Justice
An octopus with mantle fins and web patterns hovers suspended in the open ocean. It grips four ropes held in perfect tension by the competing pressure of floating kelp bladders, above and the gravity of netted weights below. The octopus's two front arms hold a pair of shells entwined below its body.
Symbolism
Justice represents a kind of ultimate, impersonal authority. It’s distinguished from other authority figures like the Emperor, the Empress of the Hierophant by being an avatar of the concept of Justice, rather than a specific individual. An authority may have executive power, but their command of Justice depends on circumstance. The Thoth deck interprets the card to refer to the ultimate Justice, that of Natural Law, and uses the name “Adjustment” to account for that.
The Universe we all inhabit has a sense of Justice, a kind of accounting. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Cause and Effect. Natural Law is impersonal, but there is balance in the certainty that all action has consequence.
When people say that 'Justice is Blind,' they mean superficially that it makes no exceptions. But you might take that same notion further and say that Justice, perfect applied, takes into account all exceptions, examines all forces exerting influence on a circumstance, and adjudicates the precise result that is warranted.
So Justice can be as sensitive as the balancing of scales and as ruthless as the edge of a blade. Justice is found in the satisfaction at the end of a good story, no matter if it is comedy or tragedy.
La Justice, Marseilles deck.
Justice, Smith-Waite deck.
Adjustment, Thoth deck.
Justice in Octopolis
The peoples of Octopolis embrace the forces of natural law, as it rules their lives. But they do not measure scales the way we do, with levers that can be easily moved by the slightest current. They use the laws of buoyancy to measure the laws of gravity.
Bull Kelp. Photo by Neil McDaniel
Giant Kelp. Photo by Kade
Many species of kelp grow bladders filled with gas to draw their photosynthetic fronds to the surface of the water, bull kelp and giant kelp being dramatic examples of the adaptation. The octopuses of Octopolis have taken advantage of this by selectively breeding kelp that grow enormous 'pneumatocysts' and putting them to practical use.
One common use, especially in commerce, is to determine weight by tying bladders to set weights and achieving neutral buoyancy (though of course lifting force changes with depth). The octopus in Justice has achieved neutral buoyancy with the four pneumatocysts its holding, all while holding an object made of shells below.
Shells are the corresponding suit to Swords in the traditional Tarot deck, so since Justice bears a sword in the original, I gave the Octopolis Justice a cool shell weapon.
Justice is often depicted as blindfolded. While this octopus is not blindfolded, it is displaying strong eye bands, which is a camouflage technique used by octopuses in real life to occlude the placement of their eyes. Kind of like the reverse of eyespots.
Eye banding on a brown striped octopus. Photo by Donald Davesne
Caribbean Reef Octopus. Photo by unorthodox_sketch
The pattern of the octopus is shaped like a net. If you look at octopuses with strong contrasted patterns, like the Caribbean reef octopus this is loosely designed after (real reef octopus are benthic do not have fins), there is a kind of criss-cross pattern that forms along the striations of their muscle tissue. To me, it evokes a net, which is in some ways a metaphor for Justice.
Justice keeps everything balanced, and in doing also keeps everything static. Often an invocation of Justice is really just the assertion of the status quo. If you think about it, this octopus cannot move without breaking its carefully orchestrated position of neutral buoyancy. Its trapped in a net of its own devising. Any change in weight, any movement higher or lower in the water column, would break the fragile equilibrium of the kelp pod's lifting power. This kind of stasis is only possible because the octopus is keeping perfectly still, in an ocean that is so still that the waves above are literally geometric and the light refracting through it remains unmuddled. It's an idealized environment for Justice to exist in, but even in this context it can exist only for one vital moment in time before entropy causes the system to degrade again.
A salient reminder to those of us who do not live in a world of Platonic solids, that Justice is a structure that requires persistent re-adjustment.
Artist’s Notes
Gaudi’s upside-down cathedral weight distribution model, preserved in the basement of the Sagrada Familia. Photo by me.
The design for this was inspired both by Crowley's Thoth but also by a recent visit to the Sagrada Familia, where in the reliquary they displayed one of the tools used by architect Antoni Gaudi.
Gaudi wanted to devise a cathedral with a higher ceiling than any previously devised, and looked to the natural world for inspiration. In order to test that the structure would actually distribute and hold weight, he used a method that is as ingenious as it is simple: he would hang bags of sand in preset weights from string with a known tensile strength.
By hanging these strings and weights at intervals corresponding to the weight of materials in the proposed building, he ensured that weight in the structure was safely distributed in the base arches. The result is a magical, haunting upside down inversion of the Sagrada Familia, made with bags of sand.
Original sketch of Justice
My first attempts at layout drew much more heavily on this imagery, but in sketching it out and trying to fit as man bags and buoys as possible into the image, the complexity of the image destroyed the sense of balance, simplicity, and space that I wanted from the piece. Especially considering that these are eventually meant to be cards that are printed at small sizes, It would not do to have too much detail obscuring the message of the card.
