The Major Arcana and The Hero’s Journey, Death, Part II

Tomorrow night is Samhain, the Celtic New Year’s Eve; or the Christian All Hallows Eve. The time, as a Scottish prayer says, of “ghoulies and ghosties, and long-leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night.” A time, as I’m sure you’ve heard ad nauseum, when the veil between the worlds grows thinnest. A perfect time to talk about Death.

The tarot Death card is macabre enough to satisfy even the Gothiest of Goths. It almost always features a skeleton. In the RWS version, Death is astride his traditional pale horse. Other decks show death swinging a scythe and reaping a field of heads and hands and feet. But the message of the Death card is actually quite uplifting.

The Hebrew letter nun signifies Death. Nun’s meaning is fish, an ancient symbol of fecundity and reproduction. The early Christians chose the fish or vesica piscis as the icon of their new religion because it symbolizes that fertile threshold between the material world and the divine. It is also a perfect metaphor for Death.

Scorpio, the sign of sex, drugs, death, and rock and roll, is, not surprisingly, associated with the Death card. A Scorpio’s goal in life is to get beyond the mundane and discover what it’s really all about; and she will embrace anything that will help her go there. Scorpio rules the reproductive organs, underlining yet again the close association between death and rebirth.

Pluto (or Hades), the lord of the underworld, and Mars, the god of war, are Scorpio’s planets. Both are intimately associated with death.

We used our compost bin to explain death to our children. We fill the bin with dead leaves, kitchen scraps, dead plants, grass clippings, and other dead stuff and it becomes the most alive thing in the garden, full of bacteria and fungus and insects that in turn die and feed other bacteria and fungus and insects, etc. The whole thing eventually transforms into fertile compost that will grow more plants that will provide nourishment and beauty for us and more material for the compost bin. Without death and transformation there can be no life.

The message of death is that you can’t take it with you. When you get to that threshold you must drop everything. Death is a transformation, a change from one thing into another. When you die your physical body falls away from your bones and your life here on earth is finished, you must leave it behind if you want to continue your journey. This is true of any transformation. Something must be given up or sacrificed before lasting change can take place. I think that the Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, and Temperance describe this process. Life happens (The Wheel). There are consequences (Justice). We choose to sacrifice ourselves (The Hanged Man) and die (Death) so that we may transform (Temperance) into something better.

Death is not optional, we all must eventually die. But facing the consequences of our mistakes, sacrificing our pride and our predjudice, and transforming into a better person is.

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