Judgement

✦ Associations

Fire / Pluto

✦ Keywords

Awakening, epiphany, hearing the call to higher purpose, spiritual evolution, important crossroads, necessity to change/transform/transcend.

✦ Quote

now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened. — e. e. cummings, "i thank You God for this most amazing"

✦ Meaning

✦ Overview

By the time we reach Judgement, the penultimate card in the Major Arcana, we are no stranger to transformation. We've been through numerous variations of death, plentiful departures and releases, enough rebirths and awakenings to fill our own personal book of Revelation. And we're not done. Here in Judgement, we meet a spiritual crossroads like none other previously encountered, an awakening of a new magnitude: a call to transcend.

✦ Traditional Scene

The traditional scene depicted on Judgement cards since the fifteenth century is that of the Last Judgement from the Bible's book of Revelation, otherwise known as the Christian version of the end of the world. The apocalyptic destruction of Revelation is symbolically depicted in the Tower, as discussed in that chapter. Here in the Judgement card, we see the other side of the end of the world. We see the resurrection. Traditional cards show an angel blowing a trumpet that awakens the souls of the dead, their reanimated bodies rising from their tombs in jubilation. To drastically simplify things, the biblical Judgement Day is when the souls of humankind are called to join God in a newly remade heaven on earth. This heaven on earth is also called “New Jerusalem,” and is depicted on some versions of the final Major Arcana, the World. So the Judgement card isn’t destruction, then, but ascension.

✦ Spiritual Rebirth

In the Tarot, the Judgement card does not represent the literal reanimation of the physical body—this isn’t a zombie movie—but instead a rebirth or transformation of the soul as catalyzed by an awakening. As mentioned in the Tower chapter, the word “apocalypse” comes from a Greek word that translates to “unveiling.” Here, yet another layer of the mystery is pulled back, and we behold a spiritual truth—in other words, a revelation.

✦ Practical Revelation

In practical, non-apocalyptic terms, the revelation of the Judgement card can be a radical new understanding of ourselves or a major shift in perspective that leads to a significant change in the way we live our lives. It can be hearing the call of higher service or the realization of our true purpose. Or it can simply be one of those moments when we know what our next right step is, even if it seems nonsensical or risky, even if we don’t know why or where it will lead. (When my partner and I moved cross-country with no jobs and nowhere to live, just because we knew it was right, that was certifiable Judgement stuff.)

✦ Relation to the Fool

If you're catching whiffs of the Fool in this description, you're not wrong. Both Fool leaps and Judgement calls can seem illogical and foolish to outsiders. But where the Fool is a blank slate, Judgement is not. In this card, we have a past to account for. One aspect of this card is reviewing that past in the light of our new epiphany and understanding that we must make a change. We can no longer continue as we were before; we cannot replace the veil. This revelation, whatever it may be, requires a choice to be made. The red cross on the white background represents a crossroads, a point where we must decide which way to go. Judgement also furthers the queering of the binaries, the red cross additionally representing a meeting of binaries in its horizontal and vertical arms, with we ourselves in their juncture. A. E. Waite compares the card with Temperance, which we have called the border walker and the angel of liminality, and he implies that both are cards of 'eternal life.' Will we ascend to the next, unknown stage of our being, following the truth that has been revealed to us? Or will we remain in the known world, the one that we know all too well, which has been stripped of its illusions?

✦ Reckoning and the Collective

Like Justice, Judgement demands a reckoning. Unlike Justice, Judgement is not concerned with external balance or equity in the temporal plane, but with the spiritual evolution of our souls and the soul of the collective. "Here a force greater than yourself is leading and calling you," Rachel Pollack says of this card, continuing, "and the judgement is not simply on the meaning of your own life but on the true nature of existence, and the way in which you and all being are a part of it." We can see the collective nature of the card in the group of people depicted—not one, not two, but by far the largest group we've seen in the Major Arcana, all rising together. Here in Judgement, we are coming loose of our individualist egoic bonds and beginning to understand ourselves as part of something larger, as one vast and unified soul.

✦ Call to Transcendence

In Judgement, we are awakened by the trumpet's call and asked to reckon with our unveiled understanding. We are challenged to make an irrevocable choice to radically change. We are called to rise, together. We are called to transcend.

✦ End

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