The Wild Unknown Tarot - Death XIII

Sulis

This is a very simple image and doesn't take much description:
Against a background of darkness lies the skeleton of a decomposing bird. To me it looks like a baby bird. Some feathers are still there but it's dead, dead, dead... No coming back..

This card depicts Death perfectly to me..
Death is inevitable, it happens to everything and everyone. There is no escaping it and no reversing it.
It is sad, sometimes scary, often painful but necessary.
When something has died, it decomposes and that decomposition feeds what is to come next. Without death there can be no new growth..
 

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lark

Besides what you said above Sulis this card to me is about stillness.
Often when I come upon a bird's body laying in the grass I stop to really look at it, examine it closely.
Because it is the only time I can do that when it is perfectly still.
And not only can you see the outside, but often the inside as well.
I think we do this when people we love die....there is a stillness, an examining of their life and the role we had in it.
Death causes us to stop....the world around us to slow down, to bring us into the present moment...it causes an acute awareness of life.
And what life means...a glimps of it's precious spark...that is so irretrievable when once gone.

This card has a sobering meaning for me.
As I was waiting for the results of a sonagram on my new to be grandbaby...I pulled this card.
And at 8 weeks there was no heart beat.
So for all we say about Death meaning transformation etc. sometimes death means death plain and simple, no getting away from it.
 

Sulis

Besides what you said above Sulis this card to me is about stillness.
Often when I come upon a bird's body laying in the grass I stop to really look at it, examine it closely.
Because it is the only time I can do that when it is perfectly still.
And not only can you see the outside, but often the inside as well.
I think we do this when people we love die....there is a stillness, an examining of their life and the role we had in it.
Death causes us to stop....the world around us to slow down, to bring us into the present moment...it causes an acute awareness of life.
And what life means...a glimps of it's precious spark...that is so irretrievable when once gone.

This card has a sobering meaning for me.
As I was waiting for the results of a sonagram on my new to be grandbaby...I pulled this card.
And at 8 weeks there was no heart beat.
So for all we say about Death meaning transformation etc. sometimes death means death plain and simple, no getting away from it.

(((((((((( :heart: Lark :heart: )))))))))
So sorry for your loss but yes, Death sometimes means death, no transformation, no rebirth, no renewal, just death and there is no getting away from it.
 

lark

Thankyou Sulis...a little soul was sparked and I'll get to meet it one day...that is something Death can never take away.
 

lburrell

Sorry, folks I'm three years late to the party here, but just new.

This card is a bird, and I suddenly wondered -- what is its relationship to the chick in the Fool card? Is this the same bird? Is this the Fool?

And then I thought about how Death in the Tarot is about transformation, and how Death cycles around again and again and again for all of us--we have to be willing to die to our life, and give it up, and let it transform into something new (sometimes something almost unrecognizable) over and over and over again as we go through the Fool's journey. And I wondered if this had some connection with the little chick giving it up and letting itself be radically transformed--maybe several times in the process of its journey.

This quote came to my mind:
"Vitam impendere vero"
(To stake one's life for the truth - Juvenal). So brave, a little tiny chick staking its life for the truth.
 

Sulis

Wow, I didn't even think of think of that but now you've said it, yes it could be The Fool..

Having said that, I've just looked at the images and The Fool appears to be a duckling from it's beak whilst Death looks much more like a crow or raven.

I love what you've said about the transfomative element of Death though and I wasn't really getting that from this version of the card at all but the living bird, whether or not it is The Fool has certainly been transformed here into bones and dust..

Welcome to the study group by the way :)
 

allifai

The bird

Yesterday, I pulled this card in a spread, and part of my ritual is to keep the spread near me the following day—I have a small wooden frame that I can rest the cards in—I don't just leave them lying about. Doing this allows me look at them and contemplate their meaning, which I think is a necessary step for me since I am still learning. Anyway, staring at the Death card, I was wondering about some of the comments in this thread about the bird possibly being the same bird as the Fool, but I am not sure...

...aaaand when I am not sure, I Google, and I spent a few hours researching bird beak shapes in an effort to find out what this one actually is knowing that Kim Krans makes deliberate decisions. I wanted to see what kind of symbolism I could draw from specific bird type, ultimately to enrich my reading.

It's an unusual beak shape; it's bottom heavy, has small or non-visible "nostrils", it's a little stubby...and the feet are not present, so that can't help with identification...and I find myself still at this impasse.

I looked at all sorts; crows, chickens, finches, and even looked at prehistoric birds, extinct species AND mythological ones like Phoenixes, but those are usually depicted with more of a raptor-type beak. Pigeons come close, but what I really need is an ornithologist!

The closest I have come to an answer is that it's a white pelican chick. Chick because the beak is stubby, white because some have black bills and white adults have yellow bills, and pelican because it is the closest to the beak shape I could find, though it would stand to reason that the skin part of the bill is present, and why not, considering that we also have an eye ball and not a socket.

Pelicans have HUGE symbolism—and might help?

Also:
1) Does this bird seem to be smiling?
2) Is it significant that in my "first impression" notes about this card I thought the feathers were pine tree branches? (Pine is linked to crows and jackdaws in the ogham if I'm not mistaking.)
3) Am I reading too deep into this card?!?

:)
 

eddiecoyote

Birds

While doing training (AAAAAARMY TRAINING, SIR!) I came upon this dead hawk. Strange to see a bird body. I rarely ever see one. To see such a "free" and limitless creature dead was sobering.

I also remember a year earlier I was on a walk. Things were bad between my ex and I. She called and as we started to talk, I came upon a dead sparrow.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BRol03TA2eL/?taken-by=eddiecoyote