8 Adjustment

(2015), graphite pencils on paper, 5.5"x10.5" backed with digital frame.

Adjustment is typically known as "Justice" in traditional decks. However, I think justice in modern times is often more about exploiting loopholes in the law; and so people have grown disillusioned with justice. Therefore for this card I reverted back to Crowley's idea to call this card "Adjustment". Another good title for it would be "Balance" - hence my subject of a tightrope dancer where balance is everything.

Balance or Adjustment is all about things having a tendency to even themselves out. Every action has an opposite reaction, and when these come together you get some sense of equilibrium. Sometimes this equilibrium asserts itself without our buy-in, you could call it karma, when the good or bad of our own past deeds comes home to roost. Sometimes we are in the driver's seat, making sure things are working out so they are fair to us and to others. We may also be caught between the tension between ideal desires for perfect and absolute justice and mundane pragmatic options of just somehow squaring things up.

For my card I didn't want "blind" justice wielding her traditional sword and scales. I loved this image of a young Indian tightrope dancer girl in Goa. She is not blind. She wears a fierce scowl of concentration as her pretty sandaled feet negotiate the rope. Instead of a sword and scales she has a balance staff tied to her chest and carefully uses it to even out her precarious path on the rope keeping her body calm enough to not upset the four vessels balanced on her head. She seemed to me so much more of an active and empowered agent than our blind, mindless Justitia statues placed in front of our court houses. And I think that is what Adjustment teaches us - the need for either us or the universe to balance things out, to give us what's coming to us - good or bad, depending on the karma we've amassed for ourselves.

In a spread Adjustment means that we are willing to take responsibility for our actions, that justice will be done, either by our hand or despite our wishes, that we and others have coming what's our due. It also means that fairness and a rational balance of pros and cons govern our decision making. We should look objectively at ourselves and others and the mistakes that have been made and seek to make amends. It may mean we need to negotiate with others to make a situation more balanced and fair to all parties involved, whether it's in a partnership, a friendship, with family or in our job. Maybe that means you need to give up some of your privileges, maybe it means you have to confront others to make them be more fair to you.