A Startling Encore for April 9-15, 2018: Judgement Comes Again!

Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.
David Whyte

Okay, apparently the cards want me to share more than a song for this important card. Because it fairly jumped into my hand this morning, before I even knew what it was. As it did in 2016, it arrives in the week of an Aries New Moon. Let us welcome back for a very unusual encore visit, Judgement.

This decisive card is fraught with meaning, as it is second to last in the Major Arcana sequence. If we think of the Majors as the mythic “Hero’s Journey,” or perhaps the psychological process of self-actualization, we can see that Judgement comes just before the grand finale of The World card.

Judgement is the summation of the moral of the Majors’ story. It is the compelling insistence that, having learned the lessons from The Fool, through The Lovers, through the Wheel of Fortune, Death, the Devil, Moon, and Sun, and all the rest, it is now time for us to choose for ourselves.

As I have pointed out in its previous visits, most older decks, including the R-W-S deck, as well as the early Swiss, Italian, and French decks, depict this card with the classical judgment day (“judgement,” to use the British spelling) motif of Christian art and theology.

In those themes, the angel of the Lord calls the living and the dead to God’s final judgment, sending what is usually a meager trickle of righteous souls to their reward in heaven, while throngs of the wicked head for the fiery pits of damnation.

Certainly, here in the Tarot, we see the angel (most scholars identify him as Gabriel) calling the dead from their graves.

But in the Tarot, even in the oldest decks, the theme of punishment and damnation is pointedly absent.

No one is being judged here. We interpret what is right and what is wrong. We choose our own hell or heaven.

Astro Awakenings

This week, we have some interesting astrological influences.

The two biggies come Sunday, including the first New Moon of the astrological year — the Aries New Moon.

As if that isn’t enough, also on Sunday the planet Mercury, currently slowing to a stop (from our viewpoint on Earth) will change back to an apparently direct motion across the heavens, bringing to a close this Spring’s challenging Aries-charged retrograde.

Judy Joyce tells us:

The chart of the New Moon begins a new energy pattern and sets the tone for the next 29 days. There are several reasons this New Moon is likely to be the start of something significant:

• The New Moon is conjunct Uranus, the planet of shake-ups, shocks, surprises and breakthroughs, indicating the main theme of the next 29 days will be changes, surprises and shake-ups.
• Mercury is turning direct on the same day, and both Saturn and Pluto are about to go retrograde within the coming week.  Planets starting or ending their retrograde phase are practically standing still in the heavens (at least from our perspective on earth). That means we experience their energies as very focused, concentrated and strong.
• Mars, the ruler of the Aries New Moon, is conjunct the Saturn/Pluto midpoint and square the Mercury/Uranus midpoint. This indicates a big fight for power and control could easily erupt in the outside world.

Fasten your seatbelt, keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times, and get ready for a roller-coaster ride…..

In this complex, pressured time, there is no safety in hiding who and what you are. The only way forward in such high stakes shake-ups is to be you to the fullest: be you to full. (Say it aloud a couple of times. See?).

The wise Auntie Moon adds a very insightful interpretation, noting that, “At the New Moon in Aries, we are called to act upon whatever is passionately tugging at our heart and soul.”

Judgement could not agree more! You know you are being called out. Your passions are too big for the timid, tame persona in which our culture wants to encase you.

Now, in this season of profound transition and burgeoning life, you are the New Moon seed that longs to rise up, seeking your own blossoming.

Last but not least, Libra Seeking Balance’s Diane Lang suggests:

As for the New Moon in Aries plus the Mercury station this weekend . . . the hardest part will be not jumping the gun.

Both events require a large dose of patience. The Sun-Moon-Uranus conjunction in Aries screams at us to dash off immediately, plan or no plan.

And Mercury in Aries is always quick on the draw but until it gets back up to speed late next week, there could be one minor delay after another.

Rather than focusing on the future this weekend, distract the mind with fun physical activities of some kind.

Wonderful advice. How do you listen deeply to your most graceful sense of timing? How might you encourage your highest, truest self to come out and play, stripped of pretense and artifice?

Use Your Best Judgment

Considering those influences, I love this card’s stubborn return, insisting that we test and follow through on what we have been learning throughout our lives. We must now trust and exercise our hard-won discernment.

This momentous message from the Tarot is that life’s lessons are not for nothing, nor do they occur in a vacuum.

Everything is connected – you to All That Is, and you to All That Has Been in your own life.

Now, on the verge of a cosmic completion, and riding the helpful energies of the final days of this Mercury REtrograde, use this time, as Elisabeth Grace urges us, to REview, REflect, and REconsider your own life’s patterns, challenges, and gifts.

Is it possible that playing small has trapped you in the very hell from which you long to be released?

All is not lost. Dance forth from the silence where your dreams and true soul-self have been dormant in the Winter of the world.

See how the puzzle of synchronicities, random-seeming meetings, and tumultuous change begin to make sense when you allow the callings of your soul to awaken you from the sleep of cultural hypnosis and imprisonment.

Own the truths you know. Then act upon them, with all your faith, hope, and creativity.

Come alive! Come alive! Burst out of the too-tiny life you have believed yourself to be.

Answer heaven’s call this week, because the vision and song of paradise is ringing in your every cell.

Your own rebirth, like the resurrection of the sacred Land Herself, is at hand.