Tag: transformation

13- Death

This article is part of a series of posts that will compare each card in the Tarot across different decks in order to study and explore each archetype and concept more deeply. This is not necessarily meant to be a teaching tool for others, but if you like to study the Tarot as much as I do, I hope you find it interesting. Enjoy!

For more on the decks referenced here please see this page in my blog: Tools of the Locksmith https://wordpress.com/page/theramblinglocksmith.com/163

A major reference for this study was “Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom” by Rachel Pollack.

Death

Death is also one of the most triggering and misunderstood cards in the tarot. We fear death in any form, even in the form of our losing all or some of our ego. This card refers to a confrontation with our own mask, and if we can give up this mask then a transformation that we were able to envision in the Hanged Man card can occur, if not then we continue to fear looking at who we can be without the mask of the ego.

What also scares us is change. Transformation is deep and often scary and painful change. Often we see that idea of transformation with very rose colored glasses: indigenous flute music playing in Sedona as we meditate calmly and become enlightened writing poetry and moonbeams and all of that. But actual transformation and ending cycles of any kind, particularly cycles of trauma can be very painful. Walking away from a mask that we used to protect ourselves our whole lives is painful and hard, and for that reason especially important and worth doing.

Lets explore all of the different ways to consider these major life changes and how to step away from our own mask.

Standard images from Rider-Waite in the card include:

  • Four people responding to the skeleton on the horse (Death)
    • The King shows the rigid ego being struck down, potentially the ego collapsing when life comes at us with alot of power
    • The priest faces death with the support of his robes and hat – value of a code of belief
    • The maiden in partial innocence has a malleable but unaware ego and turns away, unwilling to surrender
    • The child in complete innocence faces death and offers flowers
    • Also the idea that Death strikes everyone – kings and commoners alike
  • The black armour of death absorbs all light and color
  • The white horse repels all colors – both symbolize every thingness and nothingness
  • Sun rising between two pillars – the ego belongs to the duality of the pillars, but the power of Life symbolized by the sun only knows itself
  • A skeleton – representing death – the eternity of our own bones overcoming the transitory nature of the flesh

In the Ancestral Path Tarot we have an image that is as close as I could find to the Rider-Waite-Smith images in any of my decks. What is similar is we are seeing different stages of life all in one card but not necessarily different reactions as mentioned above.

In this case the old being cleared away to make room for the new – both with the old life sailing away behind the new life of the child exploring all they see with innocence, and the white trees in the back moving away to make room for new trees and plants. We also see some mushrooms that are helping to clear away what is decaying in a step of renewal. And above all of this is a wise owl witnessing the transformation for itself.

The question from this card is if you can see this change in you or around you? Can you take the owl’s perspective and see how it all fits into the same picture? Or are you only seeing or resisting parts of the picture?

The Light Seers Tarot puts the mask of the ego front and center. Is this mask reflecting what you could be a part of if you removed it, or is it showing what is truly inside of you if you can let the light and life penetrate the mask?

If you are getting this card its a sign that you are ready to lift the veil. You don’t need this mask anymore, remove it and be ready for the new you that emerges.

The Tarot of the Divine uses a part of the White Bear King of Valemon, a Norwegian fairy tale, to illustrate another version of lifting the veil to see what truly lies behind it. In this case the youngest daughter is illuminating what’s behind the curtain to see if this King is really a bear or a man. By doing this she changes the entire focus of the story. No more castles in the sky, and no more childhood fairy tale, but a chance to start a new story and grow up.

Starting a new story is difficult, as is leaving behind the story of our childhood. Not just difficult, scary, like death. But its necessary and part of living life. What is the new story that may be starting for you and which story needs to end so you can live in the present?

The Brady Tarot shows a long transformation through many different lives and species to remind us how eternal change and transformation truly is. A the skull of a Smilodon (sabretooth tiger) is being eaten by a the remains of a dinosaur. The human skull is being devoured by a new plant staring new roots that will eventually reach far enough to touch the dinosaur skull below. The only thing left alive other than the plant is the cockroach on the right.

In this card we are not just seeing transformation, we are seeing centuries long evolution. What resonates in your live when you focus on the concept of evolution? What are you evolving either within or outside of yourself? How can you connect this to a bigger picture so that it makes more sense?

In the Osho Zen Tarot would like us to understand a different kind of transformation entirely. Its not moving from one storyline to another, or removing one mask, or seeing beyond our own evolution. Its understanding how to drop the act of the teacher and to begin living the lesson. That’s all.

The teacher is talking all about the path and sharing the knowledge of the path but is not walking the path. They are technically still asleep even though they are talking and sharing wisdom in their sleep.

What lesson have you been teaching yourself and not living? Go live it, be a participant in your own story. Take that safe base metal and turn it to gold. You’ve got this.

The Sufi Tarot might be my favorite of all the Death cards. It’s so simple yet hard to do. Turn your back on the shadow and change the vibration of your own energy to move forward. Face the direction you know you need to face to start a new path. You know the way, you just need to change your direction and start walking away from something in the past that has never been healthy for you.

Turning your back on the version of yourself that you no longer are, or a relationship that you know is toxic is hard. It hurts in a very deep way. And we have to feel that fear and that pain in order to grow and move in the direction we know is right. And the way that we know that its the right direction is that it doesn’t feel the way the toxic one did.

Its real deep grown up stuff, but dive in, you are ready.

Lost in utopia

The lizard has lost its manners and is pulling a grumpy scowl across its face
The blue flower strays lackadaisically in the wind
Tall towers stroke the sky

We’ve lost our minds but we haven’t yet lost the universe

A half formed thought streaks across the sky in plaid letters
What do the letters say?
We don’t know.
We’ve lost our language and misplaced all our punctuation.
We flow through abstract sequences, colors bleeding into other colors.
Inanimate objects tell us what to think
Until…

We finally hit our head
feel our own blood run down our forehead
and wake up.

Wisp dreams

their dreams were wisps of smoke
            they prayed for rain
                   through the understated mahogany of the trees

the dotted stars faded in the morning 
           but the wisp prayers still hung in the air
                   unable to be blown away  in new gusts of wind

only the softly falling drops that finally came three months later
          finally washed away the answered prayers
                   like salt being washed from a wound

the cleansing rain awoke a new dream
    this time reflected in puddles that would last until the rain stopped
          and the new dreams echoed into the sky
                  with the rays of the sun.

Shrapnel 2

On paper and in person she was as small as a mouse
and still she tried to make herself smaller

She wished to shrink to a speck of stardust
infinitely small
but also imbued with powers contained
in the nascent universe inside her

One day she went into her mind
and did not come back out again

Instead she became stardust.
Her dream of becoming a speck came true

But that was not the end of her story…..

She became a seed planted in a new place
and all that there was left to do
was to expand.

She sang the body electric
She became the stars
and her own new multiverse under her own terms

Like shrapnel exploding
she exploded into the biggest planet 
anyone had ever seen

Her power was compassion
and no one could ever make her feel small again

We are all made of stars.

The Point

Slogging across dewy fields of tall grass she faltered 
searching through mossy swamps 
she got lost in the depths
of her own thoughts

She pierced herself on her own pointed arrow 
that she spent a good amount of her life staring at and sharpening 
with her mind

And she perished this way

And the world kept turning
and the grass continued to grow high 
and confuse those who wandered through it

This angered her
how could she not be the key to the grass and the swamp and the arrow
how could she spend her life dedicated to slogging through these fields
and sharpening this arrow 
when its point only directed her own path in the end

She was not the solution, she was only her solution
and this sorrowed her

She was missing something big
she had searched for that something big
until she perished and never found it
all the while not seeing that 
all she had to do was……

look up.

The grass isn’t meant to be sorted through…its meant to grow
There is no secret in the swamp
The arrow is not the way.

You are part of the path only if you look up
and see that you are not the only one walking it

look to the stars to see this
look to link souls with other beings to learn this
until you learn this
stop sharpening your arrow
and look up.

The basic lizard

 
 The basic lizard 
 flies its colors 
 whenever it wants
  
 It zigs, it zags
 It complains
 by shedding its skin
 and becomes next level extra
  
 It wishes it was a snake 
 but its not that smooth
  
 it sees the cracks 
 and escape routes
 It survives and 
 takes pleasure in 
 the sun with 
 infrequent blasts 
 of joy 
 and corniness 
  
 Its  laughter is so rusted
 it sounds like ancient wood and nails 
 creaking
 in doorways
 that don’t need to be opened or confronted
 because you can shed a tail and slide through them
  
  
 But its basic lizard laughter all the same
 And it has served its purpose