The Greater Trumps: (30) The Universe

This image shows the World, the sum of all that is seen from the human perspective - whether the World, the System, the Galaxy, or the Void which contains all things. At the corners of everything stand four mythical figures, or sometimes six, or eight, or twelve, or thirty, or even sixty - for all these numbers stand for completion in various stories. And in the middle, if one looks carefully enough, one sees a Fool relieved of his burdens and filled with the understanding that has always been latent in him; in many versions, the Fool is not central, but the Mother is, or the Womb, or its equivalent in one of the many symbolic languages of our species.

For this image symbolises Completion, Attainment and Wholeness. Something important is complete, a part of life is whole, a collection has found its last missing piece. It need not be an ending to all things, but to what has been a burden of incompleteness for a long time. It need not mean an end to life, but a beginning for a new phase of it, the threshold of the rebirth of hope - or the hope of rebirth. For all things are become new, and the old has passed away through the vortex of the Singularity, never to be seen again.

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Andrew Marvell has never really been a fashionable poet. And yet, one of his poems is extremely oft-quoted, and the English language has been enriched by its numerous felicitous phrases, many of which (sadly) have become clichés. Here is one of the least-quoted (and most awkward) parts of this much-quoted piece:

Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Indeed, the Universe image is one which finally combines all things and turns them into a completeness which is in itself pleasure and great gain.

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This is the last of the Thirty. Perhaps a review is in order - and perhaps not.