Potentially Pluto? Judgement in the Tarot

(Based on the representations found on the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.)

I have long feared the Judgement card more than any other. As a child, playing with my mother’s Tarot cards, next to Death and The Devil, I found Judgement’s imagery most unsettling — the inescapable hand of Death having claimed the blueish corpses now rising from their entombment.

Growing up, occult practices coexisted alongside formal religion (at least in my early years), mediating the division between those who believed in Sunday-school salvation, and those who sought the wisdom of the oracle. As an impressionable youngster, I understood and feared the correspondences of the Judgement card, echoing the promise in Corinthians 5:10, that all of us must be held accountable for our actions in this lifetime. It was a terrifying prospect, but one that has been tempered by age, understanding, and psychological exploration.

Now, I think about Judgement as the card of culmination, bringing a mini-Major Arcana cycle to a close. As much as Judgement signals karmic cycles and rebirth, it also represents separation, segmentation, and a call to embrace necessary changes that have surfaced through our psychic underworld sojourn. At various times, this card has appeared for me when I have grappled with letting go of that which has been metaphorically dying for some time.