twenty-two cards and countless possible interpretations, one thing is certain: when we draw The World, we own it. We have stepped into our power; we have risen like a phoenix from the ashes. From the Fool to the Wheel of Fortune, from Death to Judgment, we have been called to find purpose, meet challenges with dignity, and embrace a transformational process, regardless of how profoundly destabilizing it has been along the way.

The figure on this card may be “dancing on top of the world” quite literally, but I can’t help wonder if there’s caution in the positivity. After all, Saturn rules this card — a planet with challenging associations. While this is a card of cycles, just because we’ve finished one, doesn’t mean a new one isn’t on the horizon. The wreath around the dancer has an “ouroboric” quality, suggesting the eternal nature of cycles themselves: they begin and end, repeatedly and infinitely. In this way, time is neither linear nor quantitative, but rather circular and qualitative, like the phases of the moon.

Astrologically, we know Saturn to be limiting, restrictive, confining, and the bringer of myriad misfortunes: illness, exile, alienation, and, of course, death. The interplay of light and darkness, which is fundamental to the composition of the cosmos itself, factors into Saturn’s placement in a birth chart. Saturn’s coldness and dryness — shorthand for its separating, isolating, and…