AUTHOR’S NOTE: The World card is generally interpreted to mean successful completion of the matter at hand (although it may entail some delay). In her book Holistic Tarot, Benebell Wen describes it as showing the “final state of cosmic consciousness” for the querent’s Higher Self. A few years ago I formed a slightly different opinion of it.

I’ve always been fascinated by the last few scenes of the movie 2001, A Space Odyssey, in which the astronaut is irresistibly propelled toward rebirth, experiencing a profound – and accelerated – mystical transformation along the way. Since many of my decks have extra advertising or “blank” cards, I decided a while back to use one one of them to create what I think of as a 23^rd trump card titled “Cosmic Consciousness,” and I positioned it after the World to stand for the next phase in the evolution of human awareness. (This was around the same time Wen wrote her book, but I’m just now reading it.)

Since the World corresponds to the element of Earth, I see it as accomplishment in physical rather than spiritual terms; thus, it suggests an elevated springboard or “jumping-off place” for further metaphysical exploration that doesn’t immediately land the seeker back at the Fool as is normally assumed. This notion of “raising the bar” is in keeping with my assumption that the cards of the tarot form a spiral rather than a series of linked circles. I’ve noticed that Alejandro Jodorowsky proposed the same thing in his Tarot de Marseille book The Way of Tarot, but I reached that conclusion back in the 1970s while he was still making surrealistic films.

In thinking about the 2001 analogy, I decided to place the Fool after my home-made trump in the same way the obviously self-aware fetus appears at the very end of the film. The path might be called the “Stairway to Infinity,” down the far side of which the Fool descends bearing uncommon wisdom after raising his head to the stars. The Fool doesn’t return to “ground zero” but instead re-emerges on a higher arc. In electrical system design there is what is known as a “step-up transformer” that increases voltage; here we have the spiritual version, although the Rohrig Fool looks like he/she may have already seen too much.