Death...

Sophie

I received this card for today. I have not read what others wrote so far, I just want to record my first impressions.

If I put my thumb on the name of the card so that I don't see it, I see a dingy figure entirely swathed in a grey drape which covers all, including his face, holding in his draped hands a ball.

To me this figure is fear. Not naked fear - but fear that comes as a ghost in the night, the anxiety that keeps you sleepless, the fear of night, the fear of morning, the fear of life itself.

And what do we fear more than death, real or metaphorical, that comes to us unknown, in disguise? We fear what comes after. Our little lives, like the ball in his hand, are so fragile, so easily dropped...and that is what we fear - to be dropped into an abyss.

I fear that after this phase of my life, which is coming to an end, there will be the abyss. A dark grey fear, a fear that clutches me as the figure clutches the ball.

I must pull another card, to conjure this fear. But it is good to look at it and name it.
 

Satori

I fear that after this phase of my life, which is coming to an end, there will be the abyss. A dark grey fear, a fear that clutches me as the figure clutches the ball.

Funny, but to me right now the ball seems so slippery, like the robed figure is afraid to lose it's grasp on the ball....

I must pull another card, to conjure this fear.
Did you mean conquer?
And what card did you pull?

Are you ok Helvetica? This sounds like it hit you hard. I'm wondering how you are. Sending love your way girl. :)

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

When I was thinking about the card, remembering it, I was thinking about songs. Faery songs. I started thinking about how some of the cards sound. And I wondered about the sound of Death.

I don't like this card.
It doesn't even belong in the deck to me.
Is this Death to a Fae-
~the loss of your wings
~no forest
~no glowing orbs of light
~no companions
~no leaves
~no face
~having to wear clothes, give up your nudity, keep secrets
~no toadstools or mushrooms
~not even a hint of what the Fae afterlife might be....just grey, robes and a dull grey orb.

So Froud says that to a Fae, and I cannot consult any of mine, they are Scarce right now, Death is this card. I don't think so. I have often thought about taking it out of the deck. It has never come up for me in a reading, and I find it so unlike the rest of the deck as to not belong.

I'm not really afraid of it, I just don't think it is Death to the Fae. I think it is Death to Brian Froud.
 

Satori

I was thinking about a better face for Death.
I pulled the next card in the pack.
The Faery Godmother.

And I almost shouted out, "YES!"

The Faery Godmother could be a Death card. She is what I would want the Fae to see when Death comes for them.
A reminder of what life was like, a gust of winds from the First Forest and the sound of the Owl, and the gentleness of her eyes, as she lifts them up and asks them to choose, one last time, choose..........

There are Birch trees behind her...I wish I could remember what I know about Birch trees, but fertility comes to mind. The fertility of what it means to be Fae and to die, probably in the little patch of dirt or the pond or the nest of leaves or the stand of mushrooms or high up in the sky...and suddenly the breath just escapes away and the Faery Godmother comes in a swirl of silk and light and beauty, and asks you her question, like a Sphinx or a Goddess.

And then time freezes and all of eternity appears before you and all of time winks past and you are gone. And maybe the orb in the Faery Godmother's hand glows a little brighter, or the apple if you bit it, tastes a little sweeter.

But the Grey robed thing with the ball....that isn't a Faery Death.
It it is something else.
something I have yet to name.
 

FaeryGodmother

Helvetica said:
And what do we fear more than death...
Apparently we fear public speaking more than death, statistically anyway. :D

I have never associated the Faery Godmother and Death together before I read this thread. I'm going to have to give this some thought.

To me, this Fae Death represents the Unknown and Unknowable. That is far scarier to me and yet releasing as well.

By your reaction to the card Helvetica I would think what scares you most is simply not knowing what comes next.

FGM
 

Sophie

FaeryGodmother said:
Apparently we fear public speaking more than death, statistically anyway. :D

eh, not I, I'm a real chatterbox, and give me a room full of people to speak to and I'll take them on!


FaeryGodmother said:
By your reaction to the card Helvetica I would think what scares you most is simply not knowing what comes next.

You know, it's weird. I actually love surprises. I love getting lost in a place and wandering until I get found again.

What scares me is material loss. Loss of resources. And not knowing if it's going to happen or not is a big issue to me. I also fear the no-man's land, life lived the same old, same old way, without risk, without adventure, without passion.

I see both here in this card - here is figure, reduced to - a ghost. Nothing at all around it, nothing to support it, no fountain, no food - everything elf wrote about. And in a no-man's land. A limbo.

You see the contradiction?

I've taken many risks in my life, but this is the first time I am contemplating one that will affect my material life, my resources (I've taken risks with my actual life before...). This is my issue at present and why I reacted so strongly to the card. It's actually (really) making me sick. But fortunately, there are a whole stack of happy healing ones in that little cardboard deck :)

I think the Faery Godmother's death would be gentle and loving, a gift.

Edited to add: btw, the other card I drew - to conjure this particular brand of death - was Laiste, Moon's Daughter - a bright and lovely faery to guide my through the dark grey night...
 

lunar_rabbit

Veeeery interesting! This topic particularly hit home with me this morning because very recently I brought up both FaeryGodmother and Death. One thing that caught my eye was whether they were holding the same object in their hand?

The card came up in an informal reading I was doing for a friend. Instead of laying the cards out in a structured spread, I just spread them all over my bed and picked the ones that were jumping up and down.

In this case, these were the thoughts that I had about the death card, and passed along to my very depressed friend who has suffered a lot of loss this year. I told him that he had been in autumn, and then it turned to winter. He saw beautiful things perish, and warmth grow colder. Now is understandably scared that after the end of winter comes something worse. The faery Death card symbolized the midst of winter (winter solstace, or the darkest day of the year). The thing you need to trust is that after winter comes spring. To me, Death and FaeryGodmother are both winter -- the beautiful sparkle of it as well as the cold darkness.

Instead of seeing Death as an ending (although it is) I also saw shoots of green crocus flowers peeking up between the old sticks and brown leaves.

When reading this post, I also got a vision of the elves in the Lord of the Rings, cloaking themselves and going away on their ships. Was it symbolic for death? Maybe, but it was a choice. Peaceful and beautiful. And in one way or another, onto better things after a bittersweet goodbye.
 

Amashelle

Having read this thread out of curiosity, I am struck by how varied people's reactions to it were/are. We all seem to put our own ideas of what we believ lies behind the veil into interpreting the card, and I am no different, so I thought I'd share.

I love this card. Someone mentioned that it didn't seem to belong in the deck, and in some ways it doesn't, because all the other cards are about continuation. Even the other challengers are about facing aspects of our selves that we don't want to face, and Death is the only card that does not have a face for us to face (well, except the singers and the Rarr --- though if I look closely, sometimes I can see faces and beings within their light, too, but I digress).

Death is the only faceless card. Not because she (to me it is a she) does not have a face to show, like the singers and the Rarr do not have recognizable faces, but because she has chosen to veil herself.

I don't believe she is veiled to scare us --- quite the opposite, really. She is veiled to protect us from the unknowable, from the things that our mortal minds cannot fully grasp while retaining sanity. She also veils herself to protect her own mind, from the physical aspect of her duty, the actual act of bringing death to indidiviuals, for to see the anguish and the anger of our final moments, or the sorrow of those left behind, over and over again would surely invite madness. How much easier is it to blame the faceless? To not to have to put a name to our anger, to make it tangible and real? How much easier is it to blame than to accept the inevitablilities of life: accidents happen.

And yet, though veiled, she is not blind. She sees beyond the suffering, something better, someplace happier, sometime more dreamed of. What does not kill us makes us stronger, but that which we do not surive brings peace, adventure, dreams come true. Death cannot promise this for us, but beneath the shroud, she hopes.

On another train of thought, She does not take from us, but she helps us to let go of those things we need to leave behing, or that need to leave us.

The globe in her hands. Someone said it looks like an apple, another said it was our fragile little lives. I believe it is the hope of the future. It is marked (in my mind) like a skull, that fagile capsule that holds all potential of thought (i.e. our brain), imagination, intellect, and, most importantly, understanding: for while we cannot yet understand what lies beyond her veil, the ability to understand is held gently in her hands waiting until we are ready to step into the unknown. (In contrast, as it was mentioned before, I do not believe the Faery Godmother holds the same globe: hers is a pearl, the promise of material wealth, contrasted with the apple, the promise of good health: an apple a day...)

Those are my thoughts on this card.
 

pickled pixie

Wow!! I found everyones view of the Death really interesting and all so varied. I have to say I love this card, she doesn't scare me at all I always feel a sense of relief when she appears, the end of all the noise, confusion , bustle and commotion just silence and peace (except a quiet high pitch whistle I hear but thats just a weird personal thing ;) ) To me she really is a blank canvas, no busy goblins and pixies causing trouble just a brand new start....

sorry if I'm waffling and this doen't make much sense but I'm trying to sneakly write while working ; )

PP
 

DragonFae

Sometimes the death card does freak me out depending on life at the moment but most of the time I just see it as an ending...and to me without endings there are no beginnings...and therefore it is an "okay" card.
 

Jewel

DragonFae said:
Sometimes the death card does freak me out depending on life at the moment but most of the time I just see it as an ending...and to me without endings there are no beginnings...and therefore it is an "okay" card.
ditto ...