Tarot card meanings · Major Arcana 20

What does Judgement mean in tarot?

In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Judgement upright means “Change of position, renewal, outcome”, and reversed “Weakness, pusillanimity, simplicity; also deliberation, decision, sentence”.

Upright

Change of position, renewal, outcome.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3

Reversed

Weakness, pusillanimity, simplicity; also deliberation, decision, sentence.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3

What does the picture show?

I have said that this symbol is essentially invariable in all Tarot sets, or at least the variations do not alter its character. The great angel is here encompassed by clouds, but he blows his bannered trumpet, and the cross as usual is displayed on the banner.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 2

Where does Judgement fall in a reading?

Judgement belongs to the Major Arcana. On this site you draw three cards, which take three of the places in the ten-card method Waite describes: “This covers him”, “This crosses him”, “This is before him”. The same card reads differently in each place, and the I Ching cast beside it may agree or disagree.

Waite's words are quoted as printed, and left out where they speak of money, law, illness or disaster. The pictures are the 1909 deck drawn by Pamela Colman Smith. For entertainment and self-reflection.

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