The WORLD - the Naked Truth
Tarot Magic in Capricorn Season
On an ethereal plane, high in the clouds of Heaven, a piece of your soul is dancing. Inside of you she is dancing. Dancing for you as you are. In the messy middle. In the mud. In this mucky, sticky, naked moment of your beloved, cosmic unfolding.
I love reading Tarot with children. When my kids were smaller and I was just learning about the cards, I made sure to have decks around with imagery that they would find approachable.
They loved to flip through the cards and make up stories about the illustrations they found most silly, sweet, or scary. Some archetypes they identified with quite deeply, others they soundly rejected. Like most children, mine intuitively understood the concept of “reading” tarot, like an unbound book.1
A playful, creative act of self-expression.
Sometimes while pulling cards among friends, their children will want me to read for them. We start turning cards and the kids quickly become my little teachers. They aren’t afraid to ask questions of the readings they get and, unlike most adults, they trust their own interpretations and are quick to assert them. Without fail, their intuitive responses are rich with insight and meaning.
The lesson I take from them again and again is — don’t discount the gut reaction! It tells so much.2
Like when young readers ask me: “Why are there so many naked people in these cards?”
And I blush, having forgotten that nudity isn’t a symbol when you’re eight. It’s just awkward!
Have you noticed that the WORLD is almost always naked?
Adults can easily extrapolate all that exposed skin. We’ve seen this kind of art before. It represents: Wholeness. Confidence. Authenticity. As Sally Nichols writes, the nude in the WORLD is “intent on the purpose of being—being herself”…“free to express herself effortlessly…without prudery or shame.”3
You might say she’s childlike—except that this is a figure who has experience.
The WORLD card is numerally positioned at the end of the Major Arcana. By the time we access this energy, we have been forged by the fires of experience through all the majors that came before. TOWER, DEATH, SUN, MOON. All phases were leading to this moment.
Now, in the WORLD, we reclaim the state of pure, shameless PRESENCE we embodied as young children, but with deep wisdom to boot.
I’ve been reflecting on this card throughout Capricorn season—a time of year when I like to reimagine what truly “being me” could feel like. I try to picture the version me that could move like the dancer in the WORLD—free of self-judgement, wholly self-possessed, confident in her spiritual-alignment.
No surprise: there’ a gap between where I am and where I want to be.
Like the rest of the new-year’s-resolution-wielding world, I ask myself what steps I’ll take to bring myself closer to that ideal version of me, closer to the WORLD. With the energy of the determined sea-goat to back me, I try to put these ideals into action. Lists. Calendars. And intention-setting rituals are the bread and butter of January for me.
At the same time, I recognize the trap of putting myself in constant comparison with the WORLD. I know first-hand that clinging too tightly to visions of my ‘best self’ can leave me exhausted, disheartened and stuck.
I have a very vivid memory of drawing the WORLD (perhaps for the first time?) when I was about to give a talk I had prepared on unconventional narrative structure at the Writing Barn. I fancied that my perspective was a bit unconventional itself—which made me both antsy and passionate. Add that to that the fact that I was out practice at giving talks. (Early motherhood benched me from the symposium game.)
I was VERY nervous.
So I went to the cards for clarification. What energy was to accompany my talk? The WORLD.
Auspicious.
But it didn’t erase my fears of inadequacy or my negative inner chatter. The response to the talk was enthusiastic and the discussion that followed was lively, but I still felt unsettled for days afterward. I felt—naked.
One happy ending to this story: someone in attendance mentioned my talk to her writing mentor who then hired me—for actual money!—to give the talk again to her mentees. Look at that! My own crown of laurels to commend my efforts! But even though the gig was nice, I don’t think that was what the WORLD arrived to show me.
The WORLD makes us vulnerable.
The WORLD looks like a promise of purely divine, consummated purpose—a climax in the realm of the spiritually orgasmic. But in the real world this energy can feel pretty destabilizing. After all—when we leave the WORLD, the cycle starts over. We are about to become the FOOL once more.
So the kids were right to point it out—being in the WORLD means being stripped. Some part of you gets revealed. How could this be comfortable when you are still living in a body on the literal world, EARTH?
It’s just awkward.
In regard to my talk on unconventional narrative structure, I think the WORLD arrived to remind me that I was fulfilling (if in a very small way) some kind of soul-appointed purpose. The discussion themes around making room for experimentation, decentering western story-telling ‘norms,’ and asking deep questions about how stories most want to be told—are all massively resonant to me. My nervousness was evidence of how deeply I cared about the topic that I wanted to share.
On the soul level, it wouldn’t matter so much how it was received. Only that I’d opened up and released the ideas wanting to flow through me. (How often does creative expression demand this of us? That we follow its yearnings without promise of ‘successful’ outcomes? SO often.)
Reflecting on this now, I’m reminded of how the Majors (in contrast to the Minor Arcana cards that speak to embodied life) depict spiritual states as they exist on a soul plane. With the WORLD my soul could speak with the fluidity of a dancer, unconcerned with shame or discomfort—unfussed about imperfection. But on Earth—I could not.
We may never fully embody this or other Major Arcana energies the way that we might the Queen of Wands or King of Cups. The Majors move through us, alerting us to cosmic, otherworldly seasons to which we can only surrender.
So if you are drawing the WORLD card reading your guide book and thinking: “But this doesn’t make sense. I’m not experiencing any closure, accruing any accolades or feeling especially fulfilled.” It’s possible that you’re too close to your human, body-wearing existence to see how beautiful you truly are in this moment.
You are! You, spirit-vessel of flesh and bone.
Spirit honors you.
I like to think that the WORLD arrives with the invitation to believe that no matter what you may be feeling on the earthly level—no matter how naked, how exposed, or exhausted—on the soul-level you are in full-bloom. Dancing with the elemental energies of the Universe and channeling her co-creative force.
DRAW a few cards to reflect on this for yourself:
Where are you channeling magic that even you have overlooked?
Where are you living out a purpose so bone-deep that you’ve begun to take it for granted?
What does your soul long to celebrate in and through you today?
When we imagine that Spirit sees us, we can open up space to see ourselves (without reference to unrealistic ideals) as the vibrant, divine channels that we are. So if you have been pounding through Capricornian to-do lists and wellness rituals, perhaps allow yourself to consider the ways in which you are already Vast. Expansive. Childlike and Ancient. Right now.
Thank you for reading! Keep in touch for updates on Tarot events that I will begin offering regularly in the Austin area this year! There will be opportunities for you to
receive readings from me,
join in in-person Tarot Circle sessions,
take part in creative crafts with fellow magic-makers.
Tarot writer Stuart R. Kaplan is, as far as I can determine, the first to refer to the Tarot as an “Unbound Book,” though I am sure I encountered the comparison in several (maybe numerous?) other sources. As a writer of stories I find this comparison pretty compelling. Books, like tarot, educate, entertain, and enlighten us. Unbound, the tarot asks us to co-create the story, make our selves willing to adapt, change and reframe it, moment to moment. This book is never finished.
This is how I honor my initial reaction to a card: I note it (in writing or internally) then reflect on how this compares to what I have studied about the card, (in my guidebook or elsewhere). Any tensions between the two become a jumping off place for further research/reflection, ultimately helping me to both understand the conditioning I bring to the card and to expand my awareness of what possible reframes the card offers me.
Sally Nichols. Tarot and the Archetypal Journey: the Jungian Path from Darkness to Light (2019).