Justice
fairness · truth · a decision · consequences
Card art: Pamela Colman Smith, 1909, for A. E. Waite. Public domain.
Trump 11
In a few words
- fairness
- truth
- a decision
- consequences
The scales are balanced and the truth stands. A fair outcome, a legal matter settling right.
Upright
- Everything
- The scales are balanced and the truth stands. A fair outcome, a legal matter settling right.
- Love
- Honesty between you. What is owed is repaid; what is fair is done.
- Work
- Contracts, agreements, a matter decided on merit. Keep your side clean.
- Money
- Accounts settle. Tax, law, a dispute over money going the right way.
- Myself
- Take responsibility for your part. Clear conscience, clear road.
Equity, rightness, probity, executive; triumph of the deserving side in law.The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), p. 284
Reversed
- Everything
- Unfairness, bias, a decision gone wrong, or a truth being dodged.
- Love
- One side giving more than the other. Say it, before resentment grows.
- Work
- Being judged unfairly, or cutting a corner you should not. Straighten it.
- Money
- Legal tangles, or dishonesty in a deal. Get everything in writing.
- Myself
- Blaming others for a mess you helped make. Own it and it lightens.
Law in all its departments, legal complications, bigotry, bias, excessive severity.The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), p. 284
The card, as Waite described it
As this card follows the traditional symbolism and carries above all its obvious meanings, there is little to say regarding it outside the few considerations collected in the first part, to which the reader is referred. It will be seen, however, that the figure is seated between pillars, like the High Priestess, and on this account it seems desirable to indicate that the moral principle which deals unto every man according to his works—while, of course, it is in strict analogy with higher things—differs in its essence from the spiritual justice which is involved in the idea of election. The latter belongs to a mysterious order of Providence, in virtue of which it is possible for certain men to conceive the idea of dedication to the highest things. The operation of this is like the breathing of the Spirit where it wills, and we have no canon of criticism or ground of explanation concerning it. It is analogous to the possession of the fairy gifts and the high gifts and the gracious gifts of the poet we have them or have not, and their presence is as much a mystery as their absence. The law of Justice is not however involved by either alternative. In conclusion, the pillars of Justice open into one world and the pillars of the High Priestess into another.The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), p. 112
The plain-word meanings on this page were written for ShreeJyoti and are still under review.