DEATH
Let death teach you how to live -- Terminus. The end of a way of being. Clearing the path. The ascent to higher understanding. The beginning of true integration. A new beginning with a deeper understanding unfolds. Let go.
SHADOW: Forcing your hand. Using aggressive power to deal with a situation. Pushing people around as in a dictatorship or abusive relationship. The need to pull things apart. Destruction for destruction's sake. Pleasure in upheaval.
The Hanged Man falls to the ground. Her red gown turns silky white and her back sprouts white feather wings. Her chestnut hair turns ashy gray. The vampire transforms into a weeping angel.
Death moves through the woods with a scythe, collecting souls just as feudal farmers collected wheat. The season ends. It's harvest time. Death holds an hourglass. Time has run out. A small child looks up with wonder. Children accept all things at face value until experience and education lead them to question and fear.
Death exists in the shadow areas of our psyche until we are forced to deal with it. Death is not the opposite of life. Life is infinite. Death is the opposite of birth, a construct of the material world. Life's infinity resides behind the dance of birth and death. Consciousness awakens in the Fool and resolves in complete integration at the World. Death arrives at number thirteen, the uncanny number of strangeness and occult significance. Death is the energy keeping the material world fresh and new.
Esoterically, Death occurs during initiation into a magical or secret society. The old self drops away and the new soul emerges. Death inhabits shavasana, the final resting pose of yoga, where the practitioner is transformed by her practice. Death inhabits the shadows, forests, and thickets of gothic literature, film, and horror.
How do we integrate Death's lessons? How can Death teach us how to live? Death teaches us all things change constantly from the molecular level to the mundane life. Death is ongoing like the weather. Death is the energy allowing emotions to appear, be felt, and slip away, only to be replaced by new ones.
Western cultures traditionally reflect the human spirit either rising to heaven or descending into hell after death. This is a dualistic version of the cosmos ignoring a complexity, which holds all options simultaneously. The Dark Wood teaches us to befriend the darkness, look Death in the eyes, and make peace with all aspects of human existence. Death is the impermanence of the world.