Judgement

Judgement: the call from within

An angel leans out of the clouds and blows a long golden trumpet. A white banner with a red cross hangs from it. Below, on the water, float open coffins. People are rising out of them, grey and bare, with their arms lifted to the sky. A man and a woman stand on either side. Between them, with its back to you, stands a child.

This is the second-to-last of the Major Arcana, near the end of the road that started with the Fool. Here a call goes out. Everything that was asleep wakes up and answers.

The image

Look at the angel's face and hair. The hair curls up like flames. The wings are red. Look at the trumpet's mouth. Thin lines come out of it, as if you could see the sound.

Now the people. In his guide to the deck Waite saw "a woman on the right, a man on the left hand". Between them stands "their child, whose back is turned". He noticed there are more than three. Further back, three more rise from their own coffins. And he saw that "all the figures are as one in the wonder". Nobody on this card looks afraid.

The child in the middle is turned away from you, toward the angel. What is it looking at? What does it hear?

Behind everyone rise snowy mountains. They look like the peaks the Fool walked among at the start.

Waite also compared this card with Temperance. Put them side by side. Each has a great angel with red wings and golden hair. One pours water from cup to cup. The other blows a trumpet over the water.

• TemperanceTrump XIV

The inner journey

Waite didn't want this card read only as the end of the world. He asked, "What is that within us which does sound a trumpet and all that is lower in our nature rises in response?" He said the call "is heard and answered from within". He asked "those who have inward eyes" to look further.

After the night of the Moon and the morning of the Sun, the traveller of the trumps hears a name called. Carl Jung wrote about vocation, an inner voice that calls a person toward becoming who they are. Following it, he thought, was part of growing into a whole person, which he called individuation. It can be uncomfortable. It asks you to get up.

Look at the coffins again. They are open, and they float. Whatever was shut away in them, an old gift or a forgotten love, can stand up now. They come back changed, and all together.

The answer can wait a moment. You could stay here for a while and listen. What is the trumpet playing? Who in you is already standing up?

Across traditions

The picture comes from the Christian Last Judgement, when the dead rise at the sound of a trumpet. Saint Paul wrote about it to the Christians of Corinth. "We shall not all sleep," he wrote, "but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump." Waite's own question uses almost the same words: "almost in a moment, almost in the twinkling of an eye".

The Golden Dawn gave this card the element of fire and the Hebrew letter Shin. Its Book T names the card "The Spirit of the Primal Fire". The Fool had been given air, and the Hanged Man water. Here, near the end, comes fire.

XX comes down to 2 if you add its digits, which pairs Judgement with the High Priestess (II). She sits silent in front of a veil, keeping her secrets. Here there is no veil at all, and the call is loud. Whatever was hidden behind her curtain is rising into the open.

• The High PriestessTrump II

Try this

Lie down for a minute, on a bed or the floor. Set a soft sound to go off after a minute or two, like a phone chime. Rest until you hear it. When it sounds, don't jump up. Rise slowly, the way the people on the card rise, arms lifting. Notice what in you wants to answer first. Then ask yourself: if something were calling you right now, what would it be calling you to?

Questions to sit with

• What is the child looking at?
• What might the trumpet be playing?
• What in your life has been asleep for a long time?
• If a call came from inside you today, what would it say?
• What would rise in you if it heard its name?

The film

No film for this card yet.