XI Karma

XI and VIII, TTCFKA Justice and Strength, play musical chairs in tarot. In some decks - this one, for example - you'll see XI as Justice, although I call it Karma, for reasons to be explained later - while in others it will be Strength, and the same goes for VIII. It's a matter of the personal preference and metaphysical/metaphorical interpretation of the deck master.

If you look at the numbers, "11" and "8" you'll see that there is a similarity in balance, although in "11" the balance lies between two separate integers while in "8" it is within the body of the integer itself, hence my decision to chose "11" for Karma and "8" for Strength. Strength, at least in the context of the Tarot deck, is a quality both internal and individual while the old paradigm concepts of Justice and Karma both involve a balance - or judgment, if you will -  that comes from outside the individual, at least in the physical sense, and I state it that way because Karma is intrinsic to the interdimensionality of the Self and therefore could be considered, in an over-arching way, as both internal and individual but since this is a deck about life on Earth, I have chosen to interpret it in a one-lifetime kind of a way as that is what most of us are familiar with on a day to day basis.

(Is your head spinning yet?  That may very well be the longest sentence I have ever written.)

The reason I chose the word "Karma" over the word "Justice" is because Justice doesn't really exist in the way that it implies that it does. "Justice" carries more baggage than a jet liner. When the average person thinks, "Justice," he or she thinks of the "bad" being reprimanded or, better yet, punished and "good" prevailing and you know, you know even if you've never placed your trust in the hands of a justice system, that it just doesn't always work out that way, in fact, a really good lawyer can ensure that it doesn't. "Justice" is a myth. It's something we'd like to believe in, it's certainly something that hangs as a possible threat over the heads of would-be wrong doers, but it's unreliable as a source of bringing balance to a situation. Hence, "Karma."

Now, I'm not overly fond of that word either. "Karma" has baggage of its own, but at least it's baggage that's carried by the individual. "Karma" is misunderstood. "Karma's" baggage is an old paradigm interpretation of "good" and "evil" in terms of time and balance. To explain this, we have to take a couple Really Big Steps backwards, (if we can actually do that which, technically speaking, we can't).

Step 1: Spirit embodies on earth to carry out its plan. Spirit, being, as it is, pure energy knows no "good" or "evil." Spirit knows only that the way to point A will involve a number of actions which may or may not be interpreted, while in human context, as "good" or "evil."

Step 2: Time, as a linear construct, is something we made up. Oh, time exists, alright; we're in it, but it doesn't have a beginning and it doesn't have an end, so the linear construct part is pretty much just that, a construct, a convenient fiction. Time is Eternal. While embodied in a human form most of us can just about see where we are...which is to say that every aspect of us can see where it is at any given moment but all those moments exist simultaneously.

So "Karma," as an old paradigm concept of Cosmic Justice isn't what most people think it is; it isn't an "if you do this in this lifetime than you'll get that in another" kind of a thing; it is, rather, a powerful, internal, constant balance that can be maintained in a whole variety of ways inter-dimensionally speaking. How that balance manifests for any given individual starts at Spirit level. Some prefer drama, some prefer ease, some prefer to be catalytic, some prefer to respond. I could go on and on but I think that I've actually gone on quite a bit already.

Literal bottom line: when XI, Karma, shows up in a reading, what you can know is that your so-called Big Picture may become just a little more clear to you.