Angels, stairways leading to heaven and hell, a white bearded God, believers and nonbelievers, and resurrection of the dead. These are the historic images we find on the Judgment card. The earliest versions were sometimes called ‘The Angel card.’
In the 15th century the church officials asked tarot card printers to remove these religious images from the cards, as they were seen as sacrilegious/ offensive.
So what does all this religious symbolism mean today?
The Last Judgment was believed to be a big and final decision by God that would determine humans’ fate, based on how they acted in their lifetime. Essentially, a higher power or ‘god’ would decide what you deserve.
Today we can substitute ‘Self-Love’ for ‘God’ and translate Judgment as ‘self-loving examination of our fruitful/ fruitless endeavors in this life and inner reflection in which we make an epic and final decision about what we truly deserve moving forward.’ With this decision comes a ‘sending to hell’ of the shit we no longer need on the journey- old behavior patterns, connections we’ve outgrown, addictions/ obsessions; and the ‘taken to heaven’ of the things that feel true to us and in alignment.
In this sense we ‘upgrade’ or ‘uplevel’ to a new life, and this is the resurrection part, as the ancients believed in immortality of the soul which ensured all the dead would one day be brought back to life.
So the beauty of this now is we don’t have to wait for our death bed to be ‘resurrected.’ We can start soul searching now, take the time for private reflection and gain much self-knowledge so that we can decide what to give ourselves a second chance on in this life.