*Cards with Kate, with any luck, will be a monthly feature where I talk about whatever card has floated to the top of my favorite deck, Shadowscapes, drawn by the incomparable Stephanie Pui-Mun Law. I’ll discuss the meaning of the cards, how the art and presence of other cards factors into my interpretations, and what the card can mean when it turns up in your life.
A disclaimer, to cover my bases: I don’t offer readings through my site. If you’re interested in a reading, you can contact me to find out how to reach me for readings. My cards don’t predict the future, they anticipate options and different potential outcomes, but the only person responsible for your future is you!
Today’s card: THE WORLD
When I was a kid, I was afraid of space. There’s one particular photo, of astronaut Bruce McCandless II, untethered, floating in the black just above the blue-white curve of the Earth, that I think pretty well encapsulates my childhood fear. A tiny figure, unmoored. Vulnerable. Impossibly tiny and insignificant against the dark. Expand that image, and I knew I’d find the Earth–my Earth, the ground I walked on and the sky above my little-child head–also impossibly tiny, impossibly vulnerable and insignificant, a soap bubble floating in the void.
When you’re an anxious kid, vast things like space, or the bottom of the ocean, can be scary. Hell, it’s probably scary to adults, too.
But the thing that makes space so terrifying for some of us–our smallness, our planet’s vulnerability, the sheer potential of what’s out there–is also what makes space such a source of deep love and fascination for others. The sky isn’t the limit, there is in fact no limit because the universe is always expanding. Possibilities abound. No goal, however off-the-wall or out there needs to be dismissed out of hand as impossible. Our existence is impossible! We’re a soap bubble in the void, and look at us! We’re here! Laughing and crying and making messes, making mistakes, dreaming and hoping and loving and living.
Most tarot decks come with a booklet or guide, and that guide will tell you something along these lines about The World card: balance, achieving goals, fulfilling a heart’s desire or deepest wish, everything in harmony, the end of one chapter and the start of another. These ideas aren’t incorrect, but in my opinion, they aren’t complete. I like to tell people who ask me: read the guide, if you like, but don’t make it your bible.The cards will always have more to say about themselves than any guide pamphlet could.
(A friend of mine, also a lover and reader of the tarot, always says the same thing to new readers who come through his workshops: the guidebook makes good kindling. Your mileage may vary!)
Look at The World, as illustrated by Pui-Mun Law. The whirl of leaves: ivy and oak, maple and linden. The moon and stars above, unfathomable as ever, but visible through a porthole of greenery. A woman–Gaia, maybe, or some other earth parent– cradling a green sphere and peering into it. She’s dressed in green, and wrapped in scarlet ribbons. She’s surrounded by red-breasted birds: swallows, symbol of hope and good fortune? Robins, symbol of new life? Ruby-throated hummingbirds, symbol of the presence of spirit, or healing, and also ferociously fighting for the future? Or maybe some other bird, one only she knows. The woman doesn’t look afraid, or elated. She may be peering into the sphere, or she may have her eyes closed, and is resting her forehead against it. Receiving rather than seeking. Communing with the universe cradled in her arms, rather than searching for the future there.
There is balance here, a sense of peace in her relaxed shoulders, her relaxed face. But the void spins on overhead, illuminated by the moon, and the birds are in flight. There’s the comfort of the familiar in her arms, and the thrill (of excitement? of apprehension?) of the unknown in the glimpse of the world beyond her arbor.
I like to call The World card the “kick in the pants card” because, in most readings where she comes up, it’s as a signpost, a trail marker telling the inquirer time to change things up! Maybe the inquirer needs to look up at the sky where before they had been focusing on the sphere–so busy looking at an individual issue, relationship or project that they’ve lost track of the whole world beyond it. Maybe the inquirer needs to bring their gaze down from the stars, rest their head against that cool glass and pause to let the next steps make themselves known, rather than get lost in the vastness. The World, like all the cards, has different meanings depending on her conversations with other cards in a spread, but whenever she appears, it’s good to pay attention. Potential is knocking, and it’ll probably be coming from an unexpected, maybe seemingly impossible, place as remote as the stars.
But we’re living in a soap bubble in the void. Our very existence is seemingly impossible. Which means, says the World, that nothing is truly out of reach.
-Kate
Kate Hall 