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Saturday 22 November 2014

XI Justice and the Two Poles

XI Justice, Legacy of the Divine by Ciro Marchetti




Any tarot enthusiast is aware of the meaning of the Justice card in the Major Arcana. 

In the Rider Waite Smith deck Lady Justice is seen sitting in her seat, sword in one hand, scales in the other.

She's about balance, truth and reaping what has been sown by past actions.  'Just desserts' comes to mind.  She's a formidable character when it comes to self realisation and accepting that what you have got now, is because of what you gave in the past.

In the Legacy of the Divine tarot, I love that Justice is shown as 2 woman, their eyes covered and facing away from each other, as if they do not wish to acknowledge the other with their opposing reasoning, yet both have their hand on the scales, keeping everything in balance.  

However there is a association I have developed with this card over the time I have been using this deck. There are so many layers to every tarot card, differing meanings in each tarot deck, yet this one individual card has shown me something so unique to my close circle.  

It shows up frequently in the same 2 sitters readings, (these are friends and family, as I do not read for random strangers) and is usually accompanied by an assortment of cards that turn up regularly too.  Sometimes Justice is upright, other times reversed.

Reversed tends to show that the sitter is going into a crisis, upright it seems to show that their is some stability and may be managing their treatment well.

If I use the RWS deck, Justice is usually absent from their spreads, however with Legacy of the Divine, its as sure as eggs are eggs to turn up.

The two sitters it shows up for have one thing in common, they both suffer from Bipolar disorder (as diagnosed by a psychiatrist).
  
It can be well controlled with medication and therapy, but not always.  Stress an be a massive trigger to set a sufferer into a crisis. Some sufferers get only slight respite from their symptoms and others may only suffer the depressive side of the illness.  Each patient is unique in their presentation of the disorder
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One of my friends is mostly depressive with only minor 'ups', my family member was rapid cycling prior to diagnosis (which took almost 2 years to convince them to seek help) and even now whilst medicated has huge extremes of mood frequently and she's 3 years in to treatment. 

The card combinations that turn up again and again are a mix of 10 of Swords, 10 of Wands, 5 of Wands and XV The Devil (when depression is the dominant), or XIX The Sun, XXI The World, 10 of Coins and 6 of Wands (when mania is dominant).

Obviously I don't pull all of these cards at the same time, but a combination of them will turn up alongside Justice.  And strangely enough they seem to reflect the current mood cycle of the sitter.  It is difficult and probably really long winded to write about but when these cards show up for my sitters, I know exactly where these cards are taking me. 

One of my sitters (I'll refer to her as 'G') always associates the figure in the white robe with her 'up' side and the figure in purple as her 'down' side, polar opposites that are supposed to work together to keep balance, which in Bipolar, doesn't.

 'G' knows her signals when either one of the Justice figures is pulling harder on the counterbalance, she is really in tune now with her disorder and will look for a reading when she's starting to feel (or others notice) that her mood is becoming erratic.

Her explanation of her mania is that everything revolves around her, She's grandiose, feels she is on top of the world, can achieve anything and makes wild exaggerations about her self, family and home life and says she invariably feels indestructible.

Her depressive episodes take her down a very dark path that leaves her literally in self destruct mode and has come close to that many times.

I don't know anyone elses' take on this, but I find it fascinating that this specific card carries this association for me. I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts. 















   













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