My current favorite

I put poems and songs up all the time.  But everytime I see this image,  it just clarifies everything so well for me,  so I thought I would share it with you... 

Sometimes equality doesn't help at all,  or helps the already tall get taller but doesn't help you,  the smaller one.

And equity can feel unfair - why don't I get a box when that shrimp gets two,  but you can so easily see what's going when you look at it through this lens.

And finally,  why was there a fence there in the first place?  To protect the audience? to protect the game providers?  to keep people out?  Always good questions to ask... 

Giving yourself some time and space

I had a reading where a woman in her 50's came in.  She had some hard cards.  She was trapped by the Emporer and had Justice Reversed in her hopes and dreams.   It turns out she had returned home to help her aging father who had alzheimers. (Best description of an Emperor/ Justice reversed  situation I've heard in some time!) 

Looking after him had turned her wands cards upside down, all her energy was going into keeping him safe and stable, but it left none for her.  

We had a long talk about caretaker burnout and compromises on her care,  to give her some space for self care.  But I was reassured by seeing the Magician as her outcome card.  She will mange to pull a rabbit out of her hat,  and it will be okay. 

Sometimes the situations we find ourselves in are just hard,  and there are few shortcuts.  Going to tarot card readers,  talking with friends,  having some fun - helps us remember the lives we can have.  It's always important to make time and space for relaxation and happiness. 

Searching for Justice

For the past four years I've been doing the majority of my readings on line.  The way I read,  you have to shuffle the cards,  so people use their own decks.   In my recent readings,  with everyone using a separate deck,  so it's not a issue of shuffling,  the Justice card (or Justice Reversed,  even more pertinent) has show up disproportionately. 


The Justice card is often about a sense of fairness.  of things working out justly.  Pulling Justice into today's world  I interpreted as a sense of desiring fairness or justice,  or of things being not fair. Which is completely accurate.  Things are not fair.  Good work is not necessarily being rewarded,  chance encounters can lead to contagion,  life is strange.

In ordinary days when people are searching for fairness,  I warn them that life is not fair.  In fact,  living in the first world,  with running water and electricity,  we are so far ahead in the fairness stakes we are already on the wrong side of that ledger.  So instead of wanting fairness,  I tell people to seek balance.  If life isn't fair,  and you feel powerless,  then the next day you wake up and life is still unfair and what can you do?  But if your life is not balanced - then there you have some power.  You can redress the balances,  give more energy to one section,  take it away from another,  You have the power to allocate how to balance your time and energy and then the burning sense of requiring Justice can ease a little.

One client had three separate readings using three different decks over a three year period. .  As I was looking over his notes,  I realized that in each reading,  he had pulled the Justice card.  So then we had another conversation about what that card means to him personally,  as well as being part of the ether now.  Tarot is both general and deeply personal.  And if you do readings over time,  you can get to deeper insights too.

Drawing the same card twice

Eva and the Snake by Christian Schloe

I recently did a reading for a woman who was contacted by a man she knew 25 years ago, when she was in college, via LinkedIn. This scenario is more common than you may think. 

Both she and the old friend were married, and she agreed to meet him for drinks.  And he gave her that line that is so seductive – she was the one who got away, he made a mistake, he should have married her.  But when it became clear that she would not sleep with him, he abruptly dropped all communication with her.

She wants closure, or friendship, or to know what the hell happened.  She drew Justice Reversed around him.  She was not going to get the closure she wanted,  he had acted badly,  and that was the ending.  At the very end of the reading, when I had drawn all the cards together and was shuffling them to prepare them for the next reading, she asked me if she could just draw one more card around him.  And then she pulled out Justice reversed again. She looked at me. 

And I said, this is your goose bump moment. The cards are clear.  You need to let any thoughts of him go, he’s not coming back.   She sighed and then said she actually felt much better. The cards were so definite, it was time to let him go and move on.

Justice is blind...

Justice (11)

Justice is about fairness. The catch cry of ‘it’s not fair’ resonates with us all, and the wise parents response of ‘life isn’t always fair’ comes back. But Justice is about an objective balance which may not seem fair to us anyway, because it is about consequences - you can’t smoke and party without paying with your health, you can’t focus solely on career and ignore your family - all your actions will have consequences. Justice is not about punishment, it’s about adjustment. It not about the law, it’s about natural consequences. And it’s not about compassion, it’s about results.


And, of course, not all of us want to meet the fair and rational results of our actions. Often life has given us special treatment, because of our looks or charm or luck. Justice won’t give us that, and that’s when absolute fairness can feel implacable.



I like the Inner child version of Justice, with King Midas, because it shows two things – be careful what you wish for and a fair and scrupulous consequence can be a painful thing indeed.