In The Grand Etteilla, a mid-19th-Century French compilation of informed opinion on Jean-Baptiste Alliette’s late-18th-Century cartomantic deck of the same name, one snippet of text on the 6 of Clubs (Wands) assigns zero to “the world” (with a lower-case “w”) and gives it the reversed keyword of “Expectation” (not “none” as one might reasonably assume of zero), with the six staves or “sticks” showing fulfillment of that expectation in a victorious outcome that seems to have been the inspiration for the Golden Dawn’s appellation, “Lord of Victory”. The reversed definition mentions “putting in the effort and reaping the rewards,” and also “impatience in seeing something come to fruition” that may require “a long wait.” (For what it’s worth, upright it simply means “a servant,” which is far wide of any esoteric mark I can fathom.)

These assumptions are not incompatible with the modern esoteric connection of the Major Arcanum card “World” or “Universe” with Saturn, the “Taskmaster” and the “Great Teacher,” and its penchant for visiting protracted lag on worldly affairs. The naked woman dances within an elliptical mandorla, which Aleister Crowley equated with the “Cosmic Egg” or zero. The idea of zero as an amorphous state of “primordial rest” also underlies the esoteric interpretation of the Fool at the other end of the trump-card sequence and has some correlation to the Aces as the latent “root” of their elemental powers and, in a lesser sense, to the Princesses or Pages as a prefatory stage of readiness to act, not yet manifest.

During a recent Celtic Cross reading, the Universe came up reversed in the “Heart of the Matter” position (Card #1, “covering”) with the Empress “crossing” it, which in this case I read as “opportunity” rather than the more customary “challenge.” I discussed the ideas of “fertility” and “cultivation” as attributes of Venus connected with the Empress, and noted that she would have to “scrabble” in the poor soil of the reversed Universe (a bountiful card when upright) to find something worth nurturing. A subsequent card in the spread was the 6 of Disks showing six halved pomegranates with their seeds exposed as “that which was recently (or is still in the process of being) cultivated.” The Moon reversed came next, implying that “strange fruit” might very well be the resulting crop. This reading took some intriguing twists and turns centered around the “growth” implications of combined Earth and Water, the two dominant elements in the spread, strained through the profoundly mystical filter of the reversed Moon.

The interesting thing here is that the Universe, usually a card that augers well for successful completion of a matter, when reversed can mean that success comes slowly and in sporadic “dribs and drabs” rather than all at once, owing to the lassitude of Earth and the foot-dragging qualities of Saturn coupled with the delaying tactics of reversal. I used the analogy of a “patchwork” to convey the assumption of “intermittent or qualified success,” and the nurturing sustenance offered by the Empress as a boost to encourage more than piecemeal arrival. In current usage, the Universe in its upright orientation conveys the “expectation of success” more convincingly than when it is overturned. This essay has no purpose other than to explore the slightly barren nature of the Universe reversed and not of Etteilla’s more hopeful 6 of Clubs reversed, even though in modern interpretation it is more robust in its promise of victory when upright. I’ve found that the “Continental” system of delineation invented by Etteilla puts too fine a point on many of the cards when they appear in combination, so I doubt I will be learning it to any great depth. It does, however, provide a useful sounding-board when considering the origins of some of the Golden Dawn’s ideas. My colleague and online acquaintance, Mary K. Greer, did once mention that MacGregor Mathers’ personal tarot writing is “all Etteilla.” This is not surprising since Etteilla, standing on the shoulders of Antoine Court de Gebelin, was the first to propose esoteric meanings for the cards.