This past Resurrection Sunday, I felt called to pull some tarot cards for myself and I ended up creating my own spread inspired by the themes found in Resurrection Sunday!
It's a simple three card spread, and it can honestly be used at any given time—
- What is dying
- What is healing
- What is resurrecting
I won't share all of the cards I pulled during my own reading—I'd like to keep that to myself. But I did want to share the fact that this specific card came out for my what is resurrecting position. Looking at the imagery alone it just screams RESURRECTION.
When I first opened this deck to look at all of the art, I found that this card made me feel awe as though I was looking at something bigger and more powerful than myself.
One thing I love about tarot is how a card can have different levels of meaning and flavour depending on the deck being used. In this particular iteration of Judgement, we see a white bird but not without a scar on it's chest that looks similar to that of the flag found in the original RWS Judgement. However, it could also be interpreted as a crucifix shaped.
The bird is rising like a phoenix from the ashes with a mist all around it against a dark, star-studded background. And with the multitude of butterflies rising alongside the bird it really brings home the transformative symbolism found in Judgement.
Judgement is in the Major Arcana and sits between The Sun and The World card with the number 20. It's traditional art found in the RWS deck shows a fearsome angel blowing on their trumpet, and the dead rise from their graves in celebration depicting the Resurrection of the Dead and the Day of Judgement.
It's interesting because even though the original Judgement does contain the theme of resurrection, the card from my deck at the time felt intuitively more like the Resurrection of Christ and not the Resurrection of the Dead occurring during the End Times.
Had it been the latter, that could open up other potential meanings that come with that kind of energy vs the symbolism and meaning that can be found within something inspired by the Resurrection of Christ instead.
Though this spread can be used at any point in time, I found that my reading had far more significance and weight in the message shared with me given that I did it on Resurrection Sunday. Especially as I feel like the reading spoke to an area of my life that feels very much dead to me—but there is hope that it may come back to life one day.
The whole reading felt like a beautiful moment of synchronicity, because I had felt called to use this specific deck—Oak, Ash, and Thorn by Three Trees Tarot. I hardly ever use this one and I almost gave it away during a community deck swap, but the opportunity to do so kept being blocked.
And I think that's because I was meant to keep this deck maybe just for this one message alone.