The World
We have been called upwards from Judgement, and being drawn up into the heavens through the blare of the angel’s trumpet we have been taken to a place of incredible majesty and wonder: The World.
If the Sun represents the attainent of what we’ve wanted on earth as physical human beings — physical safety, uplifting community, and loving and supportive family and friends — then The World represents what we’ve wanted on earth transcended by what we’ve wanted and needed as soulful, spiritual beings. After all, it is possible to have the most loving and caring family and circle of friends in the world, and yet nevertheless still feel an immense amount of pain, confusion, and loss from an inability to meaningfully discover and realize who they are, whether it be in terms of their sexuality or their gender (or both). One can have everything they need in terms of a stable home, and yet still feel a need to fill a need unfulfilled in their spirtual self.
The World has its own fair share of esoteric visual symbolism that can be troublesome to interpret to modern eyes, so let’s start with the outer edges and work our way inward.
First, we have the four animals on each of the four corners of the card. A human (a cisgendered blond white man — heh), an eagle, a bull and a lion. Given the heavy Christian mystical influence on the tarot (owed largely to both A.E. Waite and Pamela Coleman-Smith’s background in the fabled Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a Victorian society dedicated to the study of eclectic, esoteric and occult knowledge) that we see in past cards like The Lovers, Temperance, and Judgement, it’s safe to say that there’s some at least tangentially Christian meaning to these animals.
Indeed, the four animals are often read as a direct reference to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, otherwise known as the Four Evangelists of the New Testament. This wasn’t an invention of Waite, Smith, or the Golden Dawn; the Tetramorph — the name given to the four animals when used to represent the Four Evangelists — is a very traditional part of Christian iconography that goes back to Irenaeus (130–202 CE), a highly influential Greek bishop in the early Christian church, and the symbolism of using a combination of multiple animal forms to portray multiple people in a composite goes back to ancient Egypt and Assyria. In addition to the Four Evangelists, the four animals are also often taken to represent the four faces of Christ, as outlined in the four Gospels of the New Testament; in a more esoteric and astrological interpretation that places less emphasis on Christianity, the animals are also taken to represent the four elements: Eagle for Scorpio (Water), Bull for Taurus (Earth), Man for Aquarius (Air) and Lion for Leo (Water).
The wreath surrounding the figure in the centre is a victory wreath; the naked figure in the centre holds two wands and is dancing. This is again a callback to Christian iconography; a symbol known as “Christ in Majesty” depicts Jesus in a mandorla (an oval-like geometric form that has been charitably described as “almond-shaped”), surrounded by the four animals of the Tetramorph, one in each corner. Here in this card, Christ has been depicted by naked figure, often interpreted as being a naked woman (especially of interest to queer folk is how this person is also often traditionally described as a hermaphrodite or a gender ambiguous/gender neutral person). A callback to the Star (as well as other feminine figures in the Major Arcana, such as the High Priestess and Strength), it is an image suggestive of innocence, beauty and the Divine Feminine. While A.E. Waite and Pamela Coleman-Smith drew extensively upon Christian mystical imagery and iconography for the cards of their tarot deck, they were careful not to make their deck an exclusively and directly Christian one, of a desire to incorporate more of their esoteric imagery from their own spiritual background. The wands the figure is holding seem to be two of the same wand used by the Magician in his card; again, a callback to an earlier card in the Major Arcana.
What does this all mean for us?
The adapted (and I am even tempted to say, subversive) symbolism from the Christ in Majesty imagery puts us in the centre of this scene; just as Christ rose to triumph over death to ascend to a state of divinity, so will we similarly ascend to a state of triumph over the aspects of ourselves that we struggle to integrate and embrace, at the end of our journey.
In practical terms, this symbolizes the phase of our ace and aro journey that in some way, we may never actually practically reach; the phase where we have become a wholly integrated being. We are at one with our sexuality and gender identity, as gloriously messy and non-normative as it may be. For us, it means being comfortable with being ace, or aro…whether you define yourself as simply Asexual, or Aceflux, or Panromantic Aegosexual, or a Demiromantic Bi-Lesbian, you know who you are. And you love yourself for it. Surrounded with people with whom you can feel truly safe and free, the toxicity and the hate of the bigoted trolls around you simply fall away as you ascend, far above the earth and all of the small people who inhabit it, with their small-minded notions of what sexuality has to be. Maybe those four figures in the corners represent the facets of your polycule, your family, your friend circles on Twitter, your D&D group on Discord, or your specific romantic or sexual partner. If the theme of The Sun was, “Wow, you’ve made it!”, the theme of The World is, “Now, you *are* it.”
I say that in some way, we may never actually practically reach this state because from my own reading of Shiri Eisner’s book Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution, I’ve come to the personal view that while we often frame gender or sexuality or romantic attraction as linear spectrums where we can be either on “Side A” vs. “Side B”, sexuality doesn’t always necessarily work like that. As opposed to spectrums stressing the presence of fixed binaries where, upon which, we firmly place ourselves, I almost feel like human sexuality is really an ongoing path that stretches from the day we are born, to the day we first become sexually aware of ourselves, to the day we embrace our inner queerness. Sexuality isn’t a linear spectrum. It’s a temporal continuum of experience, where the labels we use to help understand ourselves may change as our understanding of our own sexuality changes. I think of one of Abigail Thorn’s video essays on YouTube as one big example that sticks out in my memory: It was a beautifully vulnerable and exquisitely presented piece chronicling her journey from cisgendered heterosexual, to cisgendered bisexual, to bisexual transwoman. Along the way, each of her identies was valid, in that they, at each point in her life, reflected who she felt she was as a sexual human being. That journey resonated with me substantially, mirroring in a lot of ways my own journey into my own sexuality and my own capacity for attraction to both men and women (or at least people who present as such). But still, two years or so on from my own reckoning with my asexuality and roughly about half a year after publicly coming out on social media as someone on the asexual spectrum himself, I find myself still interrogating and critically examining my own asexuality. I still find myself in the asexual section of that metaphorical queer label clothing store, trying on other accessories after having found the Demi/Ace jacket fitting me so well: How does this Aceflux shirt fit on me? Pretty good I think, but how’s the fit on the Asexual turtleneck for me? Too tight perhaps?
That is sort of the point though in the end, isn’t it? To constantly keep working and striving to be the best version of who you are, not just as a someone who’s aro or ace or queer, but as a basic human being. We may never fully, truly get to that state of spiritual perfection and transcendance, where we feel absolutely zero tension with our sex or gender, and acheive this state of sexual and gender nirvana. But it is always worth trying.
On a practical level, perhaps this imagery may suit you as a “queer elder” and an “ace elder”; a person who has spent a significantly long period of time living as an out queer and ace or aro person (regardless of your age). Maybe you’ve spent so much time on Ace Twitter and Ace Tumblr that almost all of the usual discussion points floating around social media about the “validity” of asexuals and aromantics seem like ancient history by now. Perhaps you’re so “old” that you remember “AceGate”, the explosion of asexual visibility on Tumblr that led to a wave of aphobia and anti-ace/aro gatekeeping by others in the queer community (which in turn left us with aspects of Ace culture that we take for granted now, like the term “Allosexual”). In the end, the key thing to remember here is that you’ve accumulated a wealth of experience as someone on the asexual or aromantic spectrum. You’ve tangled with many ill-informed and bad-faith arguments and people, and have the scars to show for it. You’ve seen people — some younger than you, some older — ask the same questions about asexuals and asexuality over and over, only to have that lightbulb go on and say, “Yeah, that’s me.”
What you must do then, with apologies to Master Yoda, is to share what you have learned.
You may likely already be doing this, by providing badly needed support and counselling to new asexuals and aromantics on social media, and in your online and offline spaces. Maybe you’re out there making YouTube videos, recording podcasts and writing blogs about your experiences on the ace and/or aro spectrum. Maybe you’re already out there in the world, working a new book about being Ace, or Aro. If any of those things is already true, even in a small way in your life, the only thing that can be said is to keep on going, and to keep on doing the amazing work you’re doing. The World teaches us that when you think you have reached the end of a cycle or journey, it is only the herald to the start of a new one. If you started out this journey unsure and uncertain of who or what you were as asexual, aromantic, or even queer, now you’ve achieved a level of inner mastery and inner awareness that you can help others reach too.
The questions I’ve seen pop up with alarming regularity in my time on Ace Twitter go back to questions of history. “What’s the historical basis to asexuality? When did asexuality, ‘become a thing’?” — these, as well as the discussion raised by exclusionary radical feminists about the supposed historical place of bisexuals in the queer liberation movement — have to my mind cemented the importance of queer elders in the community, not just as a source of support, positivity and aid in the face of an increasingly queer-hostile society, but also as a source of information, insight and wisdom to ground the community. And people in the ace and aro communities are certainly no exception to this.
An example of this from my own experience was when I came out to someone in person for the first time; they replied with a talking point about Demisexuality that is still repeated as a supposed point that is supposed to invalidate it. That comment — from someone I greatly respected and trusted at the time — led me to a very unhappy period of questioning and self-gaslighting. It wasn’t until I did a lot of personal digging into the history of the word “Demisexual” that I began to better understand and value this label I had decided to take on for myself. I wonder if, if there had been more people with more experience dealing with aphobia, with a stronger grounding in the community to which I could have reached out to. I could have asked them about arguments made against Demisexuals, and even gone to them for support. Maybe then, my experience would have been different. Perhaps I would have been a lot more compassionate to both myself, and my friend.
The victory wreath, and the call backs to earlier cards in the Major Arcana, especially the Magician, all point to the understanding that the World is not just an ending. While it is an apex, it is the mountain you climb, only see that there are so many other mountains just waiting to be conquered. You may have completed and conquered the challenge of grappling with your own asexuality in your own way — what peaks are you going to climb next? Maybe your journey with your sexuality has led you to repeat this journey with your relationship to your gender and gender identity; maybe this has led you to new places and spaces with your spirituality and religious journey. Maybe you are ready to start a new journey on a new career path to share your story and experiences with the world. Whatever your path, you will be starting a new, with new things to learn about yourself and your goal. Time to gather your travelling bag — there’s no time like the present to start anew, and start again.
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