Embracing the Shadow Woman of Justice in Dark Times by Carolyn A. Cushing

Prayer to Justice  

Justice, we call you into the center of our hearts, our minds, our spirits. 

May the fire of your being inspire us to believe your beauty can shine forth in our world.

May the flow of your being purify and release us from wounds that come from the places where You are violated.

May the breath of your being pass through us and form on the lips of all words of wisdom.

May the endurance of your being aid us to persist in serving You.

May we hear your truth. May we know your balance. May we gather your wisdom.

Justice, guide us.

Justice seems so far away, obscured by terror, purposely ignored in these days of war and season of darkness. How can we invite Her back? What will bring Her renewal? 

For me, Justice is both an aspirational goal and a wisdom image. I’ve spent much of my life involved in activism for justice through volunteering within grassroots movements and serving on the staffs of national organizations. I’m also a Tarot practitioner who encounters the Justice archetype within the 22-card sequence known as the Tarot’s Major Arcana. 

In 2017 I explored aspects of Justice in the Faces and Spaces of Justice series where I looked at Justice images from different decks (the majority of which were created by women): right relationship between all beings; the role we can play in the renewal of Justice; the importance of Love; and the necessity of Justice’s presence in both the halls of power and community settings were vital teachings. 

In this fall’s darkening, I’ve been spending time with one particular image: the Shadow Woman of Justice from Rachel Pollack’s Shining Tribe Tarot, a deck of ancient, sacred—often explicitly Goddess-honoring—images from across the globe and throughout time. 

In 2017, I wrote about the Shadow Woman, including:

When Justice is not honored in the public sphere, she finds sanctuary in the cave.

Before humans built sites of worship, they entered caves as places to connect with and honor the sacred. Our ancestors experienced caves as the origin place of the Goddesses and Gods or the very world itself, a place to practice divination and ritual, or a burial site. Suggested by its rounded darkness and these associations with life, death, and mystery, the cave is an earthly womb offering regeneration for those who dare to give themselves to its darkness.

Here Shadow Woman and all those who dare to follow Her, meet their losses, see the limits to their power, come to understand what has thrown them out of balance. In the darkness of the cave, Shadow Woman gains this gift of greater self-knowledge. In the darkness of the cave, she begins the process of regeneration.

I see the Shadow Woman of Justice, who having given herself completely to the cave’s sacred energy, is beginning her return to the world. She stands at the threshold and has placed her two pans just beyond the cave’s entrance. She’s been casting stones – a kind of divination perhaps – to find the right time for her emergence. Now that there are a matching number of stones in each pan, the time is near.

Today I can’t see Shadow Woman as ready to emerge. 

I can imagine She has receded further back into the cave. If we are to partner with Her, we, too, must go deeper into the darkness. It’s no easy thing to do. In this darkness, there is terror that is not over but keeps coming. In this darkness there is wild, uncontrollable grief that is absolutely dangerous. In this darkness, we can’t see the pathway forward.

But this darkness is where we step away from the received knowledge, the known way of doing things, the strategies that have led to intractable violence. Here we release from our consciousness the voices of the leaders, thinkers, and fighters who have created the crises as well as the silence of those now profiting from the misery. 

Then we listen for different voices: the foolish seeming, the indigenous, the ancient, the grieving, the visionary ones. We take their voices into our minds, our hearts, our whole being. Led by Shadow Woman, we receive and balance all the voices even as they complexify reality. We will not be pushed into the limit of dichotomies. We reject false choices of: calling for preserving Palestinian life vs rejecting antisemitic hate; having good jobs vs. a healthy environment; setting up one religion to be superior to all others.

The Shadow Woman of Justice desires order, beauty, truth, and fairness for all. She is horrified when these are shattered. There is no timeline to her horror, She remembers deep into history. She shouts out from the edge of the cave even when no one will listen.

Yes, She moves between the depths of the cave and its edge. She does not abandon those who suffer because She is not honored in the public sphere. She is witness and mourner. She keens. She takes the suffering of all into Her heart. Then carries her own heavy heart and theirs into the dark to be transformed. She offers us all the courage to do the same, to not look away, to speak what we see, to seek our re-birth and Hers.

Where will our re-birth take us? The Shining Tribe Tarot offers an answer.

If we look at the Major Arcana as a journey—many call it the Fool’s Journey—we see a development from the Shadow Woman of 11 to the Shining Woman of 21. This half of the Fool’s Journey is the most challenging. We pass through Death and the disaster of the Tower; must adjust to the shifting light of Star and Moon and Sun; and finally answer a divine call in Awakening. When we take on this challenge the reward is the shimmer of the Shining Woman. 

Deck creator Rachel Pollack begins each description of the cards with a poem about the wisdom figure depicted. When we complete our Justice journey to stand as Shining Ones Rachel offers us words of celebration:

We know all the stories.
We give shelter to turtles.
We open our arms.
We shimmer with laughter.

Seasonal Ritual to Support the Journey

We might think of the Winter Solstice as the time of the Shadow Woman and the Summer Solstice as the time of the Shining Woman. We might dedicate ourselves to the journey between them (your direction, of course, depending on the hemisphere in which you live). 

Each year on the Winter Solstice, I find a Solstice Seed of the New to tend throughout the year. Because I work with the Tarot, I draw a card, but you could work with any oracle deck. Or record a dream image, note the first animal you see, or open an inspirational book in a random place and take the first line you see as wisdom written especially for you.

At first the seed is a mystery, but by Summer Solstice a revelation about its importance can shine forth. The fall may bring its harvest—or the need to compost. At year’s end whatever the seed birthed or composted returns to the dark and the embrace of the Shadow Woman.

BIO: Carolyn A. Cushing is a Tarot practitioner, seeker of justice, and poet. Through Soul Path Sanctuary, she offers spiritual mentoring, Tarot sessions, and online and in-person offerings to attune to the wisdom of the seasons and lunar cycles. For over 20 years, Carolyn has taught Tarot and facilitated ritual in Western Massachusetts and at Tarot conferences across the United States including the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies. Her Tarot practices and writing are included in The Gaian Tarot Companion Guide and Tarot for Troubled Times. She is cofounder of the Massachusetts Tarot Society. Carolyn has collaborated with many Tarot luminaries including extensively with Rachel Pollack. In 2021, Rachel said of Carolyn’s work with the Shining Tribe Tarot: “[Her] interpretations are brilliant, wide-ranging, deeply felt.  I think she may be the Tribe’s foremost interpreter (and yes, I’m including myself in the group of everyone else).” In April 2023, Carolyn began a two-year term as the Poet Laureate of Easthampton, Massachusetts.