I’m in the flow right now of doing a card-of-the-day pull Live on Instagram every morning. It’s a practice I’ve kept on and off over the last few years, and today I drew Judgment. I talked about self-forgiveness, which is the most significant aspect of this card, in my opinion. It has shown me that truth about itself again and again.
But I always like to talk about the cards I draw each day in a very tangible, actionable way. These broad, spiritual concepts we explore in the Tarot are wonderful, but they can feel like thought exercises. It’s sometimes hard to take their ‘advice’ in an everyday, boots-on-the-ground way.
I missed that opportunity on IG Live this morning, and left it at self-forgiveness. My 6 AM brain wasn’t quite coming up with the practical way to utilize this card’s energy. But immediately after I signed off the phone, I had an experience of this card that was very embodied.
It was just time for the sunrise, so I walked down the corner where the rooflines and the trees open up enough to have a beautiful window to the east. It was just beautiful: clouds in pinks and greys and creams, like an oil painting. Watching the sunrise is one of my favorite things. It reminds me that I’m a small part of something much bigger than myself.
And so I started thinking about Judgement, and the way it’s depicted in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, as an angel trumpeting from the heavens, with the corpses being lifted from their graves, arms outstretched. We heed a call from above this card, something that has the power to liberate us from an old, dead way of being in the world.
And that’s what it can feel like to watch the sunrise, or a sunset. To see the heavens explode in color can shift our entire way of being. Maybe only for 10 minutes, but that’s ok. That can be enough. I feel the same way about watching the moon come up, or star gazing, or the beautiful cloud formations when a storm is coming in. When I look to the heavens, it does feel like a call. Sometimes when I’m driving, I have to pull the car over to get a good look at the sky, because the call feels so loud.
In our day-to-day living, we are very myopic. Our vision rarely extends very far—it’s a screen, it’s the work of our hands, it’s the road immediately ahead. We don’t often look up, we don’t often look out, towards the horizon, towards the heavens. We rarely lift our hands in praise of the beauty of the sky. And that keeps us stuck. We begin to think that this small world immediately in front of us is the entire world. We keep ourselves in a box that grows smaller and smaller, sometimes to the size of a phone.
If we want to live differently, if we want the liberation of spirit that Judgement offers, then I can think of no simpler or more effective way than to watch the sky. Being in contact with the beauty and enormity of nature is a remarkable way to change our inner experience for the better. And while many of us cannot get out very often (or ever) to hike in forests or what have you, the sky is readily available. We can find a beautiful cloud, we can find the moon, and if we’re really lucky, we can find a spot for watching the sun rise or set, from beginning to end.
