Justice
Tarot card meaning, upright and reversed
What it means
Upright
Justice is read as fairness and consequence: truth, law and the weighing of what was done. Waite listed equity, rightness and probity, and the triumph of the deserving side in law.
Reversed
Reversed, it is read as unfairness, dishonesty or avoiding accountability. Waite gave legal complications, bias and excessive severity.
In love
Fair treatment, balanced giving, karmic relationships.
In work
Legal success, fair dealings, accountability.
What is drawn on the card
A crowned figure in red sits between two pillars, holding upright a double-edged sword in the right hand and a pair of scales in the left.
As Pamela Colman Smith drew it in 1909. Our paintings follow these scenes.
- Hebrew letter
- Lamed
- Sign
- Libra
The letter and sign are 19th-century occult attributions (Golden Dawn), not part of the card’s origin.
Where the card comes from
In the older Marseille order Justice is card VIII and Strength is XI. Waite swapped them in his 1909 deck, following the Golden Dawn, which is why most decks today number Justice XI.
- Tarot began as a card game in 15th-century Italy. The earliest record is from Florence in 1440, and the game is still played today in France, Austria and Bologna.
- Reading the cards for fortunes is documented from Bologna around 1750, with ordinary playing decks.
- In 1781 Antoine Court de Gébelin wrote that the cards came from ancient Egypt. There is no evidence for it, and he wrote before anyone could read hieroglyphs (1822).
- The Hebrew letters and astrological signs on each card are 19th-century French and English occult attributions; the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (founded 1888) fixed the set most readers use.
- The scenes follow the 1909 Waite–Smith deck, designed by A. E. Waite and drawn by Pamela Colman Smith. The Innerverse cards are our own paintings of those scenes.
Sources: Michael Dummett, The Game of Tarot (1980); Morgan Library & Museum, Visconti-Sforza tarot, MS M.630; Court de Gébelin, Le Monde primitif, vol. VIII (Paris, 1781); A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911).
Draw your own card
Justice is one of 78. Draw one card or a three-card spread in the Innerverse, read with the same art and the same sources, free.
Or make it daily: one card each morning, with a private note →Want the whole deck? All 78 cards and the guidebook.
Traditional readings, presented as tarot readers have held them. They are a record of a practice, not a prediction.