The past is the price we pay for the second chance each new moment gives.
And it’s a reasonable one. The past doesn’t disappear, but how emotionally attached you are to it is up to you. If it is a cherished memory – then by all means cherish it. If it is a painful, harmful one, you are perfectly free to let the attachment go.
I’ve always wrangled with the Judgement card in this form, with all the christian religious imagery here. If familiarity breeds contempt, my evangelical upbringing has bred a great deal of contempt for that ideology. The only good thing about the political climate in America since 2015 is now everyone can see what we-who-left have been talking about. Now everyone knows how toxic and insane evangelicals and Christian nationalists are. So dear everyone who said I was over-reacting when I said Republicans and Evangelicals were a bunch of fascists (middle finger) I TOLD you so.
BUT that is also an example in point for the energy of this card today. I can’t pretend that my parent’s and extended family’s religion isn’t a steaming pile of toxic, harmful bullshit. BUT I can choose to make my life a secular sanctuary, free from religion as much as a functioning adult living in America in 2026 can make it.
Alan Watts’ observation rings perennially true “You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.”
And THAT is the aspect of the Judgement card that steps forward today: Second Chances.
The judgement has been made (you have decided some aspect of past experience is unhealthy, or somehow unworthy of including in your current circumstances)
The dues have been paid (you lived it, learned from it and made the reasoned choice to shift your perspective)
Another chance is in hand (every moment is a fresh start and a chance be a different person than you were five minutes ago.)
This isn’t an IBM ad. I’m talking about that thing you do with your brain.
Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.
I’m glad I listened to pure impulse and picked up my Steampunk Tarot today. If you search the blog, you can see all the old posts about the Judgement card. I don’t know how much sense any of it makes. Some people have a significator card, a card they feel represents their essence. Or at least most of us have a card or two or a few that we resonate with more than the others. The judgement card, on the other hand, is my nemesis card. It pushes my buttons and pokes at old scars in ways that aren’t always helpful.
I love the steampunk deck’s version of Judgement though. It is the only Judgement card that doesn’t send me into a puddle of spiraling, evangelical induced post-traumatic babble like other versions the judgement and hierophant (aka pope) cards typically do.
The judgement card, like the rest of the major arcana, has at least two major threads of meaning woven into it.
One is the judgement day, face the music kind of judgement, not unlike how we might say a court judgement or a lawsuit judgement. The legal judgement also connects to the second thread…the decision making process itself. The word “reckoning” works here too. An older meaning for reckoning is to settle a debt or account. But it also means calculation or deciding, like “navigation by dead reckoning.” The biggest problem with judgement card is how easily it can slip into petty judgmentalism.
My least favorite representation of the Judgement card is, as you might expect, is the Waite Smith Tarot. Pamela Smith’s art is saturated with christian symbolism with angels, trumpets, dead looking naked people standing in graves. That whole rapture-ish resurrection second coming thing always gives me that nervous eye tick feeling. Past experience shows the slip to judgmentalism is very short with that kind of symbolism around.
Let’s just say if that kind of religion is your jam, go for it. For me it’s a jar jammed full of glowing green radioactive toxicity. In fact, in the back of my mind, I have always low key hoped that my Tarot work would help others who disliked and rejected by the American evangelicals as much as it has helped me to recover from a childhood in that subculture.
But today, thankfully, all of that is beside the point because the card is pointing to the other connotation, the “use your head” and “use good judgement” part of the card.
The Steampunk deck is good for steering intuition away from the Smith artwork. In fact, this artwork has the opposite effect. It could easily have a “face the music” connotation, but in her guidebook for the deck Aly Fell interprets it as “heeding a call.” That is a card meaning I can resonate with. Not so much a judgement in the traditional sense, not so much answering a “calling” in the religious sense, but rather a actively thinking about our life path and thinking about the meaning we infuse into what we do.
The image also calls to mind some of my favorite D.J. and E.D.M. music like Mystery Skulls and Daft Punk. It taps into my cyberpunk side as much as the Steampunk aesthetic for some reason.
It all takes me to a happy place of thinking and reason perfectly blended with abstract ideas and creativity.
It’s a personality thing that works for some people more than others. It also brings to mind Myers-Briggs personality categories. Today’s card is a comfort zone for all the thinkers, all the people with a T as the third of their four letter category. This is one for my fellow geeks.
For feelings people, those with the “F” in their code, it might be more challenging. It might be harder for them to let their head rule their heart for whatever challenges life might pose for them.
Challenge or comfort zone, the call the Judgment card is asking us to heed is a simple one: Think.
Thank you all for reading and listening!
While no appointment needed email Tarot readings by the author are available to order on the blog website, the blog itself and the podcast are not monetized. Your Tarot message comes first, not an advertiser’s. Please visit the TaoCraft Tarot page on ko-fi where the shop, memberships and virtual coffees all support the creation of this (almost) daily Tarot content.
Sage Sips / TaoCraft Tarot 