Justice: one scale, one sword

Start with the picture: between two pillars, a sword upright and a scale hanging

Waite wrote almost no picture for this card. He says it follows the traditional symbolism and carries above all its obvious meanings, so there is little to add beyond the few considerations collected in his first part. He adds one point only: the figure is seated between pillars, like the High Priestess.

Open the full-size diagram

BaZiFlow's original Justice with three ways to read it

In the Rider-Waite-Smith picture a crowned figure sits at the center in a red robe and a green cape, with a square clasp at the chest. One hand grips an upright sword; from the other hangs a pair of scales, a pan at each end of the beam. Behind is a crimson-purple curtain, two tall grey pillars stand at the sides, and the numeral XI is printed in the yellow arch at the top.

Read it from the outside in: two pillars, one figure, and in the hands one sword and one scale.

What Waite lists: equity, rightness, probity, executive, and the deserving side

Waite's divinatory meaning is a single line:

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

Of the four words, the first three ask "is this fair?" and the fourth, executive, asks "was the decision carried out?" The closing clause confines winning to the law and requires that the winner be the deserving side. No word in the list says "win" on its own.

Pillars, scale, sword: only the pillars come from Waite

Waite points only to the pillars: the figure sits between them, like the High Priestess, and he closes his note by saying that the pillars of Justice open into one world and those of the High Priestess into another. What each pillar stands for he does not say, and the scale and the sword get no mention at all.

The line Waite draws next is worth more than the pillars. He says the moral principle which deals unto every man according to his works, in strict analogy with higher things, differs in its essence from the spiritual justice involved in the idea of election.

The latter, he says, belongs to a mysterious order of Providence, "like the breathing of the Spirit where it wills", and we have no canon of criticism or ground of explanation concerning it. He compares it to the 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, he concludes, is not involved by either alternative.

How to read it: one hook, two pans, and the sword held up until the weighing is done

The picture supplies a structure: both pans hang from one hand, so both sides are weighed by the same measure, and the sword stays upright instead of pointing at either pan. Moved into daily life, that becomes three steps. It is teaching built on the picture, not Waite's own method.

1. 1

   Fix the hook: one list for both sides

   Before you hear either side's reasons, write down what counts in this matter: who asked first, whose turn it was, which shift must be covered. Use one list for both sides; if you add an item halfway, add it for both.

2. 2

   Fill the pans: the same rows, once per side

   Enter each side's facts against the same list. A cell you cannot fill is marked empty, not zero: empty means nobody has asked yet.

3. 3

   Lower the sword last: one sentence, the same for both

   Write the decision as one sentence that names the items it rests on, and say that same sentence to both sides. While an empty cell remains, the sword stays up and the next step is to ask.

Say two colleagues both ask for the same week off, and the team needs at least two people on every shift that week. Three steps later you have a sheet like this:

Reversed and neighboring cards: bias, excessive severity, and two more cards between pillars

Waite's reversed list for Justice has five items:

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

Read them in two groups. The first two words are about law itself growing wide and tangled; the last three are about the weighing going wrong. In the picture, bias is a beam tilted to one side, and excessive severity is a sword that has come down heavier than the weighing supports. That mapping is a teaching device, not Waite's wording.