Sweet Twilight - Death

Aerin

Ric mentioned this card in the Strength thread, so I wanted to discuss how we saw the card in this deck.

I like it because while it is gentle in one way (how he carries her) it doesn't pull punches in another - dry, lifeless desert with a burning sun; skull; death ?himself; the dark moon; the shadow of the scythe.

What's the snake about do you suppose?

The card seems to me to be far more focused on the 'endings' part of Death than on the 'Transformation' thing you get in so many decks.
 

gregory

I don't know, but I really love this card. Is the snake maybe temptation of some kind ?

Anyway - oddly enough I just got another deck with the carrying aspect - the Magic Star. So soon after I met Sweet Twilight I wondered how come another so soon ?
 

Emily

I've just done a quick search on snake and snake/skull symbolism - I've linked the page on the snake/skull mainly because I found it fascinating.

http://www.symbolic-meanings.com/2008/01/30/symbolism-of-snake-and-skull-in-mexican-mythology/

Also, according to Wikipedia - Quote" Serpents are connected with renewal or regeneration. This trait is connected with the practice of snakes of shedding their old skin and growing a new one." Unquote

Its been a while since I've been compelled to do searches on card images lol
 

Aerin

Ah! Thanks Emily. That's where the regeneration comes in then - a really interesting link.

I'd wondered about temptation too gregory.
 

gregory

I also wondered about Ouroboros - the wheel of life, and it being broken - as in the snake is not eating its own tail here - indicating the end of the wheel of life, as you might say ? And the use of the snake to symbolise our deepest fears, as well ?
 

Dusk Till Dawn

I pulled my Daily card today: Sweet Twilight, started using them Yesterday.
It was the Death card. I was wondering about it. I never pulled Death as a daily card before. Then My Neighbour lost her baby today. We took her to the hospital.It's so weird, because, in a reading with an oracle yesterday, an Upside down storch showed up ( miscarriage) .
I am totally confused. It was a terrible day.
I never looked at the Death card as a physical Death. I thought a new beginning takes place.
Sad.
Sorry about me rambling, but it's such a cooincidence, the Thread, and my card today.
 

RiccardoLS

I'm sorry :(

*******

Catholicism sees the serpent as "temptation".
Native American lore sees it as "healing".
Other culture sees it as "danger".

One upon a time, XIII was the only Arcana without a name, because Death was too strong a word. It is not something we want to welcome in our life.
Something similar happened when Death began to be seen as Transformation. Tarot needed to focus on positive... and that change was (i suppose) never intended as a "it's not death", but rather as "every death is a transformation".

Think about the sequence: Hanged Man (ritual death), Death (journey in the underworld, being dead, darkness), Temperance (healing, rebirth, coming to the light).
As we lost (partially) the ability to see the structure, we had to see the whole journey of three cards, inside each of them. So death was seen as death and rebirth, and then just as transformation.

Anyway... all these aspects should be complimentary one to each other, and not just mutually exclusive.

Looking at this death (one of the best I've seen, along with the Death of the Goden Tarot) I wonder what I see.

Was he carrying her... then he died, and he continued to carry her? (love beyond death, total loyalty, extreme generosity, doing things because you heve, even if there is no reward)
Is he the death angel, coming to ferry her on the other side of the river (pardon, it's a desert).
Is it death as mercy... the sweet darkness that swept away all pains (I think Hamlet:
To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
)

It is hope... because I can see her just sleeping.

But I also see the desert... it continues in fellow cards. Temperance give a sign to find the way. The devil burns the tower, but let them pass (he is a good boy after all), the star plants the seeds, the Moon waits for them to blossom. And then they blossom in the Sun, and are ripe in the Judgement.
So... maybe I just don't like Death and Rebirth only in one card.
It seems to suggest that the "in-between" is not important.
It seems to suggest we should be scared of death... of endings... of pain...
(I don't want to look, I don't want to see!!!) while maybe all that this card says is: "do not be scared"

ric
 

gregory

RiccardoLS said:
I'm sorry :(
WHY ???? :confused:

RiccardoLS said:
Looking at this death (one of the best I've seen, along with the Death of the Goden Tarot)
YES !

RiccardoLS said:
Was he carrying her... then he died, and he continued to carry her? (love beyond death, total loyalty, extreme generosity, doing things because you heve, even if there is no reward)
Is he the death angel, coming to ferry her on the other side of the river (pardon, it's a desert).
Is it death as mercy... the sweet darkness that swept away all pains (I think Hamlet:
)

It is hope... because I can see her just sleeping.

But I also see the desert... it continues in fellow cards. Temperance give a sign to find the way. The devil burns the tower, but let them pass (he is a good boy after all), the star plants the seeds, the Moon waits for them to blossom. And then they blossom in the Sun, and are ripe in the Judgement.
So... maybe I just don't like Death and Rebirth only in one card.
It seems to suggest that the "in-between" is not important.
It seems to suggest we should be scared of death... of endings... of pain...
(I don't want to look, I don't want to see!!!) while maybe all that this card says is: "do not be scared"

ric
No - it says much more than "do not be scared". In some ways it is actually quite sinister.... But I don't even see literal death as something to be feared, so I have no problems with that side of it as a card. Death - even literal death - is inevitably a transformation of sorts - into earth and ash, if we don't believe there is anything more, or into something new that most of us here have yet to experience (I say most of us because I just know someone will post that they know what's out there !) I feel sure there is something, and I have no idea what - and I am very interested. Whatever it is, it will be a transformation of some kind.

But I HATE the sanitising of tarot too. There's a thread here where someone has had to take Death and a couple of other cards out of her deck for a gig she is doing, so that people won't be upset. I was appalled. They should get in a playing card reader if that's what they want. :mad: Focus on the positive is all very well - but (I know someone who may show up here and disagree, but....) things CANNOT all come out positive. If there were no negatives in life there would be no need for positives, either - it could all be flat and boring. We need life and death, happy and sad, black and white, light and dark - we do need contrasts.
 

RiccardoLS

I was sorry for seeker 13 :(

Too much "sanitation" ends up being a lie... like a placebo to truth.
Still Tarot is a language, and communication is not created from things the way they "ought to be", but the "way they are".
IF people are going to be so upset when they feel death card taht they stop listening, maybe it's better to call it the life card, and approach the same concept from the other side.
I mean: we don't have to choose ONE meaning, or ONE name. They all are... and we can still see them all, even if we can't see them all at the same time.

Ric
 

gregory

RiccardoLS said:
I mean: we don't have to choose ONE meaning, or ONE name. They all are... and we can still see them all, even if we can't see them all at the same time.

Ric
*coughs gently*
Which is part of why I read as I do..... ;)
Which as I recall you don't ENTIRELY approve of ;)

PS it was theora in professional tarot who was asked to sanitise.....