By Gary Meister, CTM
Tarot is an excellent tool for meditation to enhance spiritual growth. With Tarot, in our readings, we each have subtly different meanings for the different cards, meanings which work well for ourselves - better than anyone else’s meanings. In Spiritual Tarot it works the same way. We each have our own path and we each see subtly different things in the Major Arcana to help us along that path.
With this series, I’m sharing my journey, in hopes that it might help to shine a little light on yours. I’m using the Rider/Waite/Smith Tarot on this spiritual journey.
Judgement
Six people (three in the foreground, three in the background) stand in what appear to be caskets floating on water. They are blue in color, signifying that they were probably dead before this moment, and they are nude, as a sign that everything, here, is out in the open. Mountains can be seen on the other side of the body of water. Above them, floating in a cloud, is the Archangel Gabriel blowing his trumpet. He is shown with wings, wearing a blue gown, and he has golden hair. Attached to his trumpet is a white flag with the figure of an equal-armed cross on it. This is an ancient symbol of the necessary balance between positive and negative polarity in all things. The scene is made to represent Judgment Day, the day in which we are all judged for the kind of lives we have led.
Metaphysically speaking, there does, indeed, come such a day for each of us, but it is we, ourselves, who do the judging. Before we come into this life, we decide what kind of life we want to have, what lessons we need to learn, and how we’ll try to go about learning them. At some time, or, perhaps, several times, it becomes necessary for us to sit in judgment upon ourselves and evaluate just how well we have done and are doing in our learning process.
When we have finished the lessons inherent in the Tarot card, The Sun, it is definitely time for one of these judgment days. It is time for us to stop and take a look at all the spiritual lessons we have learned and how we are using them in our present lives. Are we making good use of that which we have learned? Or, conversely, are we wasting it? Are we pushing it into the background of our lives and pigeon holing into a file marked “Spiritual, Not Useful in real life”?
Unfortunately, people do tend to separate their real lives from their spiritual lives. That is a big mistake! The most important reason to study spiritual and metaphysical things is to make our material lives more comfortable and productive for us. These are eternal lessons, to be used both here and in the hereafter. Spirit is the very basis upon which everything else is built. By utilizing the spiritual things we have learned in our everyday life, we make everything we experience in life more meaningful and valuable. We can actually know the things we are here to learn.
When I meditate on Judgement, it reminds me of the necessity of examining my life and spiritual growth regularly. Only in that way can I know how far I have come and how far there still is for me to go.
That’s what Judgement means to me.
The Judgement card is from the Universal Waite Tarot published by U.S. Games Systems, Inc. The Universal Waite Tarot copyrighted by U.S. Games Systems, Inc. and is used with permission.