Judgment Asks Us to Reconcile the Past: A Look at the Impact of Major Arcana Card Twenty

If The Sun is a tarot card that offers an abundantly clear impression of what it’s all about, Judgment is a different kind of tarot guide—the type that often gets a bad rap. After all, no one likes to feel judged. The name Judgment, though, is almost a misnomer. One of my tarot decks calls this tarot card Ascension, which rings truer to the guide’s real meaning. Consider, for example, Judgment’s place in the Major Arcana order.

As the final tarot guide before The Fool reaches the end of their Major Arcana journey, Judgment becomes less about deciding blame and more about cultivating experience, knowledge and understanding. Judgment provides The Fool with the final tools they need to achieve the wholeness necessary to arrive at The World.

This is a large responsibility. Judgment must ensure that The Fool is ready to complete their adventure, that they have grown wiser along the way. And how does the twentieth tarot card in the Major Arcana realize this feat? By helping The Fool to reconcile past experiences with their new present reality, release anything that no longer serves them, discern what lessons need to be carried forward and embrace the rebirth that comes from knowing oneself fully.

Judgment ensures that everything the previous guides taught—from The Magician to The Sun—have been integrated into The Fool’s awareness. There is no turning back. If The Fool reached The World unprepared, they will not successfully complete their journey. Ending the cycle requires an immense amount of courage, self-understanding, trust and openness. Judgment empowers The Fool to face even the most painful parts of their past with grace, unflinching honesty and forgiveness. When Judgment appears in a reading, this compassionate tarot guide is asking us to do the same.

We will explore these themes further in four general energy readings. These readings use tarot cards to give an overarching perspective about someone’s present circumstances. They are not meant to answer a specific question or address a specific topic.

The main purpose of this post is to show how Judgment impacts and is impacted by the tarot cards around it. We will also explore how the card’s orientation (upright versus reversed) affects the message. Each reading is written as if I am speaking directly to you.

One other thing to note: This blog post is written in conjunction with the Cup of Sugar tarot newsletter. While you do not need to receive the newsletter to understand the readings below, it will give greater context to the cards. If you’d like to sign up to receive the remaining newsletters in the series, you can do that here.

Spread 1: Healing, Happiness, Perfection and Oneness

When four upright Major Arcana cards appear in your reading, it is a blessing. The cards are speaking to big-picture themes in your life right now, and the message is pretty clear: You are killing it right now! Take time to celebrate this moment of flow and connection with the universe. Let’s look at what each card is saying individually to understand the cards’ guidance more clearly.

Judgment in this position is a sign that you have reckoned with your past and have come out better for having made the effort. You worked to reduce your trauma. Armed with this understanding of what you’ve endured, you’ve made steps to make peace and move on. It is not that these things will no longer impact you in the present, only that you will have the tools to manage them when they do. Congrats on doing the work to heal yourself. It requires a significant amount of bravery to face the things that brought us pain.

The Sun is a reminder that doing this work has rewarded you with joy. When we are no longer fighting the past, we can seek true happiness in the present moment. We also benefit from having what we need to pursue our purpose with a full heart and childlike abandon. Our lives feel a lot brighter when we are no longer giving others the power to dim our light. How freeing it feels to be the master of our own experiences.

The World here is an indication that you’ve reached the end of one period of your life. You took a significant journey—one rife with risks and obstacles—to get where you are today. Honor your experiences by reflecting on what you learned. These lessons are necessary for when the cycle inevitably begins again. You’ve gotten a taste of what it feels like to embrace wholeness. This feeling will likely ebb and flow throughout various phases of your life, but each time you reach The World, know that you have leveled up.

The Fountain is a sign that you’re content to stop striving and simply be. Outside of the traditional Major Arcana cards, The Fountain is a special card in The Fountain Tarot Deck. It is the card that appears when you’ve moved beyond the struggles of everyday life and are beginning to experience the bigger picture.

After all you’ve been through, you now know that there is more to you than meets the eye. You are not a personality. You are a deeply connected spirit—one that is united with everyone and everything in the universe. You may not be able to maintain this state of oneness indefinitely right now, but that’s OK. Surrender to the moment and stay for as long as you can. With practice, you’ll find your way back here when the time is right.

Spread 2: Do Not Fear the Power of Your Magic

Attempting to release the past requires us to view it with an objective eye. You are certainly doing the work to reconcile the dark and dissonant parts of yourself and your experiences, but you’re also getting tangled in the weeds of your subconscious.

It can feel tempting to fight against some of the things that come up, to create fantastical narrations about what “really” happened, but those things will not benefit you in the long run. Their ability to protect you from a harsh reality is limited. Soon enough, you will realize that you must surrender to what is and not what you hoped it would be.

How do I know all this? The cards tell the story in detail. Beginning with Judgment, I can see that you’re ready to resolve the things that have trapped you in the past. You want to live in the moment, and you know that this will require some work. You’re making the effort. It’s OK that this endeavor is not as easy as you thought it would be. Once we begin to mine the past for pain, we often uncover more than we’d bargained for.

There’s a reason we can’t see it all right away: Repression is the dark art of keeping things away from the light of consciousness. The Moon in reverse tells me that you’re struggling to honestly assess what you’ve found. It is disorienting. You want it to go away. Instead, make the brave effort tackle your fears, hurt, shame and guilt head on. Separate the truth from the illusion, the reality of what happened from the fantasy of what you wish had gone down.

Your success in this mission will require you to do two seemingly conflicting things simultaneously: surrender and take action. The Ten of Swords is the card of surrender. You will not end your suffering if you continue to flight against it. Allow yourself the space to mourn, to heal, to release the things you cannot change. You can forgive yourself. You can forgive others. Those things are in your control. Your feelings are not facts, and it’s time to accept that you’re not the most reliable narrator. Give yourself the space to feel everything you need to feel. Let everything else fade away.

The Magician is the card that provides guidance about the “take action” portion of your next steps. In this orientation, The Magician is meant to remind us that we have everything we need to succeed in our endeavors. We are all profoundly magical beings. I get the sense that you know this about yourself, but you are frightened by it. This is preventing you from using the full force of your power to overcome your challenges and find peace.

The Magician is here to give you the encouragement you need to dig deep and make big things happen. Your magic is strong, but it does not work on its own. It requires you to make the effort. Speak your desires out loud, take steps to bring them to fruition and watch as they manifest before your very eyes.

Spread 3: Stubborn Anger Keeps You Stuck in the Past

How does it feel to be a martyr in your own life? Not great, I bet. Four reversed tarot cards means there is a significant opportunity for improvement. As with most things, you need to make changes to see the appropriate results. The good news is that the cards tells us exactly what needs to happen to turn things around.

Judgment in reverse is a sign that you’re fighting against your best interests. You’re unwilling to be honest with yourself about your shortcomings, especially the role you play in continuing to assume the role of the victim. Your life isn’t a fairy tale. There is no pure princess or evil sorceress, no chivalrous knight or big, bad wolf. There is only you and your resistance. You cannot heal if you continue to place blame on everyone else. Own your role in your present circumstances. The past cannot be changed, only the present.

The reversed Six of Swords indicates that although you’re tempted to run away from your problems, this is the absolute last thing you should do. You dream of greener pastures, but you cannot take the same baggage with you and expect to live a different life. Stay where you are and face the reality. This will not be easy, but it is necessary for you to thrive in the future. You feel stuck right now. This is intentional. You cannot move forward without dealing with the situation at hand. Be glad you’re not able to get far on foot. Face your demons where they are or they will follow you endlessly.

The Empress in reverse tells me that all growth has stopped. Your life has become stagnant because you’re trying to plant seeds for the future on infertile ground. Life cannot be created from nothing. It must be planted, nourished, given space to thrive. Nutrient-rich soil is the key to making things grow. You must go back to basics before you can expect to reap the riches from what you’ve sown. Tend to your barren garden. You have the inherent power to make improvements from the ground up.

Finally, the reversed King of Wands reminds you not to allow your anger and frustration to thwart your efforts. Positive improvements take time. Nothing worthwhile is manifested over night. Continue to work diligently toward your future goals, but lose the entitlement. Your work is making headway, even if you don’t see the fruits of your labor as soon as you’d like. Take time to rest. Creating the life you want requires positive action. It should not feel like a fight. When the work threatens to overwhelm you, remember that slow and steady is the right way to approach this race.

Spread 4: Forgiving a Challenging Childhood Sometimes Requires You to Parent Yourself

“No one escapes childhood unscathed,” one of my former employers likes to say. She isn’t wrong. We all carry lessons and experiences from our formative years with us into adulthood. From this tarot spread, I get the sense that you had a particularly rough go of things somewhere along the line, and that trauma and/or hurt is impacting you as an adult.

Let’s take a deeper look. In this orientation, Judgment is a sign that the past is haunting you in the present. There are memories that pull you back to that challenging time and make you feel the same disconnection that you did back then. Consider that you may be addicted to these negative feelings.

You’ll want to pay attention to this because I get the sense that you might be clinging to your story of yourself as an innocent victim. While I’m not saying that you are responsible for what happened to you, you might be willfully ignoring the full story. It’s rare that someone is wholly evil or completely righteous. Stories from the past often get blurred with time. Be honest about what is really going on here.

The Page of Coins likely represents you as a child. You had a lot of curiosity and loved to learn. You weren’t just content to read about things in books, you wanted to get your hands dirty and experience them first hand. This sense of wonder is something you reflect on often. You likely miss this feeling, and there is probably a reason you feel unable to access it.

I believe the reversed Knight of Wands gives us a clue. You have a lot of misplaced angst about how your childhood played out. Something happened that made you act out. But playing the role of the aloof rebel was never really your truth, was it? You simply felt a lot of rage that you didn’t know what to do with. It’s hard for people to see us fully when we put up walls and refuse to let them in. Something from this time period continues to burden you today.

The Queen of Swords says that it’s time to stop letting the past control you. You need to be ruthlessly decisive about what thoughts are useful and what needs to go. Cut through the weeds and find the truth. I get the sense that you grew up with a mother figure who was similar to the Queen here—the type of maternal figure who was no-nonsense and showed affection through tough love. Perhaps you resent that you did not have the kind of mom that made cookies and was generous with hugs. I get the sense that your resistance to being brutally honest with yourself is a rejection of the kind of cold truthfulness you grew up with.

But you can take the message the Queen is sharing with you here and interpret it in a new way. You can act as your own mother and parent yourself how you need to be nurtured. That doesn’t mean obscuring the truth. You can be both absolutely truthful and amazingly kind. Treat your inner child with care, but do not shy away from what needs to be done. You’re an adult. It’s time to act like one.