The current news cycle had me thinking about the Death card today, one of the 22 major arcana cards in the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) tarot deck. It had me asking myself, what does it mean when it appears that democracy or at least the country as we’ve known it heretofore is dying?
I know I said in a previous post that I’m not a “political” tarot card reader. Although I admit, I am a bit of a news junkie. Next thing I know, this card’s image pops up on my inner movie screen as I am reading today’s headlines. Then, all of these thoughts started bubbling up, and I had to capture them in writing. I’m calling this piece, a “tarot op-ed.”
Despite the fact that this is one of the so-called “scary cards” that the media love to include in tarot card reading scenes as a portent of doom and gloom, it’s one of my favorites. Well, what do you expect with Scorpio rising, Pluto conjunct the midheaven, and an 8th house Moon?
The Death card is said to capture, in pictorial terms, what happened to the Knights Templar back in the day when the King of France had them wiped out on Friday the 13th. So now we have a Templar, in the form of Death riding a pale horse, coming for EVERYONE, from babies and their families to the King and the Pope!
And in the background, we see a sun, rising behind two pillars. Some may see the sun as setting, but that would suggest that nothing new emerges from the ashes. A quick look at all the Nature that surrounds us clearly demonstrates that this isn’t true. Life is cyclical. A new beginning always follows death. Even scientists know that energy can’t be created or destroyed; it can only change form.
This is why I haven’t given up hope on this country. I know that a new dawn will follow the death and transformation that we are currently undergoing. Which means — we are at a critical choice point. Do we give up hope and allow the current administration and the Republicans to destroy what we fought so hard to create in the days of the American Revolution? Or do we vote their asses out in November so that we can rise from the ashes and create something even better?
Yeah, I hear some of you saying that the election itself is under threat and they’ll subvert it and do anything to keep this administration in office. But if we sit back in defeat, throw up our hands, and decide that voting won’t do any good, that nothing will — then that outcome is a distinct possibility. The other possibility is that people — you and me — take to the streets and vote in numbers so great, the outcome of the election is obvious.
And keep in mind, more information is going to come out about how criminal this administration has been and continues to be. Whoever the Democratic nominee is, she can use this negative publicity against 45 and, at the same time, put forth a platform that the majority of Americans are hungering for.
ANYTHING is possible. What eventually happens is based entirely, both individually and collectively, on what we give our attention to.