Justice (Tarot card)
Encyclopedia
Major Arcana
The Major Arcana or trumps are a suit of twenty-two cards in the tarot deck. They serve as a permanent trump suit in games played with the tarot deck, and are distinguished from the four standard suits collectively known as the Minor Arcana...
Tarot
Tarot
The tarot |trionfi]] and later as tarocchi, tarock, and others) is a pack of cards , used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play a group of card games such as Italian tarocchini and French tarot...
card, numbered either VIII or XI, depending on the deck. This card is used in game playing as well as in divination.
Description
The Justice card, as a member of the TarotTarot
The tarot |trionfi]] and later as tarocchi, tarock, and others) is a pack of cards , used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play a group of card games such as Italian tarocchini and French tarot...
deck, appears in early Tarot, such as the Tarot de Marseilles. It is part of the Tarot's major arcana, and usually follows the Chariot, as card VIII, although various decks vary from this pattern. Justice (virtue)
Justice (virtue)
Justice is one of the four cardinal virtues in classical European philosophy and Roman Catholicism. It is the moderation between selfishness and selflessness....
, accompanies two of the other cardinal virtues
Cardinal virtues
In Christian traditionthere are 4 cardinal virtues:*Prudence - able to judge between actions with regard to appropriate actions at a given time*Justice - proper moderation between self-interest and the rights and needs of others...
in the Major Arcana: temperance and strength
Courage
Courage is the ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation...
.
A. E. Waite was a key figure in the development of the most famous of modern Tarot interpretations.. His version of the Justice card contains, as his cards usually do, references to classical Mythology
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
. In his deck, the card is 11 (switched with the Strength (Tarot card)
Strength (Tarot card)
Strength is a Major Arcana Tarot card, and is numbered either XI or VIII, depending on the deck. Historically it was called Fortitude, and in the Thoth Tarot deck it is called Lust. This card is used in game playing as well as in divination.- Description and usage as in divination :A. E...
).
Some frequent keywords are:
- Impartiality ----- Distance ----- Coldness ----- Justice
- Objective mind----- Criticism ----- Being clever ----- Insensitivity
- Decision ----- Intellect ----- Analysis ----- Realism ----- Severity
- Responsibility ----- Rationality ----- Clear vision ----- Logic and reason
Mythopoetic approach
Justice, in many Tarot representations, is Athena.Athena
Athena
In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...
was the patron goddess of Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
, credited with bringing not merely the idea of justice, but a model for justice, to Athens, Greece. Embedded in many versions of this card is the story of the cursed House of Atreus. Atreus broke a promise to Artemis
Artemis
Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name and indeed the goddess herself was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...
, who in turn cursed his family, which was a house or lineage descended from Pelops
Pelops
In Greek mythology, Pelops , was king of Pisa in the Peloponnesus. He was the founder of the House of Atreus through his son of that name....
and from Tantalus
Tantalus
Tantalus was the ruler of an ancient western Anatolian city called either after his name, as "Tantalís", "the city of Tantalus", or as "Sipylus", in reference to Mount Sipylus, at the foot of which his city was located and whose ruins were reported to be still visible in the beginning of the...
, who had fed his own son to the gods at a dinner party.
The story culminates with an episode involving Agamemnon
Agamemnon
In Greek mythology, Agamemnon was the son of King Atreus and Queen Aerope of Mycenae, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra, and the father of Electra and Orestes. Mythical legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area...
, a hero of the Trojan War
Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...
. Agamemnon was not always heroic, at least in modern eyes. He sacrificed his own daughter, Iphigeneia
Iphigeneia
Iphigenia is a daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra in Greek mythology. In Attic accounts, her name means "strong-born", "born to strength", or "she who causes the birth of strong offspring."-Post-Homeric Greek myth:...
, to get a favorable wind to Troy. In vengeance for this unfatherly act, his wife, Clytemnestra
Clytemnestra
Clytemnestra or Clytaemnestra , in ancient Greek legend, was the wife of Agamemnon, king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Mycenae or Argos. In the Oresteia by Aeschylus, she was a femme fatale who murdered her husband, Agamemnon – said by Euripides to be her second husband – and the Trojan princess...
, mother of Iphigeneia, orchestrated his murder. Their son, Orestes
Orestes
Orestes was the son of Agamemnon in Greek mythology; Orestes may also refer to:Drama*Orestes , by Euripides*Orestes, the character in Sophocles' tragedy Electra*Orestes, the character in Aeschylus' trilogy of tragedies, Oresteia...
, in turn sought vengeance for the death of his father by killing his mother. He was then pursued around the world by The Furies, who avenged mothers killed by sons.
Athena then called an end to the cycle of vengeance and empaneled the first jury.
Justice mediates the various claims of right, of morality, of duty. In a world of scarcity, not every claim can be met. Justice, in theory, sets forth a system to judge between the claims. The tarot card is therefore typically closer to the notion of Jurisprudence
Jurisprudence
Jurisprudence is the theory and philosophy of law. Scholars of jurisprudence, or legal theorists , hope to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of law, of legal reasoning, legal systems and of legal institutions...
than to the abstract concept of Justice.
The Justice card is closely connected to The High Priestess
The High Priestess
The High Priestess is the second trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. This card is used in game playing as well as in divination. In the first Tarot pack with inscriptions, the 18th-century woodcut Marseilles Tarot, this figure is crowned with the Papal tiara and labelled La...
through its cross sum (the sum of the digits). Unlike the hidden knowledge of the High Priestess, Justice is decided in the open; we are left hoping that our intellect and our intuition take us to the same place.
Justice is also connected to Judgment (Tarot card)
Judgement (Tarot card)
Judgement , or in some decks spelled Judgment, is a Tarot card, part of the Major Arcana suit usually comprising 22 cards.-Rider-Waite symbolism:Very clearly, it is modeled after the Christian Resurrection before the Last Judgment...
, Key 20, the ultimate weighting of souls.
Maàt
Maàt
Maat or maʻat , also spelled māt or mayet, was the ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law, morality, and justice...
was a goddess of justice in Egypt. She ties Judgment with Justice, as she helped judge the souls of the dead. Therefore, on many Tarot cards of Justice, Maat appears.
The notion of Justice is older than Athena, of course, even among the Greeks. Themis
Themis
Themis is an ancient Greek Titaness. She is described as "of good counsel", and is the embodiment of divine order, law, and custom. Themis means "divine law" rather than human ordinance, literally "that which is put in place", from the verb τίθημι, títhēmi, "to put"...
, a Titan
Titan (mythology)
In Greek mythology, the Titans were a race of powerful deities, descendants of Gaia and Uranus, that ruled during the legendary Golden Age....
, lurks in the archetype too. She was a goddess of natural order, and judged souls after death. She is the intersection of the Sacred and Secular orders. Themis was the mother of The Fates
Moirae
The Moirae, Moerae or Moirai , in Greek mythology, were the white-robed incarnations of destiny . Their number became fixed at three...
, who must be accommodated.
Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
said that Athena came from Africa, and if that is so, it is likely that Athena’s origins lie in the Egyptian goddess Neith
Neith
In Egyptian mythology, Neith was an early goddess in the Egyptian pantheon. She was the patron deity of Sais, where her cult was centered in the Western Nile Delta of Egypt and attested as early as the First Dynasty...
. Like Athena, Neith was a goddess of war and weaving, associating the card with the tangle of ordered threads that make up the fabric of communal life. Neith was also, in some stories, the mother of Ra
Ra
Ra is the ancient Egyptian sun god. By the Fifth Dynasty he had become a major deity in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the mid-day sun...
, making her an avatar of the Mother Goddess who is the womb and tomb of the Sun. In Native American tarot decks, this card is sometimes associated with Spider Grandmother
Spider Grandmother
The Spider Grandmother is creator of the world in Native American religions and myths such as that of the Pueblo and Navajo/Dineh peoples. According to mythology, she was responsible for the stars in the sky, she took a web she had spun, laced it with dew, threw it into the sky and the dew became...
.
Justice is also associated with the 11th card of the Minor Arcana
Minor Arcana
|thumb|[[King of Swords]] card from a Minor Arcana deckThe Minor Arcana of occult or divinatory tarot refers to the portion of a Tarot deck that consists of 56 cards. The Minor Arcana are roughly similar to the cards found in a common deck of playing cards...
, The Pages (at least in Waite and Ryder-Waite, who assigns Justice the number eleven). Pages represent the beginning of a journey. Justice is a necessary, but not sufficient, step in becoming fully human. It can be seen as a beginning.
While Athena usually upholds the existing order, demanding that everyone receive their due as defined by the current order, she is also the older sister of her brother. This is significant because the second child of Metis
Metis (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Metis was of the Titan generation and, like several primordial figures, an Oceanid, in the sense that Metis was born of Oceanus and Tethys, of an earlier age than Zeus and his siblings...
is fated to overthrow Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
(The Emperor
The Emperor (Tarot card)
The Emperor is the fourth trump or Major Arcana card in traditional Tarot decks. It is used in game playing as well as in divination.- Description and symbolism :...
). Zeus ate Metis to prevent her from bearing this second child, but there are those who say he awaits the call, and that Athena may take up his mantel if he is never born. Then, Justice may overthrow Power.
When Justice appears in a throw, it usually signals that some injustice needs righting, that something in the world is dangerously out of balance. This could be interior to the Querent (not giving the self its due; arrogance), or it could be the calling of the Querent (to right some external wrong). It is important, however, that the Querent be aware that most things in the exterior world that they perceive (at least as mediated by a tarot throw) are in fact an externalization of some interior process or conflict.
Justice Reversed is the classic signal of life out of balance.
In Waite's classic version, to the right are represented the scales (Libra
Libra (constellation)
Libra is a constellation of the zodiac. Its name is Latin for weighing scales, and its symbol is . It is fairly faint, with no first magnitude stars, and lies between Virgo to the west and Scorpius to the east.-Notable features:]...
), signifying balance; to the left is the sword, signifying accountability.
Numbering
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a magical order active in Great Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which practiced theurgy and spiritual development...
, under which the eighth card is associated with Leo and the eleventh with Libra. Today many decks use this numbering, particularly in the English-speaking world. Both placements are considered valid.
In popular culture
- The Major Arcana cards have inspired many computer games. In the video game Persona 3Persona 3Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3, originally released in Japan as simply , is the fourth video game in the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series of console role-playing games developed by Atlus, which is part of the larger Megami Tensei series of video games...
the characters of Chihiro Fushimi and Ken Amada are associated with the Justice arcana. The arcana features the powers of various angels. In Persona 4, Nanako Dojima is associated with this arcana.
- Justice is also the name of the first boss in The House of the Dead 4The House of the Dead 4The House of the Dead 4 is a light gun arcade game with a horror theme and the fourth installment of the House of the Dead series of video games, developed by Sega. The game is an interquel and takes place between the events of The House of the Dead 2 and The House of the Dead III, and introduced...
, It also serves as the first boss in The House of the Dead 4 Special. It is depicted as a giant four-armed humanoid zombie with a razor sharp tongue. Justice continues the House of the Dead seriesThe House of the Dead (series)The House of the Dead is a video game franchise published by Sega and created by in-house designer Atsushi Seimiya of AM1....
's tradition of naming its bosses after the Major Arcana of Tarot.
- In the SNES video game Ogre Battle: The March of the Black QueenOgre Battle: The March of the Black Queenis a 1993 real-time strategy role-playing video game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, directed by Yasumi Matsuno with artwork by Akihiko Yoshida...
, the Justice Tarot card is labeled as XI, and depicts a long-haired knight standing up, holding a sword in his right hand and scales in his left hand. On drawing the card after liberation of one of the towns, it increases the characters' maximum HP by 1 point, and summons a blizzard to attack enemy units when used in battle.
- Antagonist Enya Geil in Jojo's Bizarre AdventureJoJo's Bizarre Adventureis a manga written and illustrated by Hirohiko Araki. Every main character's name in each part can be read as JoJo. The manga, published by Shueisha, first ran in the magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1987 to 2002, before being transferred to the seinen magazine Ultra Jump in 2004. The current story...
has the stand Justice.
- In Saint Seiya Episode G series, Shura of Capricorn is depicted as The Justice in the tarot cards version of the manga.
- In the HBO series True BloodTrue BloodTrue Blood is an American television series created and produced by Alan Ball. It is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris, detailing the co-existence of vampires and humans in Bon Temps, a fictional, small town in the state of Louisiana...
, during the episode "Timebomb", Lafayette is reading Tara's fortune and draws Justice. However, he hides it before she can see.
- In X/1999, a manga made by CLAMP, Justice is Karen Kasumi.