Intuitive Transformation with Our Dear Friend, Death, Part 1

Facing Change, Embracing Transformation, and Accepting New Realities – A Tarot Spread for Healing

This special post is timed for the super full moon tonight, which is in Pisces. We also have a partial lunar eclipse.

Alysia Moonrise

and I have been talking over the last few months about the energy brewing in our lives, and it has a potent concentrated strength and momentum. This is a time for deepening our connections with the divine and embracing transformation. We both feel it, supporting one another through the waves of emotion and chaos to come in order to find acceptance of these changes. What follows are our takes on the transformations we are both respectively facing and how we have come to this more peaceful place with the Death card. We created a tarot spread for navigating these uncharted waters of the grieving what one has lost to move forward. So very Piscean!

Erica

This post has been brewing for months, and although I was not aware of its presence our dear friend Death made itself known in a big way. You see, I have been knocking at Death’s door for the last few months with my mediumship workshops, ancestral healing work, and grieving the loss of my best friend. All these processes were happening simultaneously. I embrace the changes Death brought me. We are not on opposite sides but sitting together drinking tea, commiserating on the changes brought into my life, what led up to it, and where I am going in the future.

One of the lovely gifts which came into my life, deep in the shadow of my best friend when at the sickest part of her cancer, was meeting @alysia here on Substack. We found each other by chance – we seemed to click right way. My best friend, even through her sickness, seemed very relieved that I have been branching out to make new connections. I think she felt the end was coming and knew I would be able to move forward after she departed. Alysia and I have been talking since and, despite the different transformations we are both going through, we are both having a cup of tea with Death.

Transformation, death’s gift, involves cutting cords to that which does not serve to make room for a new path forward. Sometimes that path feels we are like moving backward with the deep grieving we do for what we are losing. When deep transformation moves through our lives it seems to take us down. What is ending usually happens for a reason, and sometimes we don’t know what that reason is. Life is not always fair, and things come to an end. Sometimes there is no answer why we lose a loved one, experience the loss of a relationship, or experience traumatic stress from life circumstances. Don’t try to attach a reason if unsure, as it will only complicate your emotions. That’s a big ask, but acceptance goes a long way to healing.

Eventually, acceptance and forgiveness join your tea party with Death. The table is getting crowded, isn’t it? Once this happens, true transformation can begin. Sometimes, we need to forgive ourselves or others before we can move forward. This is where cutting the cords that bind us to the past can propel us to the future. This year, through a few different methodologies, I have cut many cords. You see, the trauma I carry from earlier in my life had me in a place where I could not see the future in a clear way. Old patterns repeated, ancestral generational trauma loomed large, and the hurt from life circumstances compounded.

I am open to talk with others about it if it feels right, but most of all, I don’t want anyone’s pity or condolences. You know the look you get when you reveal what hurts you to someone – Oh, poor Erica . . . It feels belittling to me, and it puts aside all the work I have done to move past it as not important – why not say wow, you have shown such strength? Recognition of the work done to overcome is more valuable to me than society’s pity responses of sorry and poor you. The most important thing to understand is that the feelings I have about my trauma are complicated - layers of grief, depression, anxiety led to events with dubious decision-making and questionable relationships. At the same time, I would not be the person I am today – that crazy rollercoaster toughened me up, for better or worse. I am very sensitive, so that outer shell of stone has saved me many times.

And yet, I need to shed that protective outer shell. It served me well, and it is time to release it. I don’t look back on my past with regret (well, maybe a few things), and I also had some great times. I am not throwing any of this away. But like my therapist frames it, it is time to put it into a photo album onto the shelf. I can visit with it whenever I want with today’s new perspective. I used a combination of hypnosis, energetic healing, therapy, mediumship studies, and ancestral healing. I have healed my primary wound (one of many, I am sure) to a really great place. I am feeling a new joy, but it is a dark joy. It is one that recognizes that the past is still there, but I am now looking forward to a new, wide-open path on a personal and spiritual level.

I cannot really give a roadmap for this process. Eventually, the dust settles, and we find ourselves at Hecate’s crossroads – choices to make, promises to keep, and a new road to travel. Crossing death’s threshold is a critical juncture – deep grieving gives way to the beginning of transformation, like a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis. It probably feels awkward, possibly uncomfortable. The biggest message I have received while on this threshold (from my guides and ancestor work) is to move forward, you have to find stillness before emerging anew. This is hard for me – I am admittedly an impatient person and then have problems with sticking with something. I need to commit and create new devotional practices. So, the threshold for death has tasked me to searching for this stillness as I drink tea at the table. To have an honest look at what I want the future to look like. And then stop. Close my eyes. Take a nap. Just be.

I invite you to have a chat with Death at his table, share some tea, and plan the coming transformation. It doesn’t happen overnight. Take a moment and rest before embarking on the next part, whatever that may be.

Alysia

Erica came into my life just before I was about to enter a transformation, sitting at the table to join in this tea party with Death. She has been a light and pillar, and our parallel experiences have been both healing and alchemizing for me. Our friendship has given me a holding on this journey that, may have otherwise been, quite unbearable to walk.

My transformation came in the shattering of two areas of my life—one I chose and one was chosen for me. The first aspect of my conversation with Death came when I decided the most important relationship in my life was no longer working for me. And, if I was quite honest with myself, it hadn’t been working for a very long time. It’s one of those situations where you give everything and get little to nothing in return. The decision to end this relationship was a shattering I wasn’t ready for, but that had to be done for my own well-being.

As I look back, only one month later, I can already see the weight lifting from my shoulders and my heart. I also feel the promise of a love that kindles on the horizon and holds everything I’ve ever wanted and know I deserve. So, while the pain was agonizing, and the shattering impossible, I see now why it was necessary.

The second aspect of my conversation with Death arrived as a complete shock and devastation. It was a situation I’d been making work, just barely, as a single mom of two girls. It was a situation I was unwilling to admit I could no longer hold together on my own. Until finally, one day, the Universe just decided for me—it’s done. Let it go. This isn’t yours to carry anymore. The rug was pulled from under me and my life literally shattered before my eyes in a matter of hours.

Arriving in the shadow of a tender heart that was still grieving the loss of love, this fall brought me to my knees in anger and devastation. What did I do to deserve this? It was the only thought I could grasp onto as I tried to hold myself together for my daughters and muster the courage to tell them their whole life was about to change, too.

Yet, here I am, just a couple of weeks after this moment, and I can already begin to feel the relief this shattering, this conversation with Death, has brought with it. It’s a calling home, a message of deep healing, and new beginnings. So, if you’re in the midst of a shattering, sitting down to a cup of tea with Death, you can be certain the transformation that awaits you is one of great potency and power calling you more into who you came here to be.

Tarot’s Death Card

The Death card in the tarot is likely feared by non-practitioners of tarot (not always), but it shouldn’t be. I think the movies and media have perpetuated this myth. Practitioners know that it is a powerful card of transformation and movement out of what no longer serves into the new path forward. Death’s table awaits, and it is up to us to answer the call – change comes whether we want it or not.

I have a book on my shelf I turn to often, “Jung and the Tarot: An Archetypal Journey” by Sally Nichols. It is one of the most complete analysis of each major arcana card I have ever read. Sally takes the works of Jung (a psychologist who paid close attention to the depth of tarot) and writes full academic chapters on each card. Within these chapters, she weaves the story of the person from The Fool card in between the references to mythology, psychological archetypes, and images of our ancient past. There are several passages I would like to share on the Death card from this book:

“The hero, having 'ripened' as the Hanged Man, now feels like he is being dismembered. Death pictures that moment when one feels ‘all in pieces’ – scattered – the old personality and ways so mutilated as to be almost unrecognizable. In the face of time’s whirlwind dance, we all stand dismayed, shattered, and scattered.” (p. 228)

“At the most superficial level we resist changes in our everyday lives – even changes we have consciously planned . . . when we at last achieve a desired transformation in our personal lives and conduct, we still mourn the old ways. We miss bad habits as well – those habits which came and felt at home with us and stayed. Parting is such sweet sorrow because we become attached to everything: people, animals, things. We don’t want to lose anything that we feel ‘belongs to us’ – even decaying teeth or falling hair. We are especially attached to the instinctual ways of our natural bodies.” (p. 228)

“But between the pruning away of the old and the maturation of the new lies a period of black mourning. In referencing to this stage of the journey to self-knowledge, the alchemists used the term mortificatio. Blessed are they that mourn. Whoever mourns the amputation of an unconscious reaction which has been a part of him since childhood, or whoever bemoans the loss of some rigid projection which has long served as support for a tottering ego, these may consider themselves blessed. They will ultimately be comforted with more valid insights and more enduring support.” (p. 229)

Death’s gift of transformation is not an easy one to take on, but the end result will be worth it in the end, for the blessing is reaching the new place of peace after shedding what is no longer serves. Acceptance comes to the table, to join our conversation with Death. In our tarot spread, I have made a special place in the middle, and invited Hecate to offer wisdom from her cauldron in this black mourning for what is lost.

Death’s Transformation Tarot Spread

Alysia and I worked on a new spread for Death’s transformation, and I have incorporated additional elements include Hecate’s crossroads in the center.

I previously posted the full Hecate’s Crossroad spread. Read the full spread here:

This hybrid spread takes some of the Hecate’s Crossroad spread and expands it.

1.        Life circumstances coming to pass

2.        The impact of these circumstances on you

3.        The impact of these circumstances on others

4.        Obstacles to acceptance of change

5.        Hecate’s cauldron of wisdom (guidance for acceptance)

6.        Tea with Death – wisdom needed for acceptance (use the Death card)

7.        Hecate’s wisdom – how to mourn the loss and move forward (cross this card over the Death card to be a bridge to the left side)

8.        Hecate’s Hound – how to get there

9.        Hecate’s Hound – where to focus efforts

10.  New life circumstance emerging for you

11.  New Obstacles

12.  New Opportunities

13.  Overall theme of this transformation (conclusion card)

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I do hope this is helpful for those thinking about the changes sweeping through one’s life. If you can, perform this spread tonight for the Super Full Moon with a lit candle, for it is hard to see in the dark without a little bit of light.

Please read on to Part 2 and 3:

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