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Justice: The 22nd Path
ALLIES OF LIBRA
"Who is that, Mr. M?" Claire asks.
“Justice. Our friend is able to see everything. She is not a blind-folded figure of justice. In her right hand, she holds a sword, straight up and down, a symbol of the element of Air, for Libra is an Air sign. The sword on one level symbolizes the mind’s ability to discriminate and find the truth and make appropriate choices. She holds a scale in her left hand to suggest the ability of the mind to weigh and balance and create harmony. Libra is the astrological sign of balance; this path balances the other Major Arcana paths on the Tree of Life.
"On another level, she personifies the soul, which sees clearly both with the physical eyes and the inner eye. The square in the middle of the crown symbolizes the third eye, the eye of inner vision. On her stable throne, she balances the pillars of the Tree of Life. On the personal level, she eliminates the unwanted negative energies and harmonizes all the energies of the self. On that level, she represents the will of the Higher Self.
“The 22nd path is daunting: you must face the discordant elements in yourself as you move from the Emanation known as Beauty to the one known as Severity. Our Queen presides over this path known as ‘Justice,’ and it refers in part to the kind of justice that you inflict on yourself, but it also suggests your ability to create balance and harmony on all levels of your being. Remember that Beauty is the center of equilibrium where you experience the Vision of Harmony and the Mysteries of Sacrifice. As you move toward Severity, you experience what is out of balance in your own nature. This path is exactly at the midway point of the journey up the Tree, and you have to establish harmony within yourself before you proceed to Severity because the sphere of Mars is the sphere of power, which can easily turn to cruelty or destructiveness if your nature is unbalanced.
“The path might also be called ‘karma’ because you must determine which energies in yourself are attracting unwanted energies into your world. As I mentioned before, whenever you touch a higher sphere, you open up a spectrum of energy containing a virtue and a vice. When you enter Beauty, for instance, you experience a sense of oneness with the Source, which leads to devotion to the Great Work, culminating in union with God. The opposite is pride, a kind of selfishness, and that energy also rears its ugly head. Perhaps you know, as I do, devoted religious people who can tell you everything that is wrong with other religions and other sects and make you afraid that you will go to hell if you even think about joining them. That is a kind of pride that throughout history has led to great cruelty and destructiveness.
“The vices, or unbalanced energies within you, attract the same problems over and over into your life because you keep sending out thought-forms filled with those negative vibrations that keep drawing the same energy to you, resulting in a kind of cosmic justice that you inflict on yourself. You are faced with situation after situation, in this life and others, until you eliminate the negative thought-forms and establish harmony in yourself.”
“That's a hard way to learn!”
“The hardest, but perhaps the most effective. The great challenge of the path is using discrimination, represented by the sword of the figure of Justice, to determine what tendencies you must harmonize in yourself. Then you use the sword of your mind to eliminate the negative energies and harmonize the vibrations within yourself, which of course requires the kind of discipline associated with Mars.”
“Seriously, Mr M, that sounds too hard for me!”
“In many ways, this is one of the greatest challenges of the Tree because you learn not only to balance the energies within yourself but also to use them for the highest good. An important Egyptian Goddess is Ma'at. As you might recall, Ma'at is the Goddess who, in the Hall of Judgment, weighs the heart against a feather. If your heart is as light as a feather, then your soul may go to Osiris. She is the Goddess of order, of balance, of harmony, of truth and justice within the cosmos and the self. The Goddess Ma'at is much like our friend now before us."
The Two of Swords:
Moon in Libra"Is this a friend of the Queen, Mr. M? But she's holding two swords and is blindfolded."
"Our friend crosses her arms, grasping a long sword in each hand. Since the swords are so long, this balancing act obviously requires great strength and concentration. She wears a blindfold, which perhaps is helping her to concentrate. So our friend appears to represent something besides the force of karma. Since she is in the second Emanation known as Chokmah, or Wisdom, a state of almost unimaginable power and energy, she is concentrating on balancing forces (a quality of Libra)--an act of great discipline. On the Tree of Life, the second Emanation balances the great force of the Source, establishing equilibrium. Your ally wears a blindfold to suggest that the force of equilibrium is at this stage a blind, primal state “outside” of nature, just as Wisdom is a supernal Emanation "above" manifestation, and she wears white to suggest how all colors together form one unified state “above” or “beyond" the diverse forms of creation, representing the underlying unity of consciousness. The diverse forms exist on “lower” planes of manifestation, hence another reason for the blindfold. The primal unity, balance, and stability within the dynamic powers and flux of creation, suggested by water and the Moon, is what our friend represents, both on the personal level and the Universal level.
The Three of Swords:
Saturn in Libra"This is terrible, Mr. M. How can this be connected with the Queen?"
"This, I know, reminds us all of the suffering that we experience in the world. Three swords have pierced a heart, two crossing each other and one straight down through the middle. Strangely, no blood flows from the heart; only rain falls from the clouds. The storm is not raging; the rain gently falls and continues the cycle of life within the physical realm. The Threes correspond to the third Emanation on the Tree of Life, known as Binah, meaning "Understanding." Binah is the celestial Mother of creation (the second Emanation, Wisdom, being the celestial Father). Binah is the female principle still “above” manifestation, but from her womb, all of creation issues forth on the lower planes. The third sphere restricts (a quality of Saturn) free-flowing force. From the perspective of spirit, the limiting boundaries of form create a kind of imprisonment. The third sphere also ushers in death because everything that is created on the physical plane is eventually destroyed (hence Saturn’s association with the grim reaper). From this knowledge comes the Vision of Sorrow. Suffering is inevitable: destruction follows creation. But regeneration follows death in an endless cycle. The symbol is simple and balanced (a quality of Libra), like the cycle of birth, death, and regeneration itself. The cosmos would remain static without this cycle, and the soul would not experience the contrasts that enable it to know true joy and understand the meaning of harmony and beauty as well as suffering. The suit of Swords represents the element of Air, the plane of the conscious mind, which is aware of change and loss, an awareness that leads to sorrow. But though suffering may be painful and debilitating, from the changes--and the recognition of our own mortality--we slowly learn to accept and establish balance and harmony within ourselves.
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