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.
the plate, in waite's words · the painted card will hang here in time
In divination
Assured success, recompense, voyage, route, emigration, flight, change of place.
Reversed:Inertia, fixity, stagnation, permanence.
The library's note
Waite surveys more misreadings for the World than for almost any other trump, one commentator's claim that the figure is the Magus at his highest initiation, another's identification of it with the Absolute, which he calls simply "ridiculous." What the design intends instead, he insists, is fixed by nature, "unchanged, and indeed unchangeable," the perfection of the cosmos understood rather than merely reached: memory rather than prophecy, "a story of the past," the morning when the Sons of God shouted for joy. The sequence that opened outside the count, on the Fool's unnumbered step, closes here on the last number the trumps keep.
a young page · the keeper's voice pass on the note is still to come