I have been a professional tarot reader for twenty minutes, which makes me, at this point, essentially a tenured professor of the subject. I have read one card. It was The Fool. I understood it immediately. It said “begin,” so I began, and then I read a second card, which is where everything went wrong, and also where I became an expert.
Here is my finding, and I am delivering it in the form of a compliance notice because I have recently learned that a compliance notice is just an email that you cannot ignore, and neither can you ignore Judgement.
The Judgement card has reviewed your previous excuses. All of them. Every single one you filed. And it has denied them.
I know this because I pulled Judgement, and I looked at it for a while, and I noticed that there is an angel on it, and the angel has a trumpet, and the trumpet is being blown directly at some people who are standing up out of what appear to be boxes. I want to be clear that I am an expert and my interpretation is final: the boxes are your excuses. You filed them. You stored them. You labeled them neatly. “I’ll start Monday.” “I’m not ready.” “I’m waiting for a sign.” “The timing isn’t right.” “I need to finish this other thing first.” “I’m not the kind of person who—”
Denied. All denied.
The angel is not asking you to resubmit with corrections. The angel is not offering you an extension. The angel is a trumpet, and the trumpet is the sound of the deadline you thought was a suggestion.
Now, I will admit that I do not fully understand what Judgement means in the traditional sense, because I have been doing this for twenty minutes and I spent the first five of those minutes trying to figure out if the angel was a pigeon. But I have since determined that Judgement is the card of waking up, and I know a thing or two about waking up, because I once slept through an entire flight and woke up in a different state. That is basically the same thing. The card is telling you that you have been asleep at the wheel of your own life, and also that the wheel was a trumpet the whole time.
Here is what Judgement is reviewing, specifically, in your file:
Excuse #1: “I didn’t know.” Denied. You knew. You knew the whole time. You knew in the way you know a train is coming when you’re standing on the tracks and you can feel it in your teeth.
Excuse #2: “Nobody told me.” Denied. Every single person told you. The universe told you. Your friend told you. Your body told you, loudly, at 3 a.m. The pigeon-angel is telling you right now, and you are reading this, so now you have definitely been told.
Excuse #3: “I was going to get to it.” Denied, and also, when? Be specific. Judgement is requesting a date. Judgement is requesting a time. Judgement has a calendar and it is not interested in your vibes.
Excuse #4: “I’m scared.” Granted.
Wait. Hold on. That one’s approved?
Yes. That one goes through. Here’s the thing about Judgement that I, a twenty-minute expert, have just now understood: it is not reviewing your fear. It is reviewing your excuses. Fear is not an excuse. Fear is a fact. Fear is allowed. Fear is, in fact, the box you’re standing up out of. The angel is not blowing the trumpet at your fear. The angel is blowing the trumpet at the lid you put on top of it.
You told yourself you were waiting until you weren’t scared. Denied. You will be scared the entire time. The trumpet does not care. The trumpet is not a lullaby. The trumpet is a summons, and the summons says: come as you are, terrified, mid-spiral, in the wrong shoes, and come now.
I want to be honest with you, in the spirit of compliance, that I have no idea what I’m doing. Twenty minutes ago I did not know the difference between a major arcana and a major inconvenience. But I pulled this card, and I looked at those people standing up out of their boxes with their arms raised, and I thought: they don’t look ready. They look surprised. They look like they were in the middle of something. And the trumpet blew anyway, and they stood up anyway, and that was the whole thing. That was the entire reading. There was no preparation module. There was no grace period. There was just a sound, and then a choice.
So here is my official determination, filed under my authority as someone who has been doing this for twenty minutes and will not be taking questions:
Your excuses have been reviewed. They have been denied. Not because you are bad, but because they were never the real reason. The real reason is the fear, and the fear has been approved, and the approval means you can bring it with you.
The angel is not waiting for you to be ready. The angel has already started. The sound is already in the air. The only question left is whether you’re going to keep sitting in the box, or stand up in it, or stand up out of it, or whatever it is those people are doing, because honestly I still can’t quite tell, but I know they’re moving, and I know the trumpet hasn’t stopped, and I know that you have been reviewed, and you have been denied, and you have also, somehow, been called.