Justice
Trump XI in Waite's deck and VIII in older ones: a seated woman with a sword and scales. A. E. Waite read it as equity and rightness.
Meaning
Justice sits between two columns holding a sword, point upwards, in one hand and a balance in the other, as Papus describes her; Waite noted that his figure sits between pillars like the High Priestess. Waite also noted that the figure is said to be Astraea, and counted Justice among the cardinal virtues in the trumps, with Temperance and Fortitude.
Why Justice is number 11
Waite moved Justice to 11 and Strength to 8. In older orders, such as a Milanese pack in the British Museum and Papus's system, Justice is card 8.
Waite's meanings
Waite gave Justice "equity, rightness, probity, executive; triumph of the deserving side in law"; reversed, "law in all its departments, legal complications, bigotry, bias, excessive severity". Papus joined the card to the eighth Hebrew letter, Heth.
See also
Strength, The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor.
Sources
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, by A. E. Waite, William Rider & Son, London, 1910 (the sacred-texts.com transcription, on the Internet Archive), The Trumps Major; The Greater Arcana and their Divinatory Meanings
- The Tarot of the Bohemians, by Papus, Chapman & Hall, London, 1896, translated by A. P. Morton (scan on the Internet Archive), The Symbolical Tarot
- A Descriptive Catalogue of Playing and Other Cards in the British Museum, by W. H. Willshire, Trustees of the British Museum, London, 1876 (scan on the Internet Archive), Italian tarots, second quarter of the nineteenth century, Milan
Last reviewed September 27, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research