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IT'S IN THE FEATURED CARDS _______________________________________________________ January 17, 2001 Well! As I have done many monologues on the moon I will look at the Scorpion card today. Card number 13, titled Death. Many decks, Visconti, Golden Dawn, Barbara Walker, Ceremonial Magick, use similar imagery: a skeleton wielding a scythe moving through a 'field' of human heads/skulls. DuQuette choice to provide a modern version of the scythe, a push lawn mower, in his imagery. Many post-modern decks have altered the title of this card to "transformation" and the imagery is also altered from the seemingly negation of life via the skeleton to some transcendent icon and eschew the skeletal image. I rather 'like' the skeleton, especially as portrayed in Thoth! However, my card shows two figures, both draped in red, but of divergent brilliance: the most removed figure is outlined against a black and featureless background demonstrating that we are the masters of our destiny. Only we can make the choices that will give definition to the background our existence. No choice is ever made without there being a consequence, so chose well. The figure is cloaked in a faded and worn red cape that still shows signs of its original elegance. The figure, a man, is wild-haired and has a frenetic countenance; his tangled beard is wind tossed and unkempt. In his left hand he grasps a scythe with a blade of immense proportions, accompanied by an esoteric banner of fluttering, coiling and snapping pink furbelows. The foreground figure is the classical Grim Reaper, although the cowled cloak is red, the Eastern colour of happiness and fortune, rather than the western black of mourning and clerical contemplation. This figures scythe is mounted atop a thick and sturdy staff. Thus we see not only the reaper, but also the journeyer in realms unknown, uncontemplated, undreamed. Keywords for Death: Creation necessitates destruction, Endings/Beginnings, Elimination/Renewal, Transition, Inescapable Conclusions From my personal tarot table I give you my understandings and impressions of this card: DEATH is transformation, the inexorable nature of human existence. DEATH is the universal link in Nature. DEATH is a challenge; the challenge of caring, of loving, but with detachment. DEATH is the inevitable conclusion of physical life, the spectrum of living at its end stage. The FOOL is confronted with circumstances of unavoidable change. The lesson to maintain continued excitement at the challenge present: dignity is incorporated into the HANGED MAN'S posture of personality. The experience of DEATH then becomes one of release, emergence, and surviving the brutality of the journey. The effort, the labours associated with JUSTICE are reprised in releasing cumbersome mind-sets and emerging with the capacity to undergo constant change with equanimity and good will. DEATH can be viewed as shedding an old or inappropriate set of tenets; much like the snake sheds its skin, to transition to and prosper in a new identity. DEATH is about letting go and moving forward in the physical and spiritual quests of the journey. DEATH is the reflection of the realms, one into the other. DEATH is change about which we cannot call The CHARIOT to victor, to conquer. The ROTA continues to spin regardless the introspection of The EREMITE, the negotiation of PRUDENCE, or the patience and compassion of FORTITUDE. The DEATH of the familiar, the closely held, the sacrosanct, is never permanent; it is but transition. The mysteries of DEATH can be deciphered. The HANGED MAN and PRUDENCE compliment each other AND lead The FOOL to the lesson of removal of the false self. The false self, that part of The FOOL that remains locked in falsehood and that embraces inequity and superficial ego. If The FOOL has incorporated the lessons and the experiences of the journey up till now, a great awakening is coming. An awakening that points to the feasibility that death is not finality, but transition to a rebirth on the physical and spiritual spheres. Where will the journey next lead The FOOL? __________________________________________________ In The Cards!
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