“What is Dead May Never Die” — An Alternate Take on Death
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I should mention in advance that nothing you see here (or in any of my essays) is AI-generated because I believe resorting to AI “web-scraping” — when it isn’t outright theft — depreciates the original contribution of creative artists and writers. (But artificial intelligence — isn’t there an oxymoron in there somewhere? — as the “death of the arts” is a separate essay.) The most I will admit to as far as derivative content is the duly-quoted insights I received from Ethan Indigo Smith’s The Tao of Thoth and Benebell Wen’s I Ching The Oracle: A Practical Guide to the Book of Changes for many of my recent posts, and from other literary sources for my earlier “pre-AI” output. I will also toss in the occasional cultural reference from movies and television.
Most of you will recognize the prayer of the Ironborn to their Drowned God from the Game of Thrones television series. Their ceremonial sublimation was achieved by initiating a near-death experience via ritual drowning and resuscitation. (The response was “But rises again harder and stronger,” spiritually fortified to take on any challenge). Despite the modern preference for sanitizing its image in the guise of unspecified “transformation,” the appearance of the Death card in a reading usually means that something in one’s circumstances is about to reach its logical (and inescapable) conclusion, an ending that — at its most beneficial — casts off outworn conditions and liberates one from the past. This can just as easily be figurative as physical, but I’ve been thinking it might also offer a way to leapfrog the showdown in Judgement by rising to the occasion well before having to endure the terminal “trial by fire.”
The most amusing take I’ve seen on the essential nature of this card comes from a sarcastic quip by author Andy Boroveshengra on the old Aeclectic Tarot forum. Some members were waxing lyrical about Death as transformation, and Andy chimed in with “There is nothing more transforming than rotting in the ground.” As I see it, the arrival of Death means that an aspect of your current situation is angling toward its final chapter and you are offered a choice to either willingly let it go or try to “pull your chestnuts out of the fire” for one “last hurrah.” It may not be catastrophic, but making the right decision is no walk in the park either.
The cards that follow Death will suggest how you might proceed in this regard. If Death appears at the end of the spread, pull another card (with or without reshuffling, as you choose) to provide this advice. If you decide to undertake a major overhaul in your life, Death and its cohort will propel you, and if you prefer to push back against change, it will trim away whatever is non-essential to your mission, leaving an irreducible kernel of truth that is unavoidable in its certainty. There is no sliding delicately around it by embracing further “transformation;” in the end you must swallow the bitter pill in order to advance.
There is always a temptation to “sugarcoat” a card like Death by downplaying its severity. But in truth, it needn’t be desperate (just daunting) if we acknowledge its relevance to the matter at hand. The fact that Death was left unnamed in the old packs was merely ignoring the obvious by refusing to recognize it. I was quite taken by my previous epiphany (linked below, with a nod of thanks to Sallie Nichols) that the skeleton in the Tarot de Marseille Death card is not gathering severed heads and limbs in the act of “harvesting souls” but rather cultivating them in the fertile soil so they can aspire to a higher calling on their own initiative with Death’s encouragement. The figure of Death is not mounted in haughty disdain like one of the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” but instead walks among the “seedlings,” is one of them in an advanced state of evolution, and with a little imagination we might envision its scythe being hammered into a plowshare.
This developmental arc is is not so much an incipient transformation as a dawning realization that reaches its zenith in Judgement, which I submit is a more demoralizing card than Death because we might work with the latter by “bootstrapping” our own salvation before we must confront the forced transmutation of the former. (Think of Judgement as intractable Fire — the “trial by fire” mentioned earlier — and Death as more malleable Water, even if it is relatable to overbearing Mars in intense Scorpio.)
I can perhaps best elucidate Judgement by paraphrasing the line by Al Pacino (as Alphonse “Big Boy” Caprice) in the 1991 Dick Tracy movie: “I’m having a revelation! It’s coming . . . it’s coming . . . it’s gone!” (Redemption is particularly elusive if we fail to “make the cut” spelled out by the angel. Similar to the mandate of Justice, one must be found worthy and not wanting when the verdict is handed down.) Another movie reference for Judgement comes from The Godfather 1: it represents an inexorable “offer we can’t refuse” whereas the precursory opportunity for ascension offered by Death can suggest how we might outflank it by “getting in ahead of the curve.”
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on October 23, 2024.
