Sunday, November 8, 2015

Writerly Tarot of the Week: Justice

This week, Lady Justice comes calling yet again (you can read about her previous appearance here). Despite my careful and thorough shuffling, cards do show up more than once, sometimes back to back (it's bound to happen a traditional tarot deck has 78 cards, so some are destined to be repeat visitors). In my tarot philosophy, a card that shows up more frequently than the law of averages would dictate usually has one of two messages to share:

1. The energy is repeating itself, only in a new transmutation.

2. The energy is the same as it was previously, but I haven't figured out everything I need to figure out about it, so until I do, it will keep repeating and repeating, like blows to the head, until the information finally sinks into my thick hard skull.

This week is #2. Alas.

So I am returning once again to my own ideas about justice and fairness. I am questioning my beliefs about what it is to be deserving. I am pondering karma, that ancient engine of cause and effect, reckoning and consequence. I am doing these things especially with my creative endeavors, because there's nothing guaranteed to make one feel like a plaything of destiny than sending one's work into the larger world.

Justice is here to remind me that she has the eternal tally sheet well in order, thank you very much. She doesn't need me nudging her in the ribs, highlighting certain details that might have slipped her mind, scribbling helpful notes in the margins. Her balance scales do not require recalibration (and they especially don't need my thumb helping things equal up properly). All that she requires of me is that I keep my own balance book neat. And all that requires is the attention and intention of my entire lifetime.

Previously, I said of Justice, "You already have the long-enough lever she's simply showing you where you might stand." That sounds exactly right for this week too.

So . . . to work.


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Yes, but Justice sits in a stone throne, anything but comfortable there, with a black mantle draped behind her that might at any time fall on her head and blind her. She has her sword raised as she balances the scale, as if to say, "you'd better add up, or else."

Tina said...

Yes, the essence of Justice is impartial, as objective as karma and physics. It is we who must bring the action, move the pieces, participate. We make the scale shift. She only holds it. In the US, we like to blindfold our statues of Justice, to remind us of this impartiality. But her vision is perfectly objective as is. And we'd better remember that.