March 12, 2010 - Death

Although I know the Death card rarely has anything to do with physical death, this is not usually the card I want to see when asking a question. The Death card is about endings. Heraclitus, a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, said you never step in the same river twice. Change is inevitable. It is perhaps the one thing you can count on (like death). Things end. Things begin. The Wheel of Fortune goes round and round. A door closes, and another opens. It's how life works.

I'm not big on change. I don't know if this has always been the case. Change was part and parcel of my childhood, major changes, my parents divorce, their remarriages, moving. I weathered those. But somewhere along the way I've become rigid, fearful. I've lost my resilience. The thing is change comes whether you're ready or not. Chapter's end and new ones begin.

The Death card says you are going through a transition. There's a change of status, moving from the known to the unknown. You are cast adrift. Okay. Yes. That's pretty much described my past few years. Experiencing inexorable forces, in the path of sweeping change, caught by the inescapable, riding your fate? Been there; done that. Time to get on with things? Yeah. I'm trying, doing, slowly but surely.

In the Jane Austen Tarot, the Death card depicts the death of Henry Dashwood. Jane Austen rarely portrays death in her books, but in Sense and Sensibility she starts the book with the death of this man and the rest of the novel follows the ramifications of this death on his two daughters. It looks bad for Elinor and Marianne. They go from wealthy to poor. They have to depend on the kindness of strangers, in this case a cousin who offers them a cottage on his estate. They lose their chances for a good marriage, or so they think. There is a brush with death, grave disappointment, despair, endurance, but friends, deep family connections, finding those true to you, and in the end -- true love. At the beginning and middle, the girls had no idea of their happy ending. We never do.

What would Jane do?

"Unalterable change may seem a bitter pill on initial ingestion, yet as the stages of the meal of life are placed upon our table, we may find the resultant foodstuffs unexpectedly to our taste. Bitter or sweet, we must continue to consume the fare we are served, in the order in which it is served. Digestion is, of course, another matter entirely." p. 38