“Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that. Now, now. Here’s looking at you, kid.” — Rick Blaine
The World is the final card in the Major Arcana and it offers us both physical and psychological freedom from our past. The World gives us a type of peace that is equivalent to grace though we are likely to resist the gift because it does not conform to our desire to be unwounded or to acquire that which we once sought. This card represents the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next. The past will no longer have us though the future must still come to know us. We are freed from one cycle but not yet settled into the next.
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
In the classic film Casablanca, Rick Blaine lives the life of a jaded man who shuts his feelings for others down as much as he can or hides the emotions and sympathies that do rise within him. Eventually, Ilsa Lund, the woman upon whom he broke his heart, returns. Famously Ilsa wanders into the drinking establishment owned by Rick, prompting the line: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” But, Ilsa is with a new man.
As the plot of Casablanca rises, which man Ilsa will choose remains the central tension. In the end, of course, Rick knows that he must let Ilsa go, once and for all. Rick does not have the option to eradicate the original wound, nor can he acquire what he once sought with Ilsa as they and Europe have all changed dramatically. Rick refuses Ilsa the chance to be with him because he realizes that her lover will be better suited to fulfill his own political purposes, which will spare thousands the ravages of war, with Ilsa by his side.
What comes next for Rick is yet to be known as he has become a new man.
Rick journeyed from the cynical man who refused to feel to a hero forever freed from the past that all but broke him. When Rick tells Ilsa “Here’s looking at you kid”, he accepts his decision to let go. By taking control over his narrative, Rick releases himself from his former life and agrees to exist in the liminality presented in The World card. What comes next for Rick is yet to be known as he has become a new man. This is summed up in the final scene as our new hero and his companion walk away from the camera and Rick delivers the final line of the film, “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
May we accept the endings that grant us the grace of new beginnings.
By Michelle Embree, author of DAYDREAM TAROT: A Basic Guide For Visionaries
www.michelleembree.com
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