There are several layered reasons why the Judgement card can evoke a guarded response, not the least of which is its common association with the biblical ‘Last Judgement’ and all the fear and guilt that represents, but there is also the common fixation in the minds of the New Age with the concept of judgement in general being an enemy and rather vicious tool in the hands of an ego run amok.

These constructs mentioned above are in and of themselves plenty good reason to feel aversion when faced with this card. However, if we consider the first, the biblical last judgement, as already having come and gone with the turning of the times, in very much the same way as the Matriarchy (Goddess worship) turned to the Patriarchy (God worship), and is now feeling into the recognition of a ‘Self’-centered universe, Consciousness itself being the God of the new Aeon, the ‘Last Judgement’ loses a bit of its grip on our old, deep-seated fears.

Similarly, if we consider that judgement in and of itself is not bad, as there is simply no getting out of bed in the morning if we do not judge one way or the other, and replace the word ‘judgement’ with discernment or discrimination, again we may begin to identify and reshape some of our personal beliefs and biases about this word, while acknowledging judgement as the necessary tool of decision-making that it is.

Yet, of that chronically misunderstood construct of ego on which I have previously written too much, I should offer you this piece on Awakening in general, if only to help make sense of this brilliant, most invaluable mechanism.

In the Thoth deck, Key XX ‘Judgement’ has undergone a facelift and name change in line with the fresh understanding that we should be moving forward with in this New Age of heightened awareness and enlightened consciousness. ‘The Aeon’ is a representation of a deep recognition of our essential nature and represents a rebirth through this understanding. And yes, sometimes the idea of a rebirth, too, can be extremely upsetting, particularly if we are attached to our positions as they stand currently. It could be said that one needs a bit of flexibility to be reborn.

When we place the Tarot on the Tree of Life, we are suddenly investing our interpretation of the cards with far more symbolic meaning than the mere surface-level attributions of our biases towards certain words. For instance there is the Hebrew letter attribution to the card. Shin is the correspondence with the current card in question. Shin is one of the Mother letters of which there are 3 in total. The others are Mem and Aleph, attributed to the Hanged man and to the Fool respectively.

So, not only do we want to be asking ourselves about the relationship between the three cards and their place in the overall evolution of the manifest universe, and consciousness itself particularly, but we also want to look at the meaning of this letter on its own. Hebrew letters each contain within them a meaning and a number. And so the statement that ‘reality is originally emanated from a letter and a word’ becomes more meaningful to us.

The Tree of Life shows us the Trump cards as paths of consciousness upon which we travel within the greater context of Self as a whole, non-dual, individuated being. Standing at the center of our reality is the innocent, child-like witness, the Atman, the soul-rider at the core of our experience as embodied consciousness. Key #20 to the Mysteries, The Judgement or The Aeon, presents us on a path between the 3D world of our day to day and the mental world of our intellection. Acknowledgement and recognition of the entirety of what has been explained above is in itself one of the Greater Lessons that this card has to offer and, in fact, can be witnessed within the art of the Aeon card. The artist has conspired, in lieu of judgement’s trumpet, to serve up a sublime meditation for us to interact with subtly, beckoning us to recall this deep mystery of the human nature.

Remember! The Tarot Trumps are most precisely referred to as Keys to the Mysteries.