EP 77: Tarot Talk on the Judgement Card

Today’s episode is a tarot talk on the 20th card of the high arcana – the Judgement card.

This is not my favourite card of the tarot, I have struggled with the symbolism and meanings. In this episode, I share with you what I have learned from having this card appear in readings I provide for my clients. It is from the years of sitting across little tables from my client and working with the tarot that I have been able to see past the 16th century art work and discover the meaning of this card.

You can see the cards I talk about in the episode in the Judgement card lesson on my YouTube channel

Full Episode transcript

 Hey there my beautiful earbud heaven.  How are you?  How are you this moon?  Oh my loves,  we are in it.  We are in that warm, cozy space.  At least I hope it's cozy for you. I hope you're all snuggled with your hot cocoa and your favorite book around warm fires. It's that time of year where we're all curled in.

And enjoying all the things we adore, so.  I hope that's what's happening for you. But this episode is not about the Wheel of the Year. This is actually a tarot episode. Guys, I'm getting excited. We only have two cards left, and then we have actually walked through the entire High Arcana together, card by card, breaking it down, looking at the symbology.

And this card, actually, we are on the Judgment card, card 20 of the High Arcana, and you know what? I find the symbology in this one the absolute worst. I struggled with this card so much, really, to understand it. It's one of those ones that is very much laced with the themes of the 1600s. That I find hard to relate to.

I feel like the artwork is trying to tell me something that I should relate to, but I just don't. So I've always struggled with it. I've done a lot of reading. I, I've looked through many decks and, hey, you know what is a great. great exercise to do if you've never done it before. If there's a card that you just like cannot wrap your head around, that you struggle with the meaning no matter how many blurbs you read on it, I suggest you grab your three favorite tarot decks or even all the decks you have I'm a little afraid to think about how many that could be, dear Coven, but you grab a bunch of decks, grab that card out of those decks, and just line them all up and look at them.

Like, look at your favorite Ryder Whitesmith inspired deck. Look at your favorite newest deck that you bought that is themed and arty and silly. Look at your go to deck that you've had the longest. Look at the deck you learned on. Grab just that one card. So for me, it would be this card. The judgment card and put them out on the table, look at them, find the similarities, you know, open up your heart, open up your clear audience and look at those cards and see what they're trying to tell you.

See what the theme is. It's actually a really awesome practice to do generally. It's something that I know I've done myself many times. There's lots of times that I dive deep into my decks. I mean, I've been doing this a long time, you know. You know I've been playing with tarot since I was 17. And that's a long time ago.

And there's been many times that I take decks out and look at them and study them and compare them to each other, and yeah, it's great. Get your hands on your decks, shuffle your decks, it's the best things you could do. Okay, now for this one, the Judgment card. Let's look at the Tarot de Marseille, shall we?

Because that's where I like to start. I really like to start with this one, and it's funny because if you look at the Tarot of Marsai and you look at the Ryder Whitesmith deck, there is very little difference. They both have this super Christian angel up in the clouds, looking down, blowing a brass trumpet.

Maybe it's a golden trumpet. You can decide what it's made out of. And, and there's like, there's like people rejoicing. So I've never quite figured out if this is supposed to be like the Christian ideal of the revelation where, where an angel comes and blows a trumpet and the souls all ascend, which would mean this card is about ascension.

It's about moving past up and beyond. It's about leveling up, getting to the next level, leaving behind that  that you don't need. And again, it's a very high vibrational card. It's very abstract. Now when we look at one of the other great decks from one of the other esoteric minds of tarot, we have Alistair Crowley's Thoth deck.

I always say his name in there because I never know if I'm pronouncing Thoth properly in my Canadian accent. His deck is way more kind of rebirth y looking. Judgment in Crowley's deck has what appears to be Horace.  in the background, kind of in a tomb or a throne of some kind. I'm not sure. It's beautiful to look at though.

I love the colors in it. And then overlaid is like a spirit and it feels like, it feels like a transcendence. It feels like a rebirth, almost like showing the body and the spirit and the everlastingness of it all. The connection between the past maybe and the present or the future. Almost every card I see of the Judgment card has spirits on it.

Sometimes they're rising out of graves. A lot of times it reminds me of that moment in the Lord of the Rings when they blow that horn and all those skeletons come to life and the dead rise up to help you. So, yeah, I find the artwork confusing on this cart, to say the very least.  And I find it interesting, too, that when you grab the little booklets that come with our tarot decks, or we read the beautiful books that are pieced together with love and care from the amazing artists that do this work, a lot of them do talk about resurrection.

With the judgment card, they talk about ascending, they talk about being called from the grave and ascending. And I just. I find it so amazing how  widespread  that theme is, the idea of Christian resurrection in what we use as a pagan tool.  So my little pagan mind has really struggled with this card for a long time. 

Similar to the Hierophant, I feel like this card one day will shift to a more comprehensive, a more inclusive meaning  that can tie in pantheons outside of the Judeo Christian pantheon. When I covered the Hierophant card, I talked about how it seems to be moving from the traditional Pope card that it was called years ago into a card that's more representative of how we relate to faith now in this 20th century world.

First century in our modern world and I, I'm interested to see how the judgment card plays like that because so many decks still have an angel and open crypts and souls going upward and that's fine. What seems to be the deeper divinatory meaning or the idea that's trying to be portrayed with all this art is the idea of ascension.

of rising, maybe not out of your bodily form to go live beside a godhead in the sky, but perhaps ascending beyond so that we can be here on earth in a spirit mindset, that we can live in a way that is less material, less tied to our ego. a life that's more spirit centered, where we're striving continually in that circle of evolution.

And I think that's where my mind kind of explodes at this idea of the judgment card being the Ascension and last movement from the soul up to heaven. I think it's because I believe in an, in a spiral. I believe that here on earth, we are often evolving that the lesson of the tarot, the fool's journey will play out multiple times in our life.

on multiple levels. So I kind of freak out at this contradiction of a card that's showing you will ascend once and once only versus the reality that I see in nature and in the lives around me of we will evolve. We will work on ourselves, the same lessons will come up at a deeper, more pronounced level in our life, that we will work on wounds, maybe in our 20s, and then again in our 30s, and again in our 40s, and hopefully, maybe I'll stop working sometime on the same wound in my 50s, but maybe it will be more nuanced, and it will be more A deeper level of understanding and a deeper, more beautiful area of compassion I gain as I continue to evolve and spiral outward. 

So I feel like the art in this card limits what it's trying to tell us. So I, I'm going to challenge you when you're reading to try to feel deeper into this card than just the idea of a judgment day.  And I think actually when I say that Judgment Day, I think one of the things my little brain also bucks at is the idea of being judged.

Because the gods of my understanding, the deities I work with, are not sitting in judgment and calling me bad or good, calling me forward or leaving me behind. They're working with me, they're evolving with me, they're teaching me compassionately every step of the way. So, this idea of being judged and deemed worthy enough to ascend or evolve really seems so strange.

So many times to me, I look at the tarot deck and I see how our humanity is reflected. In the chariot, our humanity is reflected. The fact that we go out of balance and need to learn how to balance our desires. In the lover's card, as we try to make choices. As we try to discern, as we try to deepen that connection between our head and our heart and to choose wisely.

These are things that all of humanity struggles with. In the hangman card, we have the idea of having to let go, look at things from a different perspective, pause, and stop forcing things and being open to learn what is before us. There's so many ways that humanity is reflected, and I don't see  that. in this card.

It feels stagnant to me. This is going to turn into a rant of why Jodi Anne does not like the art on the judgment card.  I feel like that's what this episode is going to turn into. And I want to give you something practical. I want to break it down in a way that you can then apply it to your readings. So let me have a sip of my tea and Pause this for one second and come back regrouped. 

I took some deep breaths, I had some tea. Now I'm going to tell you how you can read this for your client. When you have someone sitting across the table from you and the judgment card comes up, know that they are completing a cycle. There's something going on that they are coming to a close with.

There's a chapter closing. A big project, a big something. And sometimes it's like, it's not like in their work life. It's often more of a overarching life thing. They have come to the point where they are moving beyond. They are opening a new chapter. So what is that ascension piece? Because in order to get to this spot, you have already done the shedding.

You have already done the grueling ness. You have already come through a tower moment, a star moment, or you've gone through the lessons of the temperance card. And baby, if this doesn't make sense to you, you gotta go back in the archive and listen to the rest of the  episodes on the tarot, because I really do approach this as moving from the fool through to the world.

As a fool's journey, that's how I look at the higher arcana. So to get to this judgment card, where you are having this artwork of a soul lifting out of the body and moving forward, you have done the work. We are leveling up on multiple layers.  The other piece is that angel, that's the representation of divine help.

So when, when this card comes forward, know that it's, it's, it's a spirit call. It's the guides coming down and saying, it's time to move forward. You can do it. They're coaxing you to the next level. So in your client's actual life, they can look for signs. And sometimes they've missed the signs that they've been called forward.

Sometimes they've missed the signs from spirit that are calling to them, that trumpeting. Sometimes it's not clear to them in their life where that's happening. So this card comes down in their reading and says like, Hello, love. You've done it. You made it. Come on forward. You are chosen. You are picked.

This is your time.  Step forward, and there's such a rejoicefulness about this card. It's not about leaving behind. It's only about the movement forward. So, what happens when this card comes up and it's clearly A spread of chaos and upheaval and like maybe there is a tower card in there and maybe there is a devil card in there and you know that your client is self sabotaging through a very difficult time.

Then this card comes as the cry of their guides saying they will help them. Does that make sense to you? So like. If your client's in a phase where they haven't done the work or they're avoiding the work, then the part of this card that is speaking is the angel with the trumpet, the calling up,  not so much the ascension.

And sometimes it's asking your client to call to spirit for help, to petition those that will actually help them. Instead of petitioning things that won't help them. Does that make sense? I told you these are esoteric Lessons, these are heavy things up in the tail end of the hierarchana Lots of abstract enos and on that theme of calling and being called forward This can be a card that is telling your client to live in their purpose to to actually follow their calling.

And as a reader, you don't even need to know what that calling is. When you say to your client to listen to their call forward, to listen because they are being called to their purpose. Every time I've told someone that, or some version of that, they know exactly what I'm talking about. Sometimes spirit doesn't tell us everything The messages we get are enough so that our client puts things together and is able to go forward.

And when you're dealing with the energy of the judgment card,  they'll know what you're talking about. They totally will. Now I did touch on how I think this card will evolve as our collective conscience evolves this idea of Leveling up of living in your calling of living in connection with spirit, this idea of evolutionary transcendence and one of the decks, I think that shows this really well is the book of shadows.

Tarot. I think this Tarot book, it's a great, it's a great teaching tool. It's a dual deck and the. As Above, So Below concept is really cool. So, they look at really Wiccan, really Pagan ideas in the As Above deck and in the So Below deck, they look at really mundane, kind of day to day life thing.  So, the As Above, and I'll put these in the show notes and I'll show them on the YouTube.

The As Above, they call the Judgment Card Initiation. So it really is about stepping forward, stepping into your path. It has that spirit connection in it. It shows two beings in the sky, the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine. So it has that angelic form, but it's seen through the lens of a more inclusive spiritual path.

of connecting, of following the calling that has come to you. On the so below, they have someone at an ancestral shrine, it looks like. It could be, I mean, maybe it's a graveyard. I like the idea of ancestral shrine. So anyway, they're there, they have offerings, they're lighting incense, and it's kind of like a connection to the ancestors.

And like, So, I like that idea as well, that very mundane, reaching up and asking for help so that you can move in a spiritual direction. I'm interested to see in the next five to 10 years as the next batch of independent tarot readers and tarot makers put out decks how they're going to do the judgment card because it is shifting.

In the This Might Hurt tarot, what Isabella Rothman has is a Anubis weighing a heart and a feather at the end of life. And so it has that idea of judgment, of looking at your own actions. And it really, it takes that whole Christian ideal of judgment day and of And so it really, it takes that whole Christian ideal of judgment day and of resurrection out of it.

You still have the death element, but it looks at judgment from a totally different perspective. And when I read that card, it really feels like it's asking you to look at your own morals and look at your own compass and to weigh your actions. It doesn't feel like you're being judged by, even though, I don't know, even though it has Anubis standing there, and even though the Egyptian idea is that if your heart weighs more than a feather, you do not get to go forward, and you do not get to actually have an afterlife, like you're supposed to Your soul gets eaten by an alligator.

So it's interesting because it doesn't feel quote unquote judgy.  It feels like it's asking you to step into a way of living that is more spiritual. It's asking you to check yourself, to check your morals, to check your intentions. and to live a life of intentionality. I think it's also the the palette she chose that doesn't make it feel doom and gloom.

It's a really beautiful looking card. I'm going to put that one in the show notes too. So as we think about the judgment card and what it means and what it can mean to your client, What it used to mean, and what it's growing into, I think it's an exciting time for this card that I struggle with and have so much angst about.

I'm interested in how you feel about the Judgment card. I'm interested in, in what your favorite depiction is of it. I would really love to know. I think we can learn so much from each other, so tell me about it. Jump into my messages on Instagram. Leave a comment here on the, the podcast. And if you're feeling shy, you can go to my website and you can fill out my My, um, I have an email form on there somewhere to book a reading, but if you just really want to send me something personal, you can just connect with me there and you can just be like, Jodi Anne, this is what I think about the judgment card.

I don't need a reading at all. Um, yeah, I don't know. Okay. Uh, bit of a discombobulated episode. I hope it helps you as a tarot reader. I hope it helps you grow. I hope it helps you understand this beautiful, beautiful divination tool that I love so much. Okay, dear Coven, thank you for spending this time in your earbuds with me.

Thank you for your support.  You do not know it means so much when you Follow when you comment, when you like the little tiny free things you can do to support the podcast are really helping it stay alive and helping it grow. so much for being here. 

It just is. It's kind of like this card. It just is.  Oh, total. Into a card that's more representative of, well, what word am I looking for? Oh, that's tricky. More, oh, I love my magazine.