Judgement - Twenty

 

 

 

Tarot of Marseilles

With the number twenty, we are reminded again of duality, of good and evil, light and dark, saved and damned, life and death, beginning and end. There are many mythologies around the world which speak of an End Times, during which the world will be destroyed, to make way for a new beginning. According to Hinduism, we are currently in the Age of Kali, the last of the four stages the world goes through. The Mahabharata says that this Age of Kali is defined by several factors:

• Rulers are unreasonable, they levy taxes unfairly.
• Rulers no longer see it as their duty to promote spirituality, or to protect their subjects.
• People are migrating, relying on grain as the staple food source.
• People openly display animosity towards each other.
• People have thoughts of murder with no justification and see nothing wrong with it.
• People sexually abuse each other, and rape is socially acceptable.
• People are addicted to intoxicating drinks and drugs.

But if this Age is coming to an end, then what? Hinduism says that the world will suffer a fiery end that will destroy all evil, and a new age, Satya Yuga, will begin. Satya Yuga means "The Age of Truth". The last Satya Yuga was described in the Mahabharata:

"There were no poor and no rich; there was no need to labour, because all that men required was obtained by the power of will; the chief virtue was the abandonment of all worldly desires. The Krita Yuga was without disease; there was no lessening with the years; there was no hatred or vanity, or evil thought; no sorrow, no fear. All mankind could attain to supreme blessedness."

Some equate Satya Yuga with the approaching Age of Aquarius. Astrological ages are marked by the sun rising in a certain constellation during the Spring Equinox. Currently, the sun rises in Pisces. Roughly every 2,150 years the sun's position at the time of the vernal equinox will have moved into a new zodiacal constellation. However zodiacal constellations are not uniform in size, leading some astrologers to believe that the corresponding ages should also vary in duration. In 1929 the International Astronomical Union defined the edges of the constellations, marking the beginning of the Aquarian Age around 2600 CE. Whether the apparant movement of the Zodiac is a coincidence or not, it may be that the draining of our world's oil supply has a significant effect on our way of life. Petroleum extraction is expected to rapidly decrease this century. Oil is our cheapest source of energy, and as the oil runs out, energy consumption will become increasingly unaffordable. The Middle East currently has about 40% of the oil market, which is of course why there has been so much war in the region. The West is engaged in a furious battle over the last drops of oil. Even if demand remained steady, the world would have to find the equivalent of four Saudi Arabias to maintain production, and six Saudi Arabias if it is to keep up with the expected increase in demand between now and 2030. Environmentalists fear that as supplies of conventional oil run out, governments will be forced to exploit even dirtier alternatives, such as the massive reserves of tar sands. If biofuel takes over, it will have detrimental effects on food production, as arable land will be snatched up by energy companies. All this doom and gloom is a guarantee that our current way of life is in no way sustainable.

The Judgement card is like a slap in the face that says you better wake up and think fast! There will be massive consequences for the way humans are currently behaving. Don't even get me started on climate change. We have a world full of lost souls, sleep walking their way through life. They are only concerned with instant gratification, and their greed turns them into mind-numbing zombies. They key here is to hear the herald of Judgement which wakes us up like an alarm clock. It's time to open our minds and open our hearts to a New Age.