Judgment

1. The Early Cards, from c. 1440 Milan to 1736 Marseille

In the 15th and 16th century Italian lists of tarot subjects from Bologna, Ferrara, and Florence, the card we know as Judgment was invariably called "L'Angelo," The Angel, from the figure at the top of the card. In the earliest extant cards, there are two angels; by tradition these would have been Michael and Gabriel. The words "surgite ad Justiciuz" on the earliest exemplar, from 1440s Lombardy, leaves no doubt as to the subject: the Last Judgment, when the dead were thought to resuscitate bodily and emerge from their tombs, from there to be sent to heaven or hell for eternity, according to their deserts. This card has four individuals, three of them naked, two of them looking at the one above them and the third staring in front of him and praying. There is also a fourth figure, clothed. He seems to be a saint or perhaps Christ himself, making it all happen.

The motif was utterly familiar, as contemporary examples will show, e.g. Hieronymus Bosch in "Four Last Things" and Michelangelo's famous "Last Judgment" scene in the Sistine Chapel. 

The next known card, from the 1450s by the same workshop as the 1440s one just shown, has the two angels plus another figure above them, probably God the Father. In Florence the so-called "Charles VI" deck of c. 1460 also has the same three upper figures but many naked individuals below.

The next cards, printed instead of hand-painted, reduce the angels to one and the people below to three at most. Below, the Catelin Geoffroy (far left below) is from Lyon, France, and the Rothschild (next) from somewhere in Tuscany or Umbria: it survived in the binding of a book bound in Perugia). The Minchiate versions sometimes had the skyline of whatever city produced it. Here the one tall, leaning tower and a few smaller ones suggest Bologna. Another version, with "Fama Vola"  on it (Glory Flies), has the famous Bruneleschi dome of Florence and the tower of the Palazzo delle Signoria.

The French decks of the 17th century continued the motif of one trumpeting angel and three nude figures. Below are an anonymous Tarot of Paris, 1st half of 17th century (far left), Vieville c. 1650, Noblet c. 1660 Paris, and Dodal 1709 Lyon (second left, etc.). The last two are examples of what Thierry Depaulis has dubbed the "Tarot de Marseille I" design. It has the innovation that the central figure has his back to us and his hair is in the form of a tonsure, suggesting a religious figure, such as a monk or priest. In the Dodal, he is even a different color. The lines on his back are also a bit odd, in that that on the right side the lines resemble a female breast. To some this is the suggestion of androgyny, since the design is only on one side.

In the 18th century versions of the card that Depaulis calls "Tarot de Marseille II", the curve of the Noblet figure's back is now on the left side (far left, Chosson of either 1672 or 1736). There is also an interesting new development, namely, what had been a mountain in back of the central figure, with his back to us, is now a hill whose curvature mimics the man's head. To me the shape echoes that of the Eye of Horus or "Wadjet Eye" of ancient Egypt, which by then would have been known from reproductions. This was only a few decades of Court de Gebelin's famous thesis that the tarot was of Egyptian origin. Perhaps there was a deliberate attempt to put known Egyptian motifs into the cards. Horus was the savior-figure of the Egyptian trinity of Isis, Osiris, and Horus. It is Horus as the son who redeems his father by his victory over Seth. However it is not that feat alone that accomplishes the redemption: it also has to be ratified by the powers above them, chiefly the great god Ra, who is persuaded to relinquish his sponsorship of Seth, a solar god, in favor of Horus, who is a lunar god, as described in Plutarch's On Isis and Osiris.

An oddity about the early lists, and the cards themselves when numbers were put on them, is that it was not second to last, as it came to be in the French decks, but either last or third to last. As last, it corresponds to the Triumph of Eternity in Petrarch's I Trionfi. As third to last it precedes the Justice card, after which comes the final triumph, whose title, according to the anonymous preacher who first presented this order, was "El Mundo, cioe Dio (il Papa)," i.e. "The World, that is God (the Father)." One only arrives at the highest destination if one merits it, in this version of the order. In that case the world inside the circle in the Ferrarese or Venetian printed cards below is the New Jerusalem.

2. Court de Gebelin, Count de Mellet and Etteilla

The late 18th century, starting in 1781 Paris, saw a couple of new interpretations of the card. Court de Gebelin proclaimed that it signified the creation, with the people emerging from the ground as symbolizing the creation of humanity from the dust of the earth. He said that the graves were a recent card makers' addition, then commented, "Take away these graves, this Tabvleau serves as well to designate Creation, taking place in Time, in the beginining of Time, which points to XXI" (Karlin trans., in Rhapsodies of the Bizarre, p. 32, p. 378 of original). This is a strange echo of Petrarch in his Trionfi. For him, the Last Judgment marked the defeat of Time and the Triumph of Eternity, the precise reversal of de Gebelin's perspective.

De Gebelin's collaborator the Comte de Mellet, in his essay in the same volume of Le Monde Primitif, in a similar spirit maintained that the cards should be read in reverse order, with the World before creation as first and the creation of the world second, and so on, through successive ages of gold, silver, iron, and brass, a gradual deterioration of values ending with the Fool. 

Etteilla, who also held that the tarot was invented in Egypt, agreed that the first seven cards were "originally" about the seven days of creation, and accordingly moved the Sun, Moon, and Star cards to the beginning of the sequence and invented new cards (which he still maintained were part of an Egyptian original) to fit his conceptions. The Judgment card, however, remained as Judgment and was part of the deterioration of values from the original state of humanity, consequently late in the sequence. But it was no longer the Last Judgment: he removed the definite article "Le" ("The" in French) from the card. Despite the conventional scene on the card, it was now Judgment adapted to fortune-telling, in other words, the ordinary judgments of human beings. This can be seen from his account in his Third Cahier:

No. 16. Judgment. C.B.A., Judgment in C, says that you judge on nothing. B.C.A., what you judge of B is true; what you judge of A is false; means Judgment.

Given the three cards in a reading, then, the card signifies  the truth ofone's judgment about whatever is signified by the card before but not of the card after.

The secularization of Judgment (despite restoring the "Le") is also seen int the word lists that Etteilla's disciples, under his supervision initially, provided for the card (except for the ones in brackets, which are from Papus's list in Le Tarot Divinitoire (tr. Stockman), these are my translations of those provided by "Julia Orsini" in 1838 (original at right):

16. [Jugement] JUDGMENT - Judgment that is true, good, holy, correct, false. Discernment. Dedication, Intelligence, Conception, Reason, Understanding, Good Sense, Correct Opinion, Genius, Power of Reasoning, Comparison. Deliberation.-View, Suspicion, Thought.-[Strong Belief,] Opinion. Sentiment, [Disband, Dissolve]. Last Judgment.

Reversed: [Jugement]: JUDGMENT. Arrest, Decree, Deliberation, Decision [Outcome], Arbitration. Pacification. Poor judgment, Feeble-mindedness, Weak-Mindedness, Pusillanimity. Dementia. Injustice.  Simplicity [Naïveté]. Stupidity.  

The Reverseds are more negative than the Uprights. However even in the Uprights the card can represent a false judgment, probably following his guideline indicated in the 3rd Cahier. The card can also represent the Last Judgment, but it is only one of many meanings, most of which refer to the fortune-teller's client's more immediate concerns. It is probably for this reason that the Etteilla deck as currently published abandons "Jugement" altogether as a keyword, replacing it with two of the "synonyms and alternative meanings" from the word-list, Opinion upright and Arbitration reversed.   

 

3. Eliphas Levi, etc.

In Chapter 20 of Part One of Transcendental Magic, Levi affirmed the reality of resurrection of the dead, at least for ordinary people. His examples pertain to people who had been "killed" by chloroform or hypnotic trance. Chapter 20 of Part Two is devoted to seemingly miraculous cures. He attributes them to the doctor's and patient's strong belief in their efficacy: it is the healing power of the placebo. Speaking of card 20 at the end of the work, much in keeping with de Gebelin's view of the card, said it signified "the vegetative, the generative power of the earth, eternal life." At the same time his specification of who the three people on the ground were became definitive for many later theorists, saying of the "dead who come out of their tombs" that "these dead who become again living are a man, a woman, and a child, the ternary of human life" (Waite trans., p. 369).

This ternary will be repeated by Christian, Waite and Case. Christian gave "Renewal" as its keyword and said it represented "the passage from life on earth to the life of the future." Hence it is important "not to fall asleep in laziness or forgetfulness," because "the ascent of the soul is the fruit of its successive ordeals". Yet for Christian as for Etteilla, it concerns not only the final goal, but also the turns of fortune in this life (History and Practice of Magic, trans. 1910, p. 110, in archive.org). 

Hope in suffering, but beware of prosperity. . . . At a moment unknown to you the wheel of fortune will turn, and you will be raised up or cast down by the Sphinx.

He is evidently comparing card XX with card X.

A. E. Waite identifies the card with an inner event in some ways equivalent to the outer event of the Last Judgment (Pictorial Key to the Tarot, https://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/pktar20.htm):

It is the card which registers the accomplishment of the great work of transformation in answer to the summons of the Supernal--which summons is heard and answered from within.
What is that within us which does sound a trumpet and all that is lower in our nature rises in response--almost in a moment, almost in the twinkling of an eye? Let the card continue to depict, for those who can see no further, the Last judgment and the resurrection in the natural body; but let those who have inward eyes look and discover therewith. They will understand that it has been called truly in the past a card of eternal life, and for this reason it may be compared with that which passes under the name of Temperance.

Of interest also is his list of divinatory meanings (https://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/pkt0303.htm):

20. THE LAST JUDGMENT.-- Change of position, renewal, outcome. Another account specifies total loss though lawsuit. Reversed: Weakness, pusillanimity, simplicity; also deliberation, decision, sentence.

These would seem to be derived from Eteilla and Christian. The idea of "total loss" is from "Julia Orsini's" commentary. That author (probably Simon Blocquel, the publisher) adds that the loss will be offset by an "unexpected inheritance."

Oswald Wirth analyzed the card as the descent of Spirit into regenerated humanity. He did not put a child in the center, but for him it was still the son of the pair on either side. The Father is the sum of all constructive philosophy throughout the ages, while the mother is the sum of all religious feeling (Tarot of the Magicians, 1985 trans., of Tarot des imagiers du moyen-age, 1927, p. 146, in archive.org):

The ancestral constructors of a better Humanity are depicted in the Tarot by the parents of the young resuscitated boy of arcana 20. Placed on the right, the father is the incarnation of all the constructive philosophy of the past, of every profound and wise thing that human reason has conceived concerning the Great Art which is that of life lived in full knowledge of its laws. On the left the mother corresponds to the heart, to religious feeling which truly pious souls have always had. 

Between them, the son is the outcome of an evolution of spirit that started with the Magician and continued with the Charioteer and the Hanged Man. He represents "the reign of the Holy Spirit which will bring about religious unity based on the esotericism which is common to all religions"(p. 146), an inner unifying spirit beyond differences in "forms of worship and dogmas," so that (p. 146)

By reuniting itself, our spirit, while remaining identical to itself, is transfigured to become god-like in proportion to the nobility which it reaches.

At the same time, matter is not to be despised, but rather "as a substance to be put to work, it imprisons the spirit, not to hold it indefinitely, but to force it into an effort to free itself."

The Holy Spirit itself is represented in the Angel, whose green wings are the color of the Holy Spirit. Moreover (p. 147):

The Angel's hair corresponds to the transcending principles from which flow notions inaccessible to human intelligence ... in the form of inspiring beams. Some of these correspond to brilliant ideas (the golden rays), while others (the red rays) encourage us in great and noble actions.

Positively the card represents the "raising of healing powers and return to physical, mental and intellectual health, liberation, freedom, separation from wrongs suffered", and so on. Negatively the danger is "spiritual and mental intoxication, over-excitement, both natural and artificial, lack of balance ... noise, agitation for no reason" (p.148).

For Paul Foster Case the angel is Gabriel, and the trumpet is the sending down of higher consciousness, which is activated by sound.

As an instrument for amplifying sound vibration, the trumpet refers to the fact that the awakening of the higher consciousness is actually accomplished by certain sounds.

The card as a whole represents the awareness that personal existence is but a mode of universal consciousness (Tarot Fundamentals, lesson 43, p. 1).

At this stage, the adept realizes that his personal existence is nothing but a manifestation of the relation between self-consciousness and subconsciousness. H sees, also, that self-consciousness and subconsciousness are not themselves personal, but are modes of universal consciousness. He knows that in reality his personality has no separate existence. At this stage, his intellectual conviction is confirmed by a fourth-dimensional experience, which blots out the delusion of separateness. 

This "fourth-dimensional experience" - experience, not belief or faith -  is shown on the card by the figures emergence at right angles to their coffins, which in reality is in a fourth dimension, that of spirit (Ibid., lesson 44, p. 3).

The human figures stand upright, so that their bodies are at right angles to the bottoms of the coffins. This intimates something which is impossible to delineate — the mathematical definition of the Fourth Dimension as that which is at right angles to all three dimensions of space, as we perceive them.

 He affirms the interpretation of the three figures as Osiris, Isis, and Horus (Ibid.), but with additional interpretations from his own philosophy (Ibid.):

The three figures represent self-conscious awareness (the man), subconsciousness (the woman), and their product, the regenerated personality (the child). They correspond also to the Egyptian triad, Osiris the father, Isis the mother, and Horus the child.

 In Case's version, moreover, the three figures' arms spell out the three letters L, V, and X, which in Latin spells "Lux" or Light (Ibid., p. 4).

Another aspect of the card is what is behind the three figures. Case interpreted it in two different ways, between 1936 and 1947. In Tarot Fundamentals, 1936, he says it is icebergs, signifying the alchemical "fixation of the volatile" (Ibid., p. 2):

The icebergs in the background refer to a certain alchemical dictum, which says that in order to perform the Great Work, we must fix the volatile. The volatile is the stream of conscious energy, typified as water. Its flow gives rise to the illusions from which our delusions are derived. Then we fix it, or make it solid by arresting the flow, we are emancipated from bondage. 

In that way the coffins are seen as in the midst of a vast sea, colored blue on the card. This seems to contradict his previous assertion that the substrate is ice. It is apparently the work of self-consciousness to "fix" this sea by recognizing it as changeless in reality as well as ever-changing in appearance.

In The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages, he interprets the background as mountains (p. 201):

Snowy mountains in the background represent the heights of abstract thought. This takes purely mathematical form. Thus the symbolism suggests that what is shown by Key 20 is derived from mathematical considerations.

Among other things, he is referring to how the figures are in the "Fourth Dimension," at right angles to the other three, which he discusses immediately before the above. 

 

4. Jungian interpretations

Sallie Nichols in Jung and Tarot, basing herself on the Paul Marteau version of the card (far left), says that what we see is a young man rising from the dead in his tomb at which two others have been keeping a vigil. She identifies him as the hero of the "hero's journey" that she considers the cards to depict, even if he has been absent from the cards since he fell from the Tower four cards before. It is his resurrection from the dead, or from a "deep depression."

Here she has noticed something about the card that I confess I had never seen, that the people facing us might not be emerging from their own tombs. I had always thought, from other versions, that all of them were arising from their tombs, or even that it was the two facing us and not the one in the center, since they seem to be praying to him - as if to the resurrected Christ - and he has a tonsure. In fact most other printings of this version of the Tarot of Marseille (the so-called "TdM II") even color him light blue, the same as the Angel's cloud, giving him an ethereal quality, as in the version at near right above, which used the woodblocks of Conver 1760 but with the paints of 1850. (It is currently put out by Lo Scarabeo in the "Anima Antique" series. See also the TdM II's at https://tarot-de-marseille-heritage.com/english/historic_tarots_gallery.html.) Blue in Marteau's color scheme (he does not have light blue) indicates spirituality; in fact he says in his book that "The hair of all three is blue, to specify that matter can only evolve when a ray of spirituality has touched it" (Marius Høgnesen trans., p. 152, online in Scribd.)

In any case, it is worth noticing the difference between on the central figure and the other two, even in Marteau's version. The others appear only to notice him and not the Angel, and it, too, seems to be looking mostly at him. The center figure is the only one placed so he can return the Angel's gaze. Perhaps only he can hear the trumpet. There is also the tonsure, appropriate to a monk or holy person, almost invisible in Marteau's version. 

She observes that the four figures on the card can be seen as a quaternity, a four-foldness suggested by their placement on the card and also the banner that the angel holds. In particular, the quaternity is that of the four functions. A hero will have the best chance of success if he uses his dominant or first function.

In our culture it is the thinking function that is typically dominant, to the detriment of feeling. In the Tarot, she says, it is the Chariot card that particularly shows the dominance of thinking, as the charioteer who mediates between noble feelings (the light horse) and sensation (the dark, lustful horse). However the hero is also shown emerging from under the ground, she says. His over-reliance on thinking has caused a kind wounding unto death, in fact two deaths, on the Death card and again on the Tower card, from which he only now is emerging, with the help his inferior function. It is thereby a revitalization of libido via the fourth function, represented by the angel.

It is probably his under-developed opposite function that has gotten him into trouble, in Nichols' analysis. She says that on the Lover card he could not make the necessary discrimination in feeling, i.e. values, to decide between the two women, but jumped on his chariot by himself instead. His wife has left him, perhaps, or he got fired from his job, perhaps for outbursts of repressed feeling or insensitivity.

Although Nichols does not cite Jung on this point, it is the inferior function that is closest to the divine, in the sense of the Self or total personality, precisely because it is furthest from ego-consciousness and the dominant function. Here I quote Marie-Louise von Franz. After examining certain hero-figures in mythology and fairy tales, she observes (von Franz and Hillman, Lectures on Jung's Typology, 1971, p. 10):

If one studies individual cases, one can see that the inferior function tends to behave after the manner of such a "fool" hero, the divine fool or idiot hero. He represents the despised part of the personality, the ridiculous and unadapted part, but also that part which holds up the connection with the unconscious and therefore holds the secret key to the unconscious totality of the person.

And of course the description of the inferior function is also that of the savior in Isaiah (53: 3):

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised and we esteemed him not.

Although Nichols does not say this in so many words, I would think that for her the Angel would represent the inferior function, since it is closest to the divine.

She says that what the dominant function needs is revitalization from the inferior function. She gives the example of her own case. She is an intuitive type with feeling second. As such, she loved literature but after a bit didn't like teaching it. She then went to graduate school but dropped out because she could not deal with the intellectual approach. Nor did she share others' enthusiasm for tarot cards. What she loved were words, not pictures But then (p. 344):

Several years later, I attended a lecture where Jung was quoted as having said that Tarot presented a pictorial representation of the archetypes. That was the key! And after that my libido woke up and the juices of life began to flow into new channels. My intuition had risen from the grave revitalized in a new and healthy body. I began to study the pictures in detail and to find meaning in them. Later I regained enough confidence to begin giving seminars on the subject and to discipline my sensation and thinking to undertake the more exacting study necessary to write this book.

Yet her sensation function is still inferior. She says that although the had examined the Judgment card many times, she did not notice until writing her book that "the yellow earth in the background is not flat but appears to move in convulsive waves" (Ibid.) This feature is something that did not trigger her intuition, but then it did. 

This revitalization of libido is of course something to which Jung attached great importance (Nichols, p. 346, quoting Jung, Psychological Reflections, p. 293 [originally Psychological Types, p. 328]).

The birth of the deliverer is equivalent  to a great catastrophe, since a new and powerful life issues forth where no life or force or new development was anticipated. It streams forth out of the unconscious, i.e. that part  of the psyche which, whether we desire it or not, is unknown and therefore treated as noting by all rationalists. From this discredited and rejected region comes the new tributary of energy, the revitalization of life.

It is like a release from prison, Nichols says. Yet paradoxically this freedom entails new obligations - the trumpet's call, a summoning to a vocation. "Who has vocation hears the voice of the inner man; he is called," Jung says (Integration of Personality, pp. 291-2).  Nichols observes (p. 344):

When we redeem an article from pawn, we buy back something of value which formerly belonged to us and which has been held hostage. Individuation is au fond a redemptive process. Its aim is not to creates something entirely new - something beyond and foreign to ourselves - but rather, simply to redeem and liberate aspects rightfully belonging to ourselves which have been held hostage to the unconscious.  

Redeeming from pawn also requires payment. It is the response to the call that is the payment, the new obligation to oneself to let the new life flourish. A caution would be that the hero should not expect to make a living from the exercise of his inferior function: it is by definition inferior. It is rather that which gives libido to all the functions, and most importantly the superior one. In that way one goes on as before, but in a new way.

In this way the card represents a new kind of renewal, different from that on the Lover card or the Sun, as Nichols points out, where nobody (probably for good reason) looks above them, or for that matter the Pope or the Wheel, where what is above is a purveyor of dogma or a sphinx. On an experiential level, there is a conscious connection between what is below and what is above, rather than an affect (feeling, for a thinking type) that occurs without the one affected being conscious of the source. The renewal is a conscious response to the sound of the trumpet. It is also an angel of judgment, in that the inferior is recognized as inferior, yet of inestimable value as part of the whole; all that is required, for the movement toward the whole, is the forgiveness of error, as if in an act of embracing acceptance.

Some theorists point to the apparent breast on one side of the central figure's back as a sign of androgyny, i.e. a merger of male and female. You will recall that Case identified the feminine side with the unconscious and the male side with consciousness. Androgyny, among other things, could then represent the unification of the conscious with unconscious. It could also, as with Wirth, represent the unification of thought and feeling, as modes of response in which sometimes one is appropriate and sometimes the other. Or more generally, the unification of the second and third functions with the first and fourth. 

In another sense the androgynous being is a non-existent, or quasi-existent (both-and) unification of opposites, unlike the other three - and not quite, because he is still the first function. Levi, in his two Chapter Twenties, spoke in the first of the resurrection of the dead, even though ht entitled the chapter "the universal medicine," and in the second related various anecdotes about a single medicine that healed all maladies. It seemed to be the power of suggestion, the placebo affect. What the title "The Judgment" refers to is a universal judgment, that is to say, a universal transformation. I am reminded of Jung on the Aquarian Age (see my post on the Star): an epoch in which the unification of the opposites is on the agenda for all of humanity, in which thanks to technology man has Godlike power. So the four beings circle around a center, tha there is flow from two into one, in various ways, is something, but there is nothing yet in the center. In the Age of Pisces the center was the suffering Christ. What is at the center in the Age of Aquarius?