We begin this week with the arcana of consumation or completion, the (21) World. And yet, though complete, it is not static but dynamic, for we find at the heart of the arcana a dancing woman whose figure, like that of the (4) Emperor is the bodily representation of the symbol of sulphur ? . In The Tarot of the Magicians, Oswald Wirth has this to say about the arcana of the (21) World:
It corresponds to the whole of anything which is made manifest, hence to the World, the result of permanent creative action. Reality which this action creates, is not limited to what comes within our senses. These senses are instruments adapted not to the real World, but only to the deceptive materialism of the poor sublunar world in the illusory dusk from which we struggle. Of what exists we see only the dying surface, made up of cinders about to harden and become relatively immobile in an apparent and illusory materialism. We are ignorant of the living essence of things and our conceptions suffer because of it.
Oswald Wirth, The Tarot of the Magicians, p. 149.
The key, then, is to open ourselves through subjective realization to the inner mystery that the (21) World reveals:
Man is the self-feeding furnace, the athanor in which the philosopher’s pure gold is ripened. Bring about in yourself the ideal of creation to make your Microcosm conform to the harmony of the Macrocosm, for such is the final objective of the wise man.
Oswald Wirth, ibid, p. 166.
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