Death

[Nau7ik]

Key 13–Death is a very important card in Tarot. There are certain occult secrets hidden in the design.

I’m going to examine the card the way I usually do in my study time here. I also use the Builders of the Adytum Tarot images, as they are the most perfect ones for me personally.



The Death card has to do with a change in manifestation. The Hebrew letter Nun (pronounced noon) is assigned to this Key, which means a “fish” as a noun and “to sprout, to grow” as a verb. Motion is the function of this Key. Therefore we arrive at an understanding by linking these ideas together: “that change is the basis of manifestation.”

Scorpio ♏️ is the astrological sign assigned to Key 13. Scorpio deals with death and reproduction, as it rules the sex-organs.

The skeleton is the basis for physical movement in this world. “Similarly, change or transformation—particularly the transformations connected with reproduction—is the framework which supports the whole body of phenomenal existence.”
—Paul Foster Case

Dr. Waite said, “The veil or mask of life is perpetuated in change, transformation and passage from lower to higher.”

So with Key 13 we get the idea of death as a necessary change and transformation as the basis of existence.

The Bible says that Joshua is the son of Nun. As a proper noun Nun indicates perpetuity. The name Joshua literally means, “Jah liberates.” Jah is a Name of God (which can be found in the 68th Psalm). Therefore we arrive at the meaning that Joshua or “Jah Liberates” truly means that “the entire cosmic order is fundamentally liberative. It has an irresistible tendency toward the manifestation of freedom.” -Paul Foster Case

I am just going to quote Paul Foster Case for the next part because he says it beautifully:

Psychologically, the emphasis falls on imagination. Change your ideas and your old conception of personality dies. Every few years you have a new body, made up of millions of tiny beings, or cells. Change your intellectual patterns, and with the passing away of the present generation of cells new ones will come to take their places. In the mental nucleus of each tiny cell, implanted there by subconscious response to your new patterns, will be an impulse to realize the new thought in body-structure, in function, and in external action.

If your pattern be built in accordance with the ideas developed through the Tarot series, and culminating in the self-surrender pictured by the Hanged Man, it will lead to a complete transformation of your personality. The “old man” dies. One who arrives at this stage can say with St. Paul, “I die daily.” Every morning becomes a resurrection to the awakened soulS all the old motives, all the petty ambitions, all the foolish opinions and prejudices gradually die out, as the cells which carry them are eliminated in the ordinary course of body-repair.

Thus, little by little, there comes a complete readjustment of one’s personal conceptions of life and its values. The change from the personal to the universal viewpoint is so radical that mystics often compare it to death. They are more literal than many of their readers suppose. It is by the death and reproduction of body-cells that patterns created by imagination are finally fixed in personal consciousness. Then it is that we may truly declare, “The Kingdom of Spirit is embodied in my flesh.”