Justice You Are

Post-covid-brain-fog-exhaustion be damned, here I am back on a roll with my LGBTQIA+ Tarot blog series. Let me catch up any newcomers:

Tarot is a series of symbolic pictures of figures on playing cards, showing a spiritual journey, so that drawing spreads of cards can be used for meditation and fortune telling. Most modern decks are based on designs drawn by Pamela "Pixie" Colman Smith, a biracial bisexual illustrator - and you can see that side of her life reflected in so many of her card designs.

With that in mind, I'm creating a blog series based on LGBTQIA+ Tarot readers' perspectives.

To catch up on the journey so far, click on these links to meet the Fool, the Magician, the High Priestess, the Empress, the Emperor, the Hierophant, the Lovers, the Chariot, Strength, the Hermit, and the Wheel of Fortune.

Now, at the halfway point, it's time (dramatic theme music!) to meet Justice.

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Life as part of the LGBTQIA+ community in this world can feel like a fight for justice and equality - and every judgement, whether it seems to be for us or against us, can inspire us to not give up.

If judgement goes wrongly against us - trans recognition, gay inclusion, nonbinary or ace validation - then it can bring us passion to make changes that are needed now more than ever . If the judgements go rightly in our favour, it can bring us a measure of peace in knowing that there is some hope after all.

This card is often seen as being sent to us for us to see in our readings as a reassurance that the right decisions will be made - that court cases, settlements, or other issues decided for us by others, will be ruled in our favour, the card says: and for us as queer people, the smallest-seeming thing can make a huge difference. Will these new people I'm meeting decide to call me by my right pronouns? Will this doctor agree that in her professional opinion I can have the medical and mental health help, care and support that I need? Will my new boss agree that the fairness and safety rules apply to me here in this office as I know they should? Will my date tonight react and respond to me the way I deserve when I tell them truly and clearly who I am and what I need? Will I be allowed to safely use right bathroom, by the people who run this venue?

The often-used, "spiritual"-sounding, but actually toxic, idea that the situation we find ourselves in was always created by previous choices of our own, is intended to be empowering, by telling us we can bring about the new results we desire by making new choices, is, ironically unjust. We as LGBTQIA+ victims of all kinds of abuse hear enough victim-blaming from the people trying to hurt us; the last thing we need is to hear it from the people who are supposed to be trying to help us! It in fact absolves them from responsibility to be there for us - since it's not them who should make things better for us, the people who need to lean on them; it's us who have to do it for ourselves. All we need (and therefore, in their mind, all we deserve, or all that we "should" deserve) is to make strong, wise and kind decisions at this "critical turning point".

(Side note: Have you ever noticed how the pseudo-spiritual "inspirational" talk is always telling us the moment we're in, right now, is the "crucial turning point"? Honestly, how many "crucial turning point" moments can there be in a single day, or week, or month, or year?)

But the decision we can take control over, is to declare that kindness and justice from everyone involved in our lives (and therefore, with responsibility for the way they affect our lives, however they try to absolve themselves from it with faux philosophy) is not just what we deeply desire, but what we justly deserve. They need to set aside how it makes them feel to truly treat us as equals; do the truly honourable and empathetic thing to do; and be willing to look again, with great care for us, at the rules they impose on their relationship with us, without our consent.

This can put us in challenging situations with others, so the message of the Justice card can also sometimes be that we've been trying too hard to make this happen. So the energy between our two selves - or our two groups - can be softened towards finding a balanced harmonious resolution. But, whether it's right to be hard or to be harmonious, a resolution, and a resolve, is needed, because you know who you are and you know that the person you truly are, deserves to be looked at as an equal.

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To find me on social media to have a Tarot reading of your own with me online, with these perspectives, click Here. To join my LGBTQIA+ Tarot group on bookface, click Here