The World: tarot card meaning

In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the World upright means: Assured success, recompense, voyage, route, emigration, flight, change of place. Reversed: Inertia, fixity, stagnation, permanence.

The picture

“As this final message of the Major Trumps is unchanged, and indeed unchangeable, in respect of its design, it has been partly described already regarding its deeper sense. It represents also the perfection and end of the Cosmos, the secret which is within it, the rapture of the universe when it understands itself in God. It is further the state of the soul in the consciousness of Divine Vision, reflected from the self-knowing spirit. But these meanings are without prejudice to that which I have said concerning it on the material side. It has more than one message on the macrocosmic side and is, for example, the state of the restored world when the law of manifestation shall have been carried to the highest degree of natural perfection. But it is perhaps more especially a story of the past, referring to that day when all was declared to be good, when the morning stars sang together and all the Sons of God shouted for joy. One of the worst explanations concerning it is that the figure symbolizes the Magus when he has reached the highest degree of initiation; another account says that it represents the absolute, which is ridiculous. The figure has been said to stand for Truth, which is, however, more properly allocated to the seventeenth card. Lastly, it has been called the Crown of the Magi.” A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1910

Upright

Assured success, recompense, voyage, route, emigration, flight, change of place.

Reversed

Inertia, fixity, stagnation, permanence.

In one line

Assured success, the road, and the journey. (Esbat's own summary of Waite's meaning and picture.)

Where it sits in the deck

The World is card XXI of the 22 Major Arcana, the trumps. Before it comes Judgement; after it, Ace of Wands.

In Esbat

Esbat deals a card of the day, face down until you turn it, and holds all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. The World can be shared as a picture. All 78 tarot card meanings.

Sources

Meanings and picture descriptions: A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: Rider, 1910), public domain, checked against the Wikisource transcription. Picture: Pamela Colman Smith, 1910, public domain. Like the app, this page records what the book says; it does not promise outcomes.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

Esbat: Tarot & Book of Shadows, on Google Play

A card of the day, face down until you turn it, and all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. For Android.

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