How I fucked up
Every once in a while I’ll pull a reading and realize I accidentally left a card in the box. It rarely happens, but when it does, especially for a simple one-card pull, I will often void the reading and start over. Well, that's what happened today.
If this happens after an extensive reading, perhaps the left behind card will actually be the most important card that ties the reading together—it all depends.
The original card I pulled in the null reading was the Six of Cups. I’ve pulled it twice this week, but last time I pulled it, I decided to write my first divination theory post instead.
I’ve conveniently avoided writing about it both times now, which demonstrates the level of avoidance I have towards it at the moment—and yes, I’m going to continue to insist on not talking about. Maybe when I pull it a third time.
What happened next
So, I added the left behind card back to the deck and reshuffled. I then pulled Justice, which represents universal law and the forces that govern our incarnated reality.
I have always found it to be a rather puzzling card, mostly because it can mean so many different things. The simple explanation (as if any tarot card is simple) is that it represents the rebalancing of the scales of justice, held in the figure’s left hand. The sword of truth (Ace of Swords, perhaps) is held in the figure’s right hand.
This does not necessarily have to do with the laws of governing bodies but rather the laws of our existence that supersede human law. Call it karma, perhaps.
On karma and the Justice card
I admit I cannot adequately capture my understanding of karma, but I will try.
I find the average person has a very narrow view of karma that is more or less one of karmic retribution, cause and effect, and “what goes around comes around.” This is not entirely untrue of karma, but it relies on a perspective of right and wrong that is usually Judeo-Christian and punitive.
Karma is a great mystery.
Karma is a benefic, but it does not always feel this way. Karma is not punitive. If it is, it punishes only in the way one prunes a tree. Pruning injures the tree, yes, but so the tree can grow and thrive.
Karma plays the long game. It exists somewhere in the scales of justice—the push-pull of a universe ever-seeking to balance itself. It is also about lessons and crossroads and our personal timelines.
Sometimes people enter your life, and you can feel the karma between you and them, and this karma seeks to resolve itself. It seeks to balance something inside you, to resolve the unlearned lesson. Sometimes it’s even more complicated than that. A person you meet who seems of little consequence in your life can have a critical, yet seemingly background role, that impacts your timeline in major ways.
I recently had a conversation about this. I used to see someone, and he died five years later. Overall, he did not have any major, life-altering impact on me while he was living, but when I found out he died, I was in the middle of making a decision about travel.
At the time, it felt like a small decision between traveling to one location or another. Yet, his death put the seemingly-minor decision into a new perspective, and the conviction I had was so strong that I ended up rearranging my five weeks of travel only one day before my flight was taking off.
That decision changed my life. As the trip was unfolding, I was experiencing a Tower moment, as we say in tarot. It set me up to endure the hardest time in my life, which immediately followed.
In retrospect, that was my karma with him unfolding. It was not personal, either; I could even say it was like a pawn strategically placed in my timeline. Placed by who? A great mystery.
I say pawn not to be reductive—he is not unimportant. It is undeniable that he permanently impacted me. And our karma is now resolved, I think. At least in this life.
And as it goes with karma, that situation, decision, moment has had ripple effects in the lives of those around me, too. As Robert Frost said, “Way leads on to way.”
This is only one facet of this card, the one I’m seeing today. When I next pull it, I’ll have a very different story to tell.
Justice and timelines
For today, I'm reflecting on my own dissatisfaction and where the scales are rebalancing.
I also need to remember timelines. A few months ago, my friend recently reminded me of this saying, “Rejection is protection.” They often say this in twelve-step.
Rejection can feel like injustice, but perhaps it is justice.
Or, what feels like an injustice today may feel like justice a year from now. Perspective often becomes refined with time, when we can zoom out and see the full arc of the timeline unfolding.
My last breakup left me feeling like I was the victim of a great injustice—that I was wronged, treated unfairly, etc. Now that I’m on the other side, I see it as a grace.
Among the rubble of the relationship ending, I found a rare moment of clarity in those early days, where I wrote a note to myself (channeled from my higher self, perhaps):
“All of this is happening for you, for you to be the person you need to be, the person you want to be.
No one can say what will happen in the future, but keep holding onto the deep inner knowing, the simplicity.
There are beautiful things awaiting you, things so beautiful you cannot possibly even imagine them.
Have faith. Keep opening. Keep loving.
One day, this heartbreak will be one of the most important turning points in your life. What you have asked for and longed for is being met.”
I’m still unsure of this letter to myself. Somewhere, I know it’s true, even though I don’t feel it all the time.
But some beautiful things have happened. Mostly beautiful things.
Justice is a card of the major arcana, and we cannot forget these cards represent the “hidden ways,” which are the unseen mysteries that we sense but cannot fully grasp.
So, Justice requires a perspective that is beyond the present moment. It requires a level of foresight. It asks us to trust or to even hope when it’s most difficult to because justice is coming, usually in unanticipated ways.