Judgement

Quick answer

The core meaning of Judgement is The soul's final summons. Upright, it usually points to Awakening, a calling, rebirth, karmic reckoning. Symbolizes hearing the inner su; reversed, it may suggest Self-doubt, refusing the call, inability to move on, regret. May indicate overlo.

Card imagery

A great angel sounds a trumpet from the clouds, a red-cross banner attached to it. On the ground below, gray figures (men, women, and children) rise from open coffins, arms outstretched toward the angel.

Upright meaning

Awakening, a calling, rebirth, karmic reckoning. Symbolizes hearing the inner summons, reviewing the past, making a momentous decision, and being reborn.

Reversed meaning

Self-doubt, refusing the call, inability to move on, regret. May indicate overlooking a chance to change, or drowning in past mistakes without release.

Love, Career, Money and Growth

Love

In love, Judgement points to The soul's final summons. Read it back against how the relationship actually behaves and what you are both choosing.

Career

In career matters, Judgement points to The soul's final summons. Start by working out which resources you control and what your next move is.

Money

In money matters, Judgement points to The soul's final summons. Do not treat a symbolic reading as an investment conclusion — go by facts, budget and your own risk tolerance.

Personal growth

For personal growth, Judgement points to The soul's final summons. Write down the question it raises, then turn that into an action you can actually check.

Yes or No

Upright

Yes

Reversed

No

This is our own quick read, based on which way the card’s meaning leans. Traditions disagree about individual cards, and an "Undecided" needs to be weighed against the position in the spread and your actual situation rather than taken as a one-word answer.

Waite’s Original Text (1911)

Inner Symbolism (original)

I have said that this symbol is essentially invariable in all Tarot sets, or at least the variations do not alter its character. The great angel is here encompassed by clouds, but he blows his bannered trumpet, and the cross as usual is displayed on the banner. The dead are rising from their tombs—a woman on the right, a man on the left hand, and between them their child, whose back is turned. But in this card there are more than three who are restored, and it has been thought worth while to make this variation as illustrating the insufficiency of current explanations. It should be noted that all the figures are as one in the wonder, adoration and ecstasy expressed by their attitudes. It is the card which registers the accomplishment of the great work of transformation in answer to the summons of the Supernal—which summons is heard and answered from within.

Herein is the intimation of a significance which cannot well be carried further in the present place. What is that within us which does sound a trumpet and all that is lower in our nature rises in response—almost in a moment, almost in the twinkling of an eye? Let the card continue to depict, for those who can see no further, the Last Judgment and the resurrection in the natural body; but let those who have inward eyes look and discover therewith. They will understand that it has been called truly in the past a card of eternal life, and for this reason it may be compared with that which passes under the name of Temperance.

Original Upright Meaning

Change of position, renewal, outcome. Another account specifies total loss through lawsuit.

Original Reversed Meaning

Weakness, pusillanimity, simplicity; also deliberation, decision, sentence.

Quoted from A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. The text is in the public domain.