My Year as Justice

Reflecting on 2024 with the Wild Unknown Tarot

It’s the end of 2024 which means it’s time to reflect on the tarot card that marked my overall theme of the year just like I did last year. I’ve mentioned before about how I use tarot as a mirror, that when I pull a card I feel that I am being given a chance to look inward and ruminate on something that I’ve been stuck on, or more often than not, am forced to confront an idea or issue that I’ve been avoiding.

One of my close friends also uses the Wild Unknown tarot and has an attachment to the Justice card. It’s not a card that I’ve dealt often for myself, though I do have a sweater of the Justice tarot card featuring my favourite cat meme, knife cat.

The Justice card is the eighth or ninth card in the Major Arcana¹. In most decks, including the original Rider-Waite, the card is depicted with a person holding a sword and a set of scales. For the Wild Unknown deck the card appears with two cats, black and white, their tails entwined and a sword between them. Kim Krans, the creator of the deck, uses the words “decisions” and “karma” to describe the card and goes on to say this about the Justice card:

“With tails entwined, two cats look directly at you…waiting for you to choose between them. Which is right and which is wrong? The justice card implies a weight or heaviness surrounding a choice you have to make. Now is not the time to shun the concept of divine balance, or karma. All of your choices affect your life, and sometimes the lives of those around you, both now and in the future.”

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have an inkling about what this might pertain to in my life when I pulled the card, but like most times when I’m confronted with something I didn’t want to deal with. I tried to ignore it. I tried to pretend that the card would show itself to me in a different way, but there’s only so long you can avoid what you know inside.

But first, let’s go deeper, let’s talk about Justice. In tarot, the Justice card upright is associated with the words justice, fairness, truth, cause and effect, law, all things I think most people associate with the word justice regardless of if they are thinking of the tarot card or not.

Merriam-Webster defines justice as:

1a) the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments

b) a judge of an appellate court or court of last resort (as a supreme court)

c) the administration of law

2a) the quality of being just, impartial, or fair

b(1) the principle or ideal of just dealing or right action

(2) conformity to this principle or ideal : righteousness

c) the quality of conforming to law

3) conformity to truth, fact, or reason : correctness

All of this is pedantic, but I often think too deeply into the meaning of words, so let’s be pedantic. Whether tarot or a dictionary, the meaning pf the word doesn’t really change: when we think about justice we are thinking of fairness, we are thinking of truth, we are thinking of being just. And I think about how when we think about justice, when we conjure up those associated words and feelings that the reality of justice is that it’s never really about justice for all no matter how often we say otherwise, it’s about justice on an individual level. Oftentimes, justice isn’t fair at all.

I think about how often justice is not about fairness amongst people but about convenience of the individual, that people only care for so long until it actually starts affecting them. I think about how many people have already shown that they don’t care about others. Yes, I am still talking about the pandemic, yes, I am still talking about keeping vaccines up to date, because I remember the small moment when people cared or at least pretended to care about people who were at risk. I remember when people would pretend to care about masking because of my chronically ill sister, how they would talk about her illness to strangers to talk about the importance of masking and protecting those who could not protect themselves before it started to become inconvenient to them. I remember those people who pretended to care only to tell her privately² the moment that mask mandates were lifted that they would stop because masking was too much of a mental struggle for them. I will never forget that hypocrisy or hurt. And even this could be seen as individual justice in both senses of the word, individual to those who felt it was unjust to wear a mask, individual to me who felt it was unjust to have people use my sister as a symbol only to do the opposite of what they said.

I think justice, both as a word and a tarot card, has been oddly fitting in 2024. I think people have been forced to think about what justice means in a variety of instances. There are people who think that it’s justice for Donald Trump, a convicted felon, to have been re-elected as president of the United States. There are people who will think it’s justice if Pierre Poilievre is elected Prime Minister of Canada when his only platform is how much he hates Justin Trudeau while pretending that he is any different from Trump³.

And then there is the justice of Dominique Pelicot, Jean-Pierre Marechal, Lionel Rodriguez, Jacque Cubeau, Cyrille Delville, Andy Rodriguez, Joan Kawai, Hugues Malago, Husamettin Dogan, Mathieu Dartus, Fabien Sotto, Jean Tirano, Simone Mekenes, Redouan El Farihi, Thierry Postat, Jerome Vilela, Adrien Longeron, Thierry Parisis, Vincent Coullet, Didier Sambuchi, Patrick Aron, Jean-Marc Leloup, Karim Sebaoui, Mohamed Rafaa, Dominique Davies, Cyprien Culieras, Mahdi Daoudi, Cyril Beaubis, Ahmed Tbarik, Redouane Azougagh, Patrice Nicolle, Gregory Serviol, Abdelali Dallal, Jean-Luc La, Florian Rocca, Quentin Hennebert, Romain Vandevelde, Cendric Venzin, Omar Douiri, Ludovick Blemeur, Saifeddine Ghabi, Hassan Ouamou, Paul Grovogui, Cedric Grassot, Joseph Cocco, Nicolas Francois, Philippe Leleu, Boris Moulin, Christian Lescole, Nizar Hamida, Charly Arbo, the fifty-one rapists and assaulters⁴ of Gisele Pelicot being convicted and having prison sentences⁵.

All of these examples are different views of justice depending on who you are talking to, but all recognized as a version of justice all the same.

So let’s move on to Justice, individual in how it relates to me, because despite my other thoughts that’s the heart of the post. I am reflecting on how the Justice card has literally related to me this past year.⁶

I always save a page for myself in my agenda where I make notes on the card I’ve chosen and how I should reflect on my chosen tarot card for the upcoming year. Here are some highlights and what I’ve kept coming back to in 2024 in accordance to the Justice card:

• All of my choices affect my life and sometimes the lives of those around me, both now and in the future

  • Be aware of impact my decisions will have on my well-being and the well-being of others

• How do my choices influence my reality?

• Give weighted considerations and make careful choices before proceeding

• Be willing to look at situations objectively and respect complexity at work

• Account for my actions and judged accordingly

• Important choice with long term repercussions

• Plunge into shadows of right and wrong until finding where I can stand in integrity and strength

• Do I stand by my decisions and accept the consequences of my actions?

The last point I starred. I recognized that it was important, that this question was what I’d have to keep coming back to as I reflected on my decisions throughout the year.

In the past few years I’ve become aware that I’m a people pleaser with very poor boundaries. I’ve worked very hard on this though and have been trying⁷ to communicate better when something is upsetting me. I used to become very angry and resentful of people and situations and it was all because I wasn’t communicating or setting up clear boundaries. The people and situations that were the targets of my anger had no idea that they were doing these things or that they were upsetting me, and it isn’t fair to resent someone who doesn’t know that what they are doing is hurting someone.

So I’ve worked on communicating, I’ve gotten better with my boundaries and it’s helped. For the most part these things have been accepted and I haven’t had any huge pushbacks, but any self-help book on creating boundaries will tell you that there will be people who will see you setting up boundaries as an attack. That there are people who will get angry at you for communicating what is upsetting you.

It happened.

I am also an anxious person. I have obsessive tendencies, I catastrophize, I go through periods where I think that all my friends must hate me. But this has improved to, to an extent. My head doesn’t get as stuck as it used to, I’ve gotten better at stopping a thought before it snowballs out of control. I am working on the hating part.

Here’s the thing, sometimes you aren’t liked. Sometimes there are things about you that pisses people off and you don’t know it. Sometimes you learn that someone has been resenting you for a very long time. Sometimes you learn that you have been doing something that has made them resent you but were never told and so, couldn’t fix it. Sometimes you communicate this fact of not knowing, sometimes you communicate a boundary and are villainized for it. Sometimes you look at the notes you made about the Justice card. You look at the note you made that says “be willing to look at situations objectively and respect complexity at work” and “give weighted considerations and make careful choices before proceeding” and you do. Sometimes you try to communicate, you try to understand, but the resentment has built for too long. Sometimes you learn that the people you want to see don’t actually want to see you.

Sometimes you learn that people hate you. And that hurts.

Here are some things that I’ve come back to now that the year is at it’s end:

• Make choices most aligned with highest good

• Accept and move on, no retrials or second chances

• Stand by decisions and account for choices made

Do I stand by my decisions and accept the consequences of my actions?

I give a lot of chances, maybe too many, before making a choice. It’s the anxiety, it’s the fear that the choice I make will be the wrong one and I will be left drowning in the consequences of it. But consequence might be too harsh a word. Every cause has an effect, a choice can have consequences but also results. Or maybe I’m just trying to use a gentler word. Maybe I’m still avoiding what I don’t want to acknowledge.

It doesn’t do any good to make a decision and ignore that something will happen after. Good or bad, whatever the result or consequence, it has happened, it has to be acknowledged. And sometimes that acknowledgement is seeing a way you used to act reflected back at you and knowing that you can’t go back to that way of thinking. Sometimes that acknowledgement is working on the strategies you have now to communicate, to make boundaries, and knowing that not everyone will like it and that’s okay. It will hurt, but that’s okay too. Sometimes it’s seeing that you never mattered as much as you thought you did. Sometimes it is knowing that everything comes to an end, that everything has an expiration date.

Another note I wrote for myself was this:

Take back my power to define my own beliefs and to stand up for what is right

Why did I spend so much time trying to win the attention of those who only ever saw me as a burden to talk to, a chore to see when I have people in my life who like me? Who like talking to me? Who like seeing me? Why did it take me so long to understand this?

I have had too many instances in my life where I was filled with anger, where I resented people who didn’t deserve it, where I hated myself and I have no interest in going back to that way of thinking. I’ve spent years learning and working through these habits because it was my choice to learn these things, my choice to fix these thought patterns and actions.

I think it is right to communicate when you are upset with someone. A person can’t fix what they’re doing, cannot assume how good or bad another persons life is when all they are given is silence. Unless something is said it cannot be known⁸. It can’t be fixed. It was my choice to learn how to set boundaries, my choice to learn how to communicate with people so that resentment didn’t build, so that I was happier, and the results of these choices have changed my life for the better. Why would I let myself feel bad for all the things I didn’t know, for all that wasn’t communicated? As if I could find meaning in silence?

It’s clear from the length of this post that pulling the Justice card has given me a lot to reflect on, not only in my own life but in the world as a whole. I am happy with the way I have reflected on the year and proud of the decisions I’ve made even though they were hard. I have to live with my choices but these are ones I can live with, and having Justice as my card for 2024 has helped me be aware of the choices I make. I take extra time to think about the long term effect of my choices. I try to understand and see the paths ahead of me. I reflect on whether I can live with whichever road they lead me on.

And so far the answer is yes, and truthfully it will always be yes. When a decision is made we have no choice but to follow them through, and at least for this year I can see that though the path may be bumpy, it’s the one I needed to take. It’s the one that I’m confident will lead me to happiness, and to quote an old poet, that has made all the difference.

1. Depending on if you number The Fool as zero or one, and whether or not Justice and Strength have been switched which sometimes makes it the eleventh card.

2. Without me present because they knew how I’d react.

3. If you are subscribed or following me and are fans of Trump of Poilievre unfollow me now. We are never going to agree.

4. Named and shamed.

5. Though unfortunately all their prison sentences were less than what was asked.

6. So narcissistic.

7. And sometimes failing.

8. It would have been easier had I been born telepathic, but alas I’ve had to make due.