The scales and the sword
Justice holds a pair of scales and an upright sword, the oldest attributes of the virtue. Waite says the card follows the traditional symbolism, and reports that the figure is said to be Astraea.
In the tradition
Weighing as an image of judgment is very old: in the Egyptian Book of the Dead a heart is weighed against a feather. Renaissance Europe fixed the look of Justice, and Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia of 1593 gives her the scales for fairness and the sword for its enforcement.
Astraea, the maiden of justice in Greek and Roman poetry, became the constellation Virgo, beside the Scales of Libra. Waite’s Justice is not blindfolded, unlike many courthouse statues.
In the cards
On the Six of Pentacles a merchant holds the same scales while he gives coins away.
Sources
- A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910). Waite's own guide to the deck he designed with Pamela Colman Smith, with each card's divinatory meanings.
- Cesare Ripa, Iconologia (1593). The Renaissance handbook of personified virtues and how to draw them.
Updated October 9, 2026.
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