Justice: tarot card meaning

In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Justice upright means: Equity, rightness, probity, executive; triumph of the deserving side in law. Reversed: Law in all its departments, legal complications, bigotry, bias, excessive severity.

The picture

“As this card follows the traditional symbolism and carries above all its obvious meanings, there is little to say regarding it outside the few considerations collected in the first part, to which the reader is referred. It will be seen, however, that the figure is seated between pillars, like the High Priestess, and on this account it seems desirable to indicate that the moral principle which deals unto every man according to his works (while, of course, it is in strict analogy with higher things) differs in its essence from the spiritual justice which is involved in the idea of election. The latter belongs to a mysterious order of Providence, in virtue of which it is possible for certain men to conceive the idea of dedication to the highest things. The operation of this is like the breathing of the Spirit where it wills, and we have no canon of criticism or ground of explanation concerning it. It is analogous to the possession of the fairy gifts and the high gifts and the gracious gifts of the poet: we have them or have not, and their presence is as much a mystery as their absence. The law of Justice is not however involved by either alternative. In conclusion, the pillars of Justice open into one world and the pillars of the High Priestess into another.” A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1910

Upright

Equity, rightness, probity, executive; triumph of the deserving side in law.

Reversed

Law in all its departments, legal complications, bigotry, bias, excessive severity.

In one line

Equity and right: the scales held level. (Esbat's own summary of Waite's meaning and picture.)

Where it sits in the deck

Justice is card XI of the 22 Major Arcana, the trumps. Before it comes Wheel of Fortune; after it, The Hanged Man.

In Esbat

Esbat deals a card of the day, face down until you turn it, and holds all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. Justice can be shared as a picture. All 78 tarot card meanings.

Sources

Meanings and picture descriptions: A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: Rider, 1910), public domain, checked against the Wikisource transcription. Picture: Pamela Colman Smith, 1910, public domain. Like the app, this page records what the book says; it does not promise outcomes.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

Esbat: Tarot & Book of Shadows, on Google Play

A card of the day, face down until you turn it, and all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. For Android.

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