Mi-Shell
Ironwing Xlll Death
When I pulled this card in my daily draw today I was very sattisfied. It is a good card for the task ahead and will give me the strength I need to do what needs to be done.
And I knew, that the corrosive tears that the skull weeps would mingle well with the ones I am to shed.
Here the information from the book and my musings and thoughs to follow...
The rusty mask shows the ultimate fate of all iron that is exposed to the earth's atmosphere.
Oxygen and water vapor return the metal to the same oxide minerals that are pictured on the Ore cards, since iron silicate and sulfide minerals in rocks are transformed in the same way through weathering. The mask weeps corrosive tears of salt crystals, a reminder that Death even when it is "natural" or welcome - is always a difficult and shocking change. Rusty steel is also a disturbing symbol of the destruction of civilization itself.
The skull sprouts crystals of vivianite, an iron phosphate mineral that forms when bone phosphates combine with iron oxide in water. Vivianite is the pigment blue ochre and the commercial "bluing" that protects steel. It gives a rare blue color to fossil bones and mammoth ivory. It sometimes crystallizes from ashes when a body is burned, forming the "jewel-like relics" of Tibetan Buddhism, the greenish-white glassy pebbles found in the ashes of funeral pyres. One of these pebbles hovers over the third eye of the mask. Below the skull are diagrams of human bone under the microscope. Details of the bone become a circle of flying vultures.
Any personification of Death is a mask, yet death also reveals truths that cannot be known any other way. The shaman learns to see this mask in her own face. The moment of death and the brief period of transition bring about strange fleeting transformations. A gate is open and the Otherworld intrudes upon everyday life as it does at no other time. There is much to be learned in facing this experience fully aware. It will energize the work of letting go and the difficult process of rebuilding and accepting new growth.
When I pulled this card in my daily draw today I was very sattisfied. It is a good card for the task ahead and will give me the strength I need to do what needs to be done.
And I knew, that the corrosive tears that the skull weeps would mingle well with the ones I am to shed.
Here the information from the book and my musings and thoughs to follow...
The rusty mask shows the ultimate fate of all iron that is exposed to the earth's atmosphere.
Oxygen and water vapor return the metal to the same oxide minerals that are pictured on the Ore cards, since iron silicate and sulfide minerals in rocks are transformed in the same way through weathering. The mask weeps corrosive tears of salt crystals, a reminder that Death even when it is "natural" or welcome - is always a difficult and shocking change. Rusty steel is also a disturbing symbol of the destruction of civilization itself.
The skull sprouts crystals of vivianite, an iron phosphate mineral that forms when bone phosphates combine with iron oxide in water. Vivianite is the pigment blue ochre and the commercial "bluing" that protects steel. It gives a rare blue color to fossil bones and mammoth ivory. It sometimes crystallizes from ashes when a body is burned, forming the "jewel-like relics" of Tibetan Buddhism, the greenish-white glassy pebbles found in the ashes of funeral pyres. One of these pebbles hovers over the third eye of the mask. Below the skull are diagrams of human bone under the microscope. Details of the bone become a circle of flying vultures.
Any personification of Death is a mask, yet death also reveals truths that cannot be known any other way. The shaman learns to see this mask in her own face. The moment of death and the brief period of transition bring about strange fleeting transformations. A gate is open and the Otherworld intrudes upon everyday life as it does at no other time. There is much to be learned in facing this experience fully aware. It will energize the work of letting go and the difficult process of rebuilding and accepting new growth.