Archetype and The Tarot: The Teacher & Judgment
For the week of August 13, 2023
For an overview of what I’m doing here, please check out this post all about it.
The Teacher Archetype
In a nutshell, The Teacher archetype is all about educating. On the light side, The Teacher has a superpower of taking in information, then distilling it and expressing it in a way that helps others receive the most benefit from it.
On the shadow side, however, The Teacher is just not very good at teaching. This can look many ways. It can be a teacher who is more concerned with self-image and achievements than helping students; the know-it-all teacher or the teacher who talks over the heads of the students. Sometimes, The Teacher in the shadow can also simply be one who withholds teaching for any number of reasons. Maybe they don’t think they’re qualified or have any other fear of sharing their knowledge.
When I was thinking about The Teacher to write this post, I realized that I tend to automatically think of the teacher in the classical sense, as in our teachers at school or online classes. But, really, we have teachers all around us, all of the time. Every being we interact with teaches us something.
It’s been my experience that plants are teachers by their very nature. They possess intrinsic knowledge about themselves and their environment or ecology, and then they pass along this knowledge to all beings who interact with them. (We might not always be good students, but the lessons are there if we pay attention.)
There’s this magnificent canyon that’s just a mile down the road from my house. I try to walk the two mile trail there a few times a week. As I’ve learned to listen, this canyon–and its inhabitants (especially lava rock, coyote, and chickadee)–has become one of the greatest teachers of my life. I believe I’ve learned more about relating well from this canyon than I have from any of my relationships with other humans. And I know I still have much to learn.
Because this card has come up in a divination reading, it means we need to not only look for the teachers around us, but also look at the ways that we are the teachers. Who is learning from us? (Try to extend this question beyond other living humans.) What are we teaching and how are we teaching it?
Perhaps more importantly, this is a call to look at the ways we teach ourselves. Do we teach ourselves with patience and kindness? Are we strict and unbending? Do we check out from reality and forego teaching ourselves altogether?
Judgment
On this card in the traditional Rider Waite/Coleman-Smith deck, we see people standing up out of their own caskets, having been woken by an angel’s trumpet. For this reading, however, I used a different deck. I used the Mary-El tarot deck, which has become one of my favorites over the years. For copyright reasons, I can’t post the image of that deck’s Judgment card, but it will turn up with a quick internet search if you want to see it. Basically, that card is a bright red, dragon-looking Phoenix bird. Whichever card you look at, the idea of resurrection, or rebirth, is front and center.
When the Judgment card comes up, it’s telling us that there is some pattern in our lives that has died and we are born anew, able to now see this pattern in a whole new light. It’s that feeling of a blindfold coming off. We’re waking up to something we couldn’t see before.
Have you ever had the experience of suddenly realizing that someone in your life never did have your best interests in mind? It’s a strange feeling of being shocked and not-at-all surprised at the same time. You can suddenly see the truth of their behavior towards you across time. It is exactly that feeling of a blindfold coming off. As painful as this type of experience might be, being able to see a situation for what it is, being able to look at it with true judgment (aka discernment) and possessing a wisdom we didn’t have before, is such a potent form of expansion that it makes it all worthwhile.
This waking up and seeing a new pattern doesn’t always have to be about something negative like the above example. It can be the exact opposite, in fact. Sometimes a simple action by someone else can wake us up to the fact that they have always truly loved us.
Oftentimes, the Judgment card is asking us to wake ourselves up and see the patterns within us that are no longer beneficial.
How do The Teacher and Judgment work together?
The image I see for these two is that one of the people who has woken up in their casket (from the Judgment card) is now turning back to face the living people that she’s left behind. Before she goes on to her afterlife, or even rebirth, she makes a priority of teaching something important to those she left behind.
As you go about your week, think about patterns that have ended, patterns you’ve come through, and how you might express what you’ve learned about them. Maybe the student who most needs to hear these lessons is you.
Let me know in the comments, or feel free to send me an email, if you have any questions or thoughts about this week’s guidance. Blessings and kindness to you all!
Paid subscribers, below is the mini-ritual to go along with this week’s reading. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions you might have.
(Everything is free for August 2023! This mini-ritual is available to everyone! Enjoy!)
So interesting Jenna and very relevant for me. This week I realised that although I am the teacher, I don't have to know everything. It's ok to ask others to contribute their wisdom too, which really helps me as I tend to want to do it all myself!
Excellent article. Will be incorporating this into my New Moon work this week.