Death is a fairly dramatic card, and not in a “THE DEATH CARD!! BWAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!!!” kind of way. Death is a signifier of change, transformation and rebirth.
Continuing our trip through the Hermetic laws, it’s time to consider the Law of Transformation. Case says that “dissolution is the secret of the Great Work.” Everything eventually decays and rots. Mountains do it over the space of millennia while the veggies in my crisper drawer seem to do it over a period of minutes. Decay is required for new life to grow, though. Think composting, organic fertilization, or simply the idea of death making room on the Earth for new lives to have a chance. Death is also the transition from the physical to the metaphysical. Your body is going to die, but your soul and astral body will continue and eventually, will flourish in a new physical body.
It’s the Circle of Life! (ahem)
Death’s Hebrew letter designation is Nun, which can mean “fish” or “to grow or propagate”. The fish is a well known symbol of Christ, whose transformative powers are fairly well known. It also reminded me of some illustration of hydroponic gardens that show fish swimming below the plants, their effluvia working as fertilizer. Scorpio, our card’s astrological designation, is known to rule the reproductive organs.
The skeleton is sometimes known as the foundation of movement. All muscles are attached to it, and you couldn’t do much without bones! This brings in the idea of “seed power”. Case emphasizes the following statement, and urges us to note and meditate on it:
An inner power projects itself, or a seeming extension of itself, as space and fills that space with the forms of energy whose combination constitutes the body of the universe.
The “seed” at the top left corner of the image is made of two ovals, one inside the other. The larger oval is the space, and the inner oval is the inner power. Note the emanations.
The skeleton itself is walking from North to South, from dark to light, from ignorance to knowledge. His scythe is in the shape of the letter Tau, like the gallows the Hanged Man hanged from. Remember, Tau is the letter for the World card. The steel of the blade relates to Mars, as does the red background of the card.
The river flows towards the sunrise. It’s a sunrise to emphasize the new beginning inherent in the meaning of the card.
The man and woman’s heads in the foreground are Qabalistic/Tree of Life symbols. The man is Wisdom and Beauty and the woman is Understanding. The hands symbolize the new activities that result, and the foot is to symbolize the stepping out from the Piscean age into the Aquarian.
This week’s meditation directive is to contemplate change, and our reactions to it. I tend to be resistant to it. I like my happy little rut and am not disposed to hoist myself out of it! (Thanks, Marge!). I am trying to catch myself closing down to the idea of change, large or small, and examining whether I am reacting to the merits of new ideas and situations, or whether I’m just reacting to the fear of change.
Lucina's Cauldron 