This card has alot of rich colours and the central figure similar to the typical figure of justice is a woman (although it is kind of difficult to tell with this card!). The royal purple suggests a heavenly appointment and the crown signifies the authority to dispense justice. The reds and greens create a striking contrast, as does the purple against the yellow crown. These complementary colours show the power inherent in the card. The scales in her hand connect the card to Libra and also to Venus..its planetary ruler. The upraised sword is perfectly straight and poised to dispense whatever measure may be necesary. Everything in this card suggests balance, equanimity and fairness..even her scarf is symmetrical. The only imbalance is her foot poking out and pointing to the right, which I feel doesn't need to be explained further.
One very important consideration with this card is that she, unlike our statues of justice has no blindfold. While human justice is blind, it appears that divine judgement suffers no errors or bias. One of the major aspects of this card is the understanding of the workings of karma. In a way she very directly portrays karma in action, impartial, but all seeing.
Now, the general idea of karma can be very limiting. What you sow is what you reap. While this is true, it can lead to some very basic errors about how it functions. It can give the impression that it is like an inexorable wheel turning and crushing all those beneath it that have done "Wrong" and handing out sweets and feathery wings to those who have done "Good" deeds. That at some point in the future you will pay for your crimes or those acts of kindness. This can create tremendous fear and worry in those that have done wrong and a kind of smugness in those that commit charitable acts as they squirrel away good karma points.
While this is the basic premise and it does function in such a way, there are far more elements to consider. If we imagine that every action we commit to is colour, so red is passionate actions, green is compassionate and caring, black is hate and so on. Each of these actions colours us, so the more we hate, the blacker our soul becomes and so forth, so that eventually we appear to be a record of every action we have ever taken. Now if we image that these clouds of colour hang around us and tint the world we live in, so a loving person sees the world in hues of rosey pink and and hateful being sees everything in shades of black.
Now of course it is easy to see that the hateful person is already living his own punishment. Each action is rarely a pure colour and many times these actions become muddied (such as by smugness). But it is possible to clear away these colours through truly forgiving and reparations, which is effectively neutralising the colour with its opposite. So love cancels and reduces hatred in a very real sense.
This model has the advantage of showing us that if you do something bad, it is not out of your hands to prevent that by neutralising it before it arrives. Of course, one must actually neutralise the right action, a murderer could not make things right by devoting money to charity..all he is doing is adding a different hue..not canceling the other out.
So karma as I understand it is happening now..in the moment, we decide what kind of world we will see and how the future will turn out by the actions we commit in the moment..and if you don't like it..change it.
On a personal level this card is showing me something..a choice I believe I have to make. In my last post I mentioned how with my clairvoyant sight, I find it somewhat clouded as if I was wearing a gauze over my eyes. Of course in this card, Justice has no such blindfold, even though her human counterpart does and it is ironic that it is a point to be discussed now. It has become apparent to me that playing so many video games is impairing the further growth of my abilities, as well as being a considerable time sink when I could be doing something a great deal more constructive. This has left me feeling like I have to make a choice which route I can follow. I do love playing video games, but I lose track of the time and basically fall into a trance in which the outside world becomes less relevant. Coming out of that fugue makes me feel like I have lost or wasted time..now this could be a throwback to my childhood where playing games was seen as something negative and I was often restricted as a form of punishment for bad behaviour. I don't wish for it to become some form of self flagellation or abnegation.
But I feel I could be a great deal more productive if I didn't get stuck in it so often. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with games and gaming, in fact I think they are a great deal healthier than TV and good for developing imagination and remaining connected to child-like states of wonder.
In the end the choice is up to me, I can attempt to reach my full potential without the games and live more in the world and in the moment.
Or I can continue to play games and live at a lower level than I know I am capable of.
The card is saying I can choose my path or my poison, neither is wrong, but I will get exactly what will come from each choice and must not close my eyes to the repercussions. For me there is no middle ground in this, I barely have enough will power to resist it, so I must make a clean cut either way. There is no one else to blame for my actions in this but myself.
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