The picture on the Tarot Judgement card makes no secret of what judgment it refers to: the Last Judgment, when all the people who ever lived are awakened and sent either to Heaven or to Hell for eternity. Ultimate justice. Sublime reward for the good and terrible punishment for the bad. This moment is also the one of the end of the world as we know it. At such a cost, is it really justice we want? To countless Christians through the past two thousand years, the idea of divine judgment had wonderful appeal, since so many of them were constantly victims of injustice. It started already by their savior being crucified and many of his disciples meeting similar fates. And the first generation of Christians in Rome was hunted down by the forces of a vicious Emperor. They dreamed of the Last Judgment and prayed that it was near. The Tarot Judgement (spelled with an archaic ‘e’ in the middle) card, then, signals the promise of justice being done, eventually. The villains will be revealed and the righteous ones will be rewarded. At a cost. Tarot Judgement is final and irrevocable. That’s dire in itself. So, is it really what we want? And are we that sure of being innocent and the others are the only guilty ones? If we call for the Judgement implied by the Tarot card, it will come, and it will strike according to its own elevated perception. The outcome is never certain, no matter how we might have convinced ourselves of the opposite. So, it’s a moment of fear for the good and the bad alike. The Tarot Judgement card has sort of a twin in that of Justice, which seems just as clear about the right and the wrong of things, but at closer inspection reveals the complexity of it all. But Justice of that Tarot card is not definite, since it’s of the world. The Tarot’s version of Judgement, though, is forever. There may be a reason for the people’s legal system preferring the principle of justice to that of judgment. Judgment Day is a spectacular vision, which has inspired many artists through the centuries, especially in the long period when the church was their richest and most frequent client. Here are some of the paintings on the theme. Click on them to see larger images — and you want to do that, because these are scenes surpassing anything Hollywood manages even with the biggest budget…
First Appearance Ducal courts of northern Italy (c. 1440)
First Publisher ○
Appearance List Sola Busca (1490s) — earliest surviving deck [Open Culture] [WaiteSmith.org]; Monde primitif… (Vol. 8: “Du Jeu des Tarots”) (1781) by Antoine Court de Gébelin; Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées Tarots (1783–1785) by Etteilla (Jean-Baptiste Alliette); Dogme et rituel de la haute magie (1856) by Éliphas Lévi; The Tarot: Its Occult Signification, Use in Fortune-Telling, and Method of Play (1888) by S. L. MacGregor Mathers; Le Tarot des Bohémiens (1889) by Papus (Gérard Encausse); Rider Waite Tarot (1909) by A. E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith [WaiteSmith.org]; The Tarot of the Bohemians (1910) by A. P Morton [Internet Archive]; The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911, 1959) by A. E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith; Le tarot des imagiers du moyen âge (1926) by Oswald Wirth; The Book of Thoth: A Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians (1944) by Aleister Crowley; Le Tarot de Marseille (1949) by Paul Marteau; The Tarot Revealed (1960) by Eden Gray; Tarot Cards for Fun and Fortune Telling (1970) by Stuart R. Kaplan; The Encyclopedia of Tarot (Vol. 1) (1978) by Stuart R. Kaplan.
Sample Read The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911, 1959) by A. E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith [Internet Archive]
Description The picture on the Tarot Judgement card makes no secret of what judgment it refers to: the Last Judgment, when all the people who ever lived are awakened and sent either to Heaven or to Hell for eternity. Ultimate justice. Sublime reward for the good and terrible punishment for the bad. This moment is also the one of the end of the world as we know it. At such a cost, is it really justice we want? To countless Christians through the past two thousand years, the idea of divine judgment had wonderful appeal, since so many of them were constantly victims of injustice. It started already by their savior being crucified and many of his disciples meeting similar fates. And the first generation of Christians in Rome was hunted down by the forces of a vicious Emperor. They dreamed of the Last Judgment and prayed that it was near. The Tarot Judgement (spelled with an archaic ‘e’ in the middle) card, then, signals the promise of justice being done, eventually. The villains will be revealed and the righteous ones will be rewarded. At a cost. Tarot Judgement is final and irrevocable. That’s dire in itself. So, is it really what we want? And are we that sure of being innocent and the others are the only guilty ones? If we call for the Judgement implied by the Tarot card, it will come, and it will strike according to its own elevated perception. The outcome is never certain, no matter how we might have convinced ourselves of the opposite. So, it’s a moment of fear for the good and the bad alike. The Tarot Judgement card has sort of a twin in that of Justice, which seems just as clear about the right and the wrong of things, but at closer inspection reveals the complexity of it all. But Justice of that Tarot card is not definite, since it’s of the world. The Tarot’s version of Judgement, though, is forever. There may be a reason for the people’s legal system preferring the principle of justice to that of judgment. Judgment Day is a spectacular vision, which has inspired many artists through the centuries, especially in the long period when the church was their richest and most frequent client. Here are some of the paintings on the theme. Click on them to see larger images — and you want to do that, because these are scenes surpassing anything Hollywood manages even with the biggest budget…
