The World Reversed

Finishing up our Majors...the World or Universe is a card about achievement, mastery, completion, and a feeling of being welcome anywhere you go. It's a card of travel, not travelling to learn but travelling to dispense knowledge. This is the Wise Scholar instead of the Fool, packed up and going wherever the road takes them. Reversed....

1) Opposite: obviously, the opposite of the travelling card would be staying at home. A person who can't venture from their comfort zone. Likewise, the person is far from finishing what they've been working on. It isn't complete, it's only just started.

We might also say that the opposite here would be the Fool - but we already have that card. So what's the difference? I would say that the Fool doesn't pretend to know anything. But the reversed World indicates a person who thinks they are worldly, pretends to be worldly...but they are not.

This card could very well suggest someone who is fooling themselves or others. Their knowledge is faulty or just plain wrong. Their information is false; they don't know what they're talking about.

2) Blocked: as the energy of the World card is completion or mastery, a blocked World card indicates that something is stopping a person from finishing the job. Ever seen the movie "Wonder Boys"? A writer keeps working on a novel, it gets longer and longer, but he can't seem to finish it. The reversed world would very much suit this man. What he's taken on he can't compete or master - or, for some reason, doesn't want to.

This card might also come up for someone who is agoraphobic. A person who cannot leave their home, who is afraid of the outside world.

3) Upside-down: the upside-down image of the Rider-Waite world gives us an image very like the Hanged Man. The dancing figure can't dance, the world, as it were, can't turn. We end up with stillness rather than movement. As with the other interpretations, we get the feeling that no travel is possible. The person can't turn and so can't see all around them - they can't complete what they've started.

Onto the next reversed Tarot card, the Aces...

Order Thirteen's Tarot Reversals as a downloadable eBook.

Back to the list of Tarot Reversals...