Judgment

"Perhaps grief is not about empty, but full. The full breath of life that includes death. The completeness, the cycles, the depth, the richness, the process, the continuity and the treasure of the moment that is gone the second you are aware of it."

- Alysia Reiner

Associations / Attributions

Card Meanings / Keywords

Golden Dawn

Final decision, sentence, determination without appeal.

Waite

Change of position, renewal, outcome. Reversed: Negligence, absence, carelessness, apathy, vanity.

Crowley

Final decision, taking a definite step.

Personal

Surrender, gateway, leaving baggage behind, start of a new life or cycle.

Synopsis

The elemental trump of fire offers purification through surrender. Like it’s mirror in X (The Wheel), it is a gateway to more refined realm. In order to pass through the gate one must leave behind heavier, more dense attachments in order to enter the heavenly realms. When offered, one can accept the energy and intensity of fire to be renewed into a new state, or return to the previous cycle.

When Judgment appears it is not often a conscious choice issued from the experiencer but the result of a natural cycle of transformation. The choice to move through the lessons and tribulations of the path toward Judgment is strongly personal, however. Know that the opportunity will arise to enter through the gate even if one knows not when; and when one is presented the opportunity, be prepared for a choice to be made, one of which will involve giving up much of what one has accumulated to that point. Desire is necessary to walk the path beyond Judgment, but virtue stemming from the embodiment of all the other trumps will be the deciding factor as to whether one can step into the fullness of the World. Know, too, that in stepping through the gate there is no turning back.

Poiesis

Herald and light of a new dawn
Set me ablaze and let my obscurations fall as ash
At last the soul is revealed
To die into a new cycle
Or be born as a new world

Do I wish to complete this cycle of experience or continue to develop it? What may be holding me back from moving forward in a new direction? What or who stands at the gateway and what do they ask so that I may pass?