The World is the arcana of Joy, according to Valentine Tomberg in his Meditations on the Tarot. This is represented by a naked dancing girl, the summation of the major arcana of the tarot. Rather than a Buddha in the lotus position or Jesus hanging on a cross—our usual representations of spiritual completion—a naked girl symbolises full enlightenment! She is adorned only with a scarf; her head is tilted backwards as she takes a step forward in a spiral gyration. Her neck and breasts are displayed in full sensual glory. The world is, therefore, naked resplendent glory—full-on carnality.
Sadly, Tomberg has to be a good Catholic and warn us of ‘the sins of the flesh’ and ‘the whore of Babylon’? On the one hand, he is correct in pointing out the danger of Neo-pagan naturalism. The French Revolution was symbolised by a woman with a naked breast, holding a flag, in a similar posture. However, there is another interpretation of the naked woman than Roseau’s primitivism or Sadean pornography. Tantric imagery is replete with erotic display—because it represents life in its fullest creative expression. For this, a symbol of ecstasy—as opposed to crucifixion—is warranted.
The World is not a return to the Garden of Eden. As a symbol of liberation, She comes after the full path of the archetypes and the 20 previous arcana. Therefore, she represents the gradual and sudden path of enlightenment—the developmental path as well as the preservation of original innocence. Furthermore, The World is the realisation of work, passion, inspiration and art—symbolised by ‘the four sacred animals’, which are the angel, the eagle, the bull and the lion. The bull represents perseverance, the lion of Eros, the angel divine inspiration—the eagle has technical ability and can fly or soar. All these are necessary for the World to be whole.
The woman is naked but adorned—which is interesting. Her silks are not so much about covering her privates but about bringing out her beauty. The adornment of women is fundamentally not about hiding, as it is in primitive theocracies, but about bringing forth what is already there. Enlightened ‘make-up’ is not for covering blemishes but for revealing beauty spots. We need to adorn and celebrate the world in other worlds. Nakedness without art, as we know from nude beaches, has no erotic quality whatsoever: the erotic always needs shadows and veils. Furthermore, Freedom cannot exist without this circle of protection. Circles of protection are essential to all forms of magic, just as we need borders, walls, and membranes to protect what is most sacred to us.
This brings us full circle—to magic and the magician, which is the first Arcana. The World is the magician's final creation. Of course, magic is indistinguishable from art. Her dance, and the dance of life, is art itself—the world is art. That is: our creative acts make us human, give us joy, and cause the dance of the world. If the magician in the first arcana works his secret occult magic, the world arcana no longer needs to hide—she has gone beyond self-conscious expression—she is the fully embodied expression of magic.
There seems to be a Christian dualism in Tombergs analysis of Tarot, a denial of the embodied pleasures of sex. At the same time, he quotes Nietzsche’s ‘Joy—deeper than woe is she!’. Nietzsche also said, ‘Happiness is a woman’. The Catholic world, understanding the power and danger of sex, went too far in making sexuality and the body ‘dirty and sinful’—which never happened in the East. There is a paradox between the Catholic focus on the incarnation and the tendency toward disincarnate spirituality, which often leads to perversion or paedophilia at its worst. Of course, free sex is an illusion, but sexuality, the body, is the vehicle of joy. ‘This very body is the lotus land’ as zen monk Hakuin put it; therefore, this body is the world. On the other hand, without art and magic, sexuality becomes the ultimate banality.
Personally, I believe that the Tantric traditions solved this problem by creating boundaries and spaces where sexuality could be expressed as art. The tarot arcana are fundamentally Tantric: they show the hidden, often forbidden aspects of religion—what could not be expressed in exoteric Catholicism. While the Catholic tradition had created power by channelling sexuality into monasticism—the Vatican had the world's largest collection of pornography. Of course, there is a hidden esoteric aspect to Catholicism, and there is a deep tantric secret in the heart of Catholicism as a world religion—with its cannibalistic ritual at the centre (drinking blood and eating the body of Christ). The body, the pagan aspect of religion, must be transmuted and turned into sophisticated art. Tarot was created, in part, as a way of expressing these hidden truths within the culture of Christianity.
The world as a Dance is not something that can be captured by ideas (although the best philosophers make words dance) but is an embodied expression. The naked woman in the picture is like the word in her mystery, whose fullness can’t be captured in realism but only in pointed-to-in symbol. She is best expressed in art and iconography.
This article is part of a consideration of our study group on symbolism and Psychomagic. If you want to become a member and join one of our study groups, please write to me at andrewpgsweeny@gmail.com or check out the events calendar below for more details.
Also, please join us at some of our upcoming classes at Parallax Academy:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Parallax to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.