Major Arcana · XI
♎︎ Libra · ל Lamed · Thoth: Adjustment (VIII)
What you have done comes back to you. Be honest, weigh the facts and make the fair decision.
Lamed, the ox-goad, is the tallest letter, rising above the line; the word also means “to learn” and “to teach”, since the goad drives the ox as instruction drives the student. Its value is 30. Spelled in full, למד has the value 74. Lamed and Aleph together (the ox and the goad) make the word al and El; Crowley built a whole book on the formula LA, “not”, and AL, “God” (Liber AL vel Legis).
The 22nd path joins Geburah to Tiphareth: severity brought into balance in the heart. Libra, the scales, is the sign of equilibrium; the Faithful Intelligence increases the spiritual virtues.
Smith’s Justice sits crowned between two pillars with a purple veil behind her, holding an upright sword in her right hand and scales in her left. She is not blindfolded, since spiritual justice sees. Case’s key word is equilibrium (and action): the balance that comes from the right use of the sword.
Crowley calls the card Adjustment, “the Woman Justified”, because nature is not just but exact: every action is balanced by its reaction. A slender masked woman, Harlequin-like, balances on tiptoe holding a great sword, with the scales of Alpha and Omega hanging from her crown of ostrich feathers (the feather of Ma’at, against which the hearts of the dead are weighed). Crowley stresses that she is the complement of the Fool, as Libra is the balance of Air: she adjusts every disturbance.
Card image: Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite tarot, 1909 (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).