part0050

She is wrapped in a cloak of mystery, the more mysterious because diaphanous; she is the sphinx without a secret, because she is purely a matter of calculation. In Eastern philosophy she is Karma. [290]

Image : A masked female figure holds a sword between a large set of scales, in which are the symbols of Alpha and Omega. She is placed within four geometrical shapes and sets of symmetrical spheres.

In the back of the Book of Thoth are two sections that often go unremarked and yet are incredibly rich with information on the Major cards in particular. These are “General Characters of the Trumps as they Appear in Use” in Appendix A and the “Vital Triads” in Appendix B. The latter is part of an appendix of correspondences mainly taken from 777 and lists key aspects of Crowley’s own correspondences and cosmology.

In the first appendix, we are also given a verse by Crowley on each of the Majors, so we will take this as his own summary of the essential quality of the card, particularly in reading. Here is the one for Justice – which as we have seen, Crowley renamed Adjustment, and placed in the sequence of Majors as 8, rather than 11:

In this verse Crowley is commenting on the nature of thought, and what Lon Milo Duquette calls the “western zen of Thelema”. [291] Crowley paired Adjustment as the feminine counterpart (Crowley says strongly, “partner and fulfilment”) to the Fool. [292] The reason for this is partly that the Hebrew letters corresponding to the Fool and Adjustment are Aleph and Lamed, spelling AL. This is both the root of the word “God” and backwards, “LA” meaning “not”. So the letters, the meaning, and the two cards by virtue of correspondence, signify “everything” and “nothing” in constant combination; the very essence of existence.

The Adjustment card, who also equates to Ma’at, the ancient Egyptian goddess of truth and measure (who was even above the very gods themselves), is the perfect nature of everything considered in harmony, and the Fool is the nothingness that must be when everything is one. This is an entirely paradoxical, essential, and mystical doctrine.

It is also interesting with this image that we see how Frieda Harris’s “channelling” during the card design and execution, affected Crowley’s later textual descriptions of the cards. She described in her letters for this card; “She has, after all, insisted on being Beardsley …” and “Harlequin comes in & out of it so I must have to submit …” [293] This later appears in Crowley’s text for the Book of Thoth as he compares its relationship to the Fool.

On a more everyday level, Crowley offers key meanings for the card in terms of reading; “law suits or prosecutions”, of which he had several experiences prior to writing the Book of Thoth and during his life. He goes on to say it can also mean in social terms; “marriage or marriage agreements” and politically, “treaties”. [294]

In Appendix B, the section on “Vital Triads” he splits the Major Arcana into sets of three, assigned to his own cosmology. The Adjustment card falls in the triad equated to “the woman, justified”, and is symbolic of “the sexually joined”. It is in this group with the Chariot, “the grail, the chariot of life”, and Alchemy (Temperance), “The Pregnant Womb preserving life”. [295]

In practical readings, then, we can see this triad of cards as three stages of pregnancy; the Chariot is the protective but as yet empty womb; the Alchemy (Temperance) card is the preserving womb as the embryo develops (in the alchemical crucible) and the Adjustment (Justice) card is the sexual act that creates this new life. So when these cards show up in a reading they can indicate the progress of any creative act, whether it be an actual birth, or a new project, relationship, lifestyle, etc.

It is worth exploring the “vital triads” to see how Crowley saw the patterns of creation, energy and the myths of all life – they underpin at the most profound level any aspect of everyday life. In knowing the deepest patterns, we can work up to illuminate even the most apparently mundane of questions. If someone is asking about whether they should change their job, this is entirely connected to all their values, experience and sense of identity; their relationship to the entire universe. As it is said, “as above, so below”.

Whilst not appearing specifically as a symbol upon the card, unless we count the strange symmetrical throne-like design behind the central figure, Crowley writes that this card is the “final adjustment in the formula of Tetragrammaton”. [296]

We met this formula in the Chariot card and we will return to it in the Moon card – and at length in our third volume on the Court cards. It is described by Crowley in Magick , and presented as a metaphor of father, mother, son and daughter; “In this complex family relationship is symbolised the whole course of the Universe”. [297]

It derives from the biblical narrative of King David, from where Crowley gets the specific term, “the eld of the All-Father”. [298] In the story of King David, the King “waxed eld” and a young virgin was brought to him in order to “make the lord our king warm” [Kings 1.1]. Crowley takes this story and makes a correspondence with the letters YHVH in a universal process of incarnation.

The letters stand for four family members as well as four stages in all creative processes. The first letter, Yod, is the Father, who creates all, when married to the Mother, the second letter Heh. They produce a Son, the letter Vau, and a daughter, the final letter Heh, which is the same as the Mother letter. There is a cyclic and incestuous process, where the son and daughter are twins, and the daughter is “set upon the throne of her mother” to restart the creative process. [299]

This is not an actual family relationship, but rather a simple model of all creative processes, and one suited for use in magick. It also works as a pattern for any four-fold system; the four elements, the four Court cards, the four Worlds in Kabbalah, etc. We see it in the process described by the Aeons, where each Aeon can be viewed as a stage reflected in even the smallest or apparently insignificant act of creation.

Adjustment, then, sits on the throne – she is Libra, the Venusian daughter ruled by Saturn, her father, returned to awaken the process through constant compensation. She is exacting and always seeking equilibrium without respect to anything other than truth. This is a card which really does mean “Karma”, come what may. [300]

Justice is masked because she is working in silence and seeking to cancel everything out to return to the empty truth – symbolised by the Fool card. She shows “intimate secret satisfaction” in her rule, and to some extent, in a reading, we might counsel the client to be careful of what they wish. She is blind to desire or expectation, her only action is to resolve imbalance.

The Sword is perfectly balanced between the scales and the thighs of the goddess Ma’at. It carries the symbolism of the Magic Sword as being the Will of the Magician, similar to the Arrow. It is more specifically the “analytical facility”, to simplify existence down to its simplest structure. [301] It is constructed with two lunar guards and spheres creating a triangle, a perfect balance of change – symbolising a constant adjustment.

Crowley, in his description of the Magical Sword, suggests that the hilt is “of Venus”, and emphasizes that “Love is the motive of this ruthless analysis”. [302] We can be kind even if we are being critical – and sometimes that criticism is for kindness.

The Scales balance the letters Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end, over which Ma’at rules as the eternal measure. Crowley describes these as the “Judex and Testes of Final Judgement”. [303] He extends the meaning of “testes” with a sexual allusion – writing that this is symbolic of a secret course of judgement, or perhaps transmission, whereby experience is “absorbed, transmuted and ultimately passed on” to further manifestation in the world. [304]

Whilst it is arguable that the word ‘testes’ meaning ‘witness’ is directly connected to the word ‘testicles’, it is unarguable that Crowley sees this as a sexual symbolism. The thinking is that semen ‘absorbs’ the nature of its surroundings and thus a specific invocation to a specific force will generate a manifestation in the semen of the practitioner. This is the converse to the operation described in Moonchild , where the baby is magically prepared by focusing the surroundings of the pregnant mother.

In our everyday reading of the card, we can suggest that the balance is presently held in a delicate position, and that our every thought, emotion and action will tip it, perhaps more than we would expect at the time. Crowley himself seems to predate the ‘butterfly effect’ when he writes, “From this Crown, so delicate that the most faintest breath of thought must stir it, depend, by chains of cause, the Scales …” [305]

Justice is not justice in the Thoth Tarot, but Adjustment. We are asked to constantly measure ourselves against what we have set out to accomplish, who we think of as ourselves, and calibrate the reality to our perception. It is a card that also suggests equal partnership, balance, and harmony be established before action.