Tarot Talk: Thoughts On The Death Card

The loss of a dream is a loss. The loss of a fantasy is a loss. The loss of a loss is a loss.

Pluto goes direct. Full Moon in Aries. That’s this weekend’s sky. Matters regarding your Capricorn House (where Pluto lives at this time) move forward again, but a Full Moon always always always presents to us a loss of some kind.

I’m sitting here, reading Freud for school, and thinking about how my feelings about my previous therapist are changing. And — you guessed it — it’s a tremendous loss. It’s not the loss of losing him. That already happened. But the loss of… various things, certain feelings, for example, hopes for the future, wishes. The death of a wish is a loss. It’s a long story. A story I may someday tell but perhaps in a psychoanalytic paper or a book.

In the Tarot, we tend to read the Death card “nicely.”  I mean, we call it change. Transformation. All this is true and, often enough, not so nice. But I’m using that word nice or nicely because Tarot readers are careful to say: it’s not a literal death. God forbid you wind up seated before a Tarot reader who pulls Death for you and announces so and so will soon be cavorting with the heavenly tribunal. Run don’t walk from such a person. (Unless of course you are asking a literal question about death. People ask all kinds of questions.)

And it’s true enough that some may welcome the Death card. They know change is here or change is coming. We aren’t telling them what they don’t already know. This weekend’s Pluto station is a Death card and whether that metaphorical (or literal) card is upright or inverted is up to you.

So I’m thinking about loss and I’m thinking it may take you by surprise this weekend the intensity of your intensity. Or maybe not. And anyway who doesn’t love a Full Moon conjunct Chiron on a Pluto station? The losses tumble down from a great height, one after the other. It makes a sound. Which reminds me: I don’t want to make clients cry but when a client cries, with me, it does feel like a cracking. It was seemingly solid and now it’s cracking, if only for a moment. What can slip through in that moment? A Pluto station? A Full Moon? Chiron?

So much more to say, but Freud awaits. To be continued….
xo

"Jupiter retrograde"