The Beauty of Death
Major Soho Art gallery vibes from “The Little Sister Tarot” @gthonson
Death comes for us all. As humans we are a part of nature, of the wheel of the year, and death is inevitable. As we begin to slip into the coolness of fall, I see the rhythm of this card all around me. The deepening color of the trees, the increasingly cooler nights, the diminishing hours of an ever decreasing warmth of the sun’s rays, the changes in offerings at the farmers market, transition softly makes its presence known. The Death card has appeared often and persistently over the last several weeks, it enters without announcement and asks me to make due with what it whispers in my direction.
While many of us may look at Death as “transition”, the late Rachel Pollack made the ever so important ,yet miniscule shift in this interpretation in “Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom” ,
“..it shows us the precise moment at which we give up the old mask and allow the transformation to take place”
Pollack writes about the 13th Major Arcana card as disintegration of the ego. The mask we have been wearing our entire life, gets lowered and dissolved. We allow the old energetic version of us to go, in order for a new and truer one to move on through, entering our physical body in its place.
Death does not symbolize an easy movement of this energy. (Wouldn’t that be lovely if it did!) When Death arises as we lay down the Tarot, it signifies holding on to the outdated version of ourselves because , “Oh no! If I am not THAT person…then who am I actually?” And that, my friends, is the scary bit. Our ego grips so tightly to the version we have created and presented to the world all this time, that the releasing can feel..squeezed, tight, and gasping.We may feel the energetic nudge of “Wouldn’t it be easier if we just stayed where we were? At least we know this life.” I firmly believe that this could work out for some time. You may be able to play at this game for a few more weeks or even months, but when Death comes for you, it raises the mirror up to the reality of the stronghold your ego has on someone you no longer are.
Sometimes it takes a long while to wiggle free when we are stuck in this box, but with every small twist of our shoulder and shimmy of our torso, we slowly begin to emerge. There is no rush here. It takes as long as it needs to take, and when we have given the final push, and are free of our containment, we breathe in the new air and are ready for our next lesson in Temperance. She has also been making her way to me lately and I look forward to meeting her soon. In due time, I am almost there. I hope. 🐣