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Happy summer solstice! If you’re in the northern hemisphere, enjoy this longest day (clouded or bright), for it will be balanced (as it is right now in the southern hemisphere) by the long night of midwinter. What goes around always comes around, in nature and in human affairs. The only question, as ever, is how do we choose to respond?
Our wrangler for this blog hop (we are a group of writers on the topic of Tarot who have linked our blog posts at a certain time and with a certain theme to give you a nice series of perspectives to enjoy), Alison Cross, gave us the challenge to actually pick a card from the Major Arcana and give our take on it in whatever way we’d like (love it, hate it, do a video, write a poem, build a spread, etc.).
© US Games, Inc. Universal Waite
And we had to use up all the cards first before doing duplicates, so by the time I checked the list, only two were left, The Sun and Justice. Well, The Sun seemed too easy (you’ll have to work your way along the hop with the links at the top or bottom of this post to find out what my fellow blogger, Shauna, wrote about The Sun), so I picked Justice.
Not normally one of my favorite cards. She’s a classic symbol, though, that serious, mostly blindfolded lady with the scales and imposing sword (shades of Solomon and the women fighting over the baby!). Very stern, very rational, probably a lawyer prior to her appointment to the Justice position. In this version originally drawn by Pamela Colman-Smith, she (or is it he, even?) has her eyes wide open to see all the evidence presented. I always found the large sword and imposing pillars of institutional authority to be very stiff and unsympathetic to the complexities of the human situation.
So, finding justice means balance, right? Well, maybe. But life and the universe tend to swing more like a pendulum than a set of static scales. Fairness can be inhumane sometimes; maybe this person needs a little more in their water glass than that one because they’ve just walked across the desert, and the other fellow has been sitting in the shade all day. So, justice is not only about making the situation even, is it? It’s not just about keeping everything balanced all the time.
That sword is very sharp; I think perhaps it needs to be sheathed in mercy more often than actually happens in this world. For me, true justice actually is the appropriate application of mercy and boundaries on behavior that make for a harmonious humanity.
©Llewellyn Publications
Imagine a nice, fluffy scabbard for the lady’s sword; she could soften the blow of justice, or even just use the sword to separate the conflicting parties so they can see the virtue and advantage of reconciliation over retribution. A thought. Or, a feather, like the one in the Shadowscapes version of Justice. The feather represents the measure of the worthiness of the soul in Egyptian mythology. Much more peaceful, I think.
I vote for seeing Justice as an opportunity to clear the air of hatred and fear, and to carve a space for mercy, and ultimately, love. So there. 
Off you go now, either backwards or forwards in the hop to check out the other cards.
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The post The Heart of Justice—Tarot Blog Hop appeared first on Cosmic Whispers Tarot.