I once asked the Oracle "Being Alive Means ....". I got the Death card. I still laugh about it.
The Death card is not about the literal death of any person. It may represent the death of something else, like a project, plan, or relationship. This card also points to a time of harvest, symbolized in classical decks by the reaping skeleton. Unless the fruits of summer are harvested, they are lost to winter's harshness, and the people do not eat. As the scythe cuts the cords that link us to the past, it liberates us to go forward without fear, because we have nothing left to lose. Everything being pruned away is recycled for the fertility of the future, so that nothing is really ever lost, despite seasonal cycles of gain and loss.
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Almost invariably, both commentators and readers will backpedal away from this card in a reading, beginning with a quick and reassuring apology like, “This doesn’t predict death or disaster so much as some kind of change or transformation.” Most of humanity is just as quick to back away from this subject, which in fact is a driving force behind much of human culture, especially religion. And of course the fear of death authors gods and spins lies like nothing else on earth, from those with no clue as to what this Death really is or means. But a Tarot reader here is doing the querent a disservice in not allowing this card to impact the reading with at least some emotional force. This is an opportunity to feel death’s nearness, its relevance, its inevitability, and its finality. In Castaneda’s words, it’s a chance for sassy, immortal, irresponsible, important beings with the sense of having time to use Death as an advisor. On failing to deal with our death directly, one can choose from a vast array of metaphysical foma and live a life twisted by fear. But this will not insure one a noble place among the ancestors. Buddha tried to take the subject head on by teaching anatta, no soul, that there may be a rebirth of some of your component factors, and even some memory, but there is no spirit that reincarnates from one life into another. He taught the need to face this possibility, to give us the urgency and the diligence that we need in order to live our lives more skillfully. Even the harder-core Theravadans can get pretty squirrelly and apologetic when this subject comes around. But with that said, we can set ourselves a challenge, while staring into this abyss, to find the perfect life to live, no matter what is true beyond this. It would seem that a full, rich, and optimized life might satisfy all the contingencies and possibilities. It will be likely that such a life would have a deep connection with something greater than ourselves. We can ask Mr. Death for advice on this when we see him pop up in a reading. He will not give us vapid, mealy-mouthed platitudes.
If we are to become heroes in life, it’s important that we each make our hero’s journeys down into the underworld, to meet and learn from this great shadow, to dance the danse macabre, to bargain for Persephone’s return to the light, to feel the death wish Thanatos, to come to know heaven and hell, all in order to conquer our fears without the aid of lies and delusion. All of the present will one day be mulch, as detritivores eat up the past. In the great old-growth forests and climax ecosystems, life and death are equals. Destruction becomes renewal as it clears the way for new life. To run from this is to run from what we are. We’ve pretended for too long to be beings of light from outer space that come to get dirty in order to get clean again. We make up strange explanations for how this light can be that ignorant. And this illusion of alien nature has made a real mess of our home world here, the ground of our being, and the prospects for all our descendants and other relations. This is the price of our cowardice in facing our finitude. Seneca asked, “You want to live, but do you know how to live? You are afraid of dying, and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?” Death would have us ask the big questions, to cut it all down to the barest of bones: what is important, really? The meat won’t survive, but some contribution or legacy might. Then we let the outdated and outgrown decompose into soil again.
Finding a way to closure, of a matter ending or ended, is urged by this card. Mourning and grieving are done by the wisest among us, but there comes a time to let the gone be gone, to let the dearly departed depart, and the outdated and outgrown die, to let go, to have nothing more to lose now, and get on with the living again. Even if the refreshing new life or next transformation has so far failed to make the slightest appearance, we clear the way first, unhaunted by things not let go. Our costly, embalmed corpses, clung to and kept from decay, are resting in error, not peace. Descansos are our milestones. Change is the proper way to greet death, not fighting or denying the inevitable, but seeing all things, including ourselves, as merely part of the larger process or procession. It’s not about the far side of transformation, but about what precedes it, the way we face change in the present and have our say in its progress, and the way we’ve let go of old baggage and burdens, that we might step more lightly into this world of renewal. What’s left of life is most of it. We stay present by keeping life current.
Death should at least metaphorically scare the crap out of us, to show us how little time we have to make the most of this life. We want it to urge us to reach down deep inside, to call upon every resource we can. We want to feel its power, to see what it’s done for and to us. We want the motive to let go of dead weight. We want the encouragement to place some hope in the future, and make our contributions, through our work and art, and our children. We want to rage and not go so gently. It’s the fear of death that’s the thing to be feared, while it’s death that can give us the courage to live. The inevitability of death means our debt for life is already paid: what we do now is spend life before it gets taken. This is the treasure we bring back from our time down below with the shadow. That we have much living to do, and not all the time in the world, suggests that we decide what’s important, what is worth keeping with us, and what we need to let go or set free. We stop killing precious time. We high-grade the ore of life. It’s a moving-day yard sale, maybe a little bit sad and nostalgic, but we lighten up. We get our priorities straight. And it may be a good thing after all that the reaper has no respect for the self, that in the end we can only continue in larger continua, involving our ancestors and heirs, and other lines less mortal, like the great work of mankind’s transformation, or other faces of higher purpose.