JUDGEMENT: the Dead will Rise.
Tarot Magic in Scorpio Season
As the nights grow longer in the Northern Hemisphere, the waning light reminds us of the inevitability of endings of all kinds. The close of the year, the end of a cycle. The mortality of all things on Earth.
Timely rituals of this season call the dead back into the land of the living. All Saints Day. Dia de los Meurtos. Halloween. These allow us to imagine that the dead can once again commune with us; that we need only reach out for the deceased and they will be there, acknowledging us from the other side.
JUDGEMENT, the 20th card in the Tarot’s major arcana, depicts such a moment of communion with the dead—and a radical one. Here, the dead are not simply interrupting the world of the living for a single hallowed night, the span of an instant in eternity…they are called from their graves by the Archangel Gabriel to witness the End of Days:
the ultimate Death/Rebirth.
Understandably, JUDGEMENT can bring up a lot of discomfort in a reading. (Dead-looking people crawling out of their coffins spells disaster to most of us children of Hollywood). Maybe the religiously inclined can shout a Hallelujah, imagining the coming Rapture, but in the day-to-day, who really wants to be judged? Who wants to be around folks (or tarot cards!) that are gonna be judgy?
It’s not just that we don’t want to have our flaws pointed out. It’s that on some level we know that most people are trying to do their best with the tools that they’ve got. All of us get it wrong—likely in ways we aren’t even aware of.
I love the JUDGEMENT card because, to me, it signals the trumpet call of my own awareness toward something I’ve been doing that isn’t working, isn’t right for me anymore, and is ready to be released. It’s a cue to follow Maya Angelou’s stellar advice: “Do your best until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” Only when I’m cured of my own ignorance can I amend my behavior.
Mercifully, this awakening doesn’t have to be accompanied by an onslaught of GUILT.
JUDGEMENT isn’t really about making us feel bad for where we’ve went wrong…those dead folks in the image are there to remind us that our patterns really don’t even originate with us, they are part of a continuum that transcends life and death.
JUDGEMENT speaks to ANCESTRAL HEALING, freedom from inherited beliefs and patterns that may not be self-created, but for which we can now take responsibility. In JUDGEMENT we EVOLVE.
Communing with our Beloved Dead can help with this process.
I grew up in a religious context that frowned on ancestral devotion practices—the deceased were banished to some far-flung heavenly plane, definitively out of reach. If you were grieving, struggling, or in pain, you were asked to turn to God, not your ancestors.
Ghosts only populated folktales where they represented a break in the natural order, confused entities trapped between worlds, spectral vestiges of violence and treachery. Sparse were the tales that allowed the dead to return as familial messengers, reaching out with wisdom, warnings, love and support.
But biology teaches us that our ancestors live in the very structure of our DNA. As witch and futurist, Chaweon Koo has explained, we are living altars to the folks that came before us.1 When we recall that our hot temper is an inheritance from a crotchety grandfather, or our eye color mirrors that of a favorite aunt, we acknowledge that we aren’t alone in our bumbling, fumbling attempts to live ‘right’ on this Earth—however we define what that means.
We don’t have to have known our ancestors personally for this to be true.2 I think we all are equally shaped by the books we read, the movies we watch, the reels we consume. We have cultural as well as physical forbearers.
As an academic in Comparative Literature and Visual Culture, I dedicated the better part of two decades to the belief that understanding where we come from helps us gain the self-awareness that empowers positive change. I examined long-forgotten fan ephemera and movie posters from the Weimar period, hoping to shed light on the deluge of visual material acting on our attention now.
What I learned is that so much of what we do with art, with language and image, is a game that allows us to play with the malleability of our own perception. It often feels like silly fun, but the mechanics of the imagination crank open the doors of possibility and often yield real, material results.
These days I’m putting that knowledge into practice a little more explicitly.
Reach out to your ancestors for support.
I keep framed photos of Walt Whitman and Jonathan Larson beside my writing desk, reminding myself of the magic in their creative efforts. Both artists gave shape and form to my emotional life when I was young—becoming mentors of a sort. I express my gratitude before the photos and invite their determination, energy, and love to resonate in everything I write.
I imagine that they hear me—and the Sisyphean task of writing a novel transforms into something dignified and meaningful, even if my efforts don’t take shape as I expect.
On weekends, I make German egg-cakes for my children, following our family recipe. I whisk together the milk and eggs, thinking of my great grandmother, Metta, who twice lost all her possessions in post-war Germany—once when she fled with her children from the East to live in a refugee camp and again in a fire that consumed their small apartment. I talk to her. I ask her to guard us and guide us, to fill us with her love and resilience.
She enjoys our breakfast with us—and our mundane Sunday morning gleams with magic.
I truly believe that our ancestors are here to support us in our everyday efforts—to care for others, to find joy for ourselves, to amplify the love available to us all. Calling on their strengths, acknowledging their challenges (even when we feel they got something wrong) invigorates the process of our healing and the transformation that JUDGEMENT portends during Scorpio season.3
When we shed the patterns and defenses that aren't working for us anymore, our whole ancestral line celebrates with us. They blow trumpets of appreciation from the other side of the veil. They step with us onto a new Earth. Our shared potential dramatically increases. Our collective wisdom deepens and expands.
As we continue our journey through the dark half of the year, the veil will remain thin, the ancestors will continue to reach out with their love and support. Bring them on the path with you. Celebrate how far you have come. It is the end times…and a new era will soon be dawning.
Try this spread.
To dive deeper into how Judgement is showing up in your life this season, pull cards for the following questions—
Which of my inherited beliefs or patterns are ready for revision?
How can I support myself through this process of evolution?
Which of my ancestors is here to serve as a guide?
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Koo’s book, Spell Bound, is an art piece in and of itself, full of inspiration for bringing Ancestral work into your magical practice.
I highly recommend Perdita Finn’s book, Take Back the Magic, for inspiration and instruction on connecting with your Beloved Dead.
JUGDEMENT corresponds to the planet Pluto, the modern ruler of Scorpio Season, and the spiritual energy that asks us to disrupt our assumptions and to integrate change. You may be feeling this right now. You’re not alone.