20 - Judgement Tarot Card

The Judgement card is tarot card number 20, although it is the 21^st card of the Major Arcana because the 1^st of the 22 Major Arcana cards is number 0 (The Fool).

The Judgement tarot card is one of several cards in the tarot deck that has different names in some older and / or less conventional tarot decks.

For example, it may be called

Judgement Day,
The Day of Judgement,
The Last Judgement
or
The Angel in some tarot decks.

Whatever the name printed on the card, the description here applies to card number 20 of the Major Arcana of a standard tarot deck.

The overall theme of this card concerns the removal of previous restrictions (self-imposed or otherwise), and awakening to new opportunities or avenues for progression.

The presence of the Judgement tarot card in a spread may indicate new or renewed energy for the sitter, situation, or the project in question. Alternatively, it may be interpreted more literally in terms of criticism, judgement, or a fair evaluation of a situation being an important aspect of the issues illuminated by in the spread

Some words and phrases terms associated with the Judgement tarot card include:

Change of situation or circumstances
Reward
Atonement
Fine or other penalty
Recompense such as payment of compensation for a loss

Note: The image of this tarot card shown on the right (above-right) is from an early French tarot deck that has been made available for general use via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. This shows a distinctly different style of illustration from that of modern tarot decks but is of historical and artistic interest.

The Gilded Tarot (Book and Tarot Deck Set)

More about the Major Arcana

The cards of the Major Arcana are widely considered to be the most powerful cards in the Tarot Deck. The 22 cards of the Major Arcana tell a complete story when arranged in upright and numerical order (beginning with 0 - The Fool then progressing through the sequence of Major Arcana cards until 21 - The World).
This is a story of personal development and enlightenment that is sometimes referred to as "The Fool's Journey".

Some texts also include meanings for "reversed cards". These are for the situation in which the cards are shuffled in both order and orientation. The theoretical advantage to this is that it effectively doubles the number of possible "cards" in the deck from 78 to 156. However, in terms of the calculation of obtaining results according to chance alone, it is not a simple mathematical doubling because once a card has been drawn it cannot be drawn again in the opposite orientation in the same reading.

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