Death

[ricdaw]

81.13 

QUESTIONER: [We have] already discussed the Significator, so I will skip to number thirteen. Transformation of Body is called Death, for with death the body is transformed to a higher-vibration body for additional learning. Is this correct?

RA: I am Ra. This is correct and may be seen to be additionally correct in that each moment and certainly each diurnal period of the bodily incarnation offers death and rebirth to one which is attempting to use the catalyst which is offered it.

____

Has anyone else noticed that the number of years that it takes to live through a grand cycle (25,000) is also the approximate number of days that a person lives each life?  25,000 days/365 days equals 68.5 years.



Every day we live is another opportunity to reset, to transform the mind (card 5).  Our Afterlife Review is probably nothing more than reviewing the 25,000 times we had a chance to Make a Difference.  To Crystalize.  To Choose.



Mine will be full of Netflix and bourbon.  



Anyway.  Imagining each day to be the equivalent of one year of a Grand Cycle has its benefits.  If I pause just long enough to wonder, did I do something in favor of my polarity today?  Did I walk my talk?  It might just spur me to some action.



The Earth Life School is a place of action, after all.  (Card 9)  And we are here, at this time more than any other in the Grand Cycle, to KNOW YOURSELF.  Which is Card 6 (Lovers).  So many people don't KNOW WHO THEY ARE, except for their Tribe (red state blue state) or their job or their . . . whatever.  Introspection, let alone mediation, is not high the priority list sadly.



But if you find yourself, at the end of the "diurnal" day, another one of your 25,000 day allotment, about ready to go into the dustbin of indifference, maybe try this.



Take a moment to ground.  (Inhale water/energy/light up from your feet . . . it draw it up your spine to the top of your head, then exhale it "down" the front of your body . . . down to your feet and then into the Earth's core.  Repeat a couple times.  You will be astonished by how good this feels.)



Then send love/light.  Inhale that energy up again (count of 2) but send it down slowly into your heart (count of 5).  Repeat.  This heart-charged energy will come out your hands.  It's just what it does.  That's how the chakras work.  Hands beam love/light.



Send this love/light from your hands to your housemates, your plants and your pets.



Breathe.  



Send this love/light to the neighbors.



Breathe.



Send this love/light to the planet.



Breathe.



Send this love/light to anyone who needs it.



Then own it. You have DONE SOMETHING this day.  It will be noticed.  It will charge your polarity.  It will MAKE A DIFFERENCE.



Then, when you do the same thing the next day, the Law of Squares applies and you amplify your first day. . . by some weird "squaring" that I never understood . . .so that it was as if TWO of you were working together.  Day three you get . . . more squaring with yourself as if THREE of you were working together.  And so on.



Don't blame me if you spontaneously combust at day 100.



Anyway, the Death Card is a potent reminder that each day is a new opportunity to Do The Work.  To advance your own polarization--even if you spend the whole day in the basement playing video games.  Even in this time of Covid, sending love/light is a form of action.



Namaste, folks.  



Namaste.

[ilovekittiesbro]

Not literal death... This card is broadly Death of the Ego. I would say Death of Desire.

The Transformation of the Body - Death - Immortality
Hieroglyph DEATH which reaps crowned heads in a prairie where men are seen growing
"The night has passed and a new day has arrived, so adorn yourself with the weapons of light"
"man confuses the force of Desire with Willpower"
"As we are now, asleep, daydreaming, tossed about between our memories of the past and our cravings for the future, or our worries for the future, we are in a self-created Fantasyland. We are not aware of ourselves. We are being buffeted by waves of our own lust, anger, envy and fear. And if all those waves of emotions and circumstances that hit us, we reacts automatically, without awareness. All of the reaction, these mechanical emotions waste our vital values"
81.30 Q: Transformation of Body is called Death, for with Death the body is transformed to a higher vibration body for additional learning. Is this correct?
Ra: This is correct and may be seen to be additionally correct in that each moment, and certainly each diurnal period of the body incarnation offers death & rebirth to one which is attempting to use the catalyst which is offered it"

"Observe humanity and the prevalence of mental illness and emotional sickness. They vastly outnumber the physical ones, yet we avoid them. We avoid knowing how prevant, how strong, how pervasive mental and emotional illness really is in our culture. We cannot deal with it. It is too big of a problem and, of course, our advertising, our movies, our media are all taking advantage of it, telling us - "you can have a happy life, happiness, contentment, if you buy something, if you look a certain way, if you dress a certain way, if you belong to a certain group". This is all utilizing desire to hypnotize us, to manipulate us for the purposes of money, power. For the Gnostic, for the aspirant, awareness becomes the critical step: To be aware, to be obervant of one's own three brains. To be always aware of what one is thinking, to always observe what one is feeling, to always be watchful of sensation or the impulse to act one way or another.

How many of us have chosen a career out of envy? Of fear? Pride? How many of our daily activities are driven entirely by the ego? This is onoly going to produce suffering. To bbe aware of those things means we have to stop ignoring ourselves - to observe, to look, to pay attention. In doing so, we begin to save energy when we recognize that this particular form of action is driven by Ego - "Why should I do that? It would be much more intelligent for me to not do that"- and when we take that step of renouncing our own egotistical will, we save the energy that we could have otherwise wasted. In this manner, little-by-litte we begin to save those values, to accumulate them. This is the basis of Gnostic psychology. In this process is death - we become the Reaper!

Our own consciousness becomes that Angel of Death from moment to moment in ourselves because we, with the staff of our spinal column, harness the energies with that scythe, the blade of discriminating awareness. We clise through the wheat of the moment-to-moment experience of any given impression, and we pull out from those impressions a seed - comprehension, understanding, wisdom. As we discard the chaff, that which is not useful, that which we do not need, that is the process of death - dying in our own desires. We must deny ourselves.

By saving those energies, by developing more conscious comprehension by gathering togethehr the energies from the impressions of life to transform those forces, by savings the energies that are present in our psyche to transform and accumulate those forces, we step towards immortality. We conquer death. This is how we move from being the mere shadow of a human being into becoming a human being. When we develop this conscious awareness of death, death is no longer a fearful thing.

When you begin to recall and remember how many times you have already died, you begin to realize that death is not the problem. Ignorance is the problem. Life and death proceed as a cycle, which is natural. The Essence proceeds from body to body, which is naterual. There is nothing to be afraid of in that. What is to be fearful of, to be worried about, is to ignore that. The longer we ignore it, the deeper our suffering bbecomes. When we conserve these forces, we begin to accomplish something that is written in Corinthians:

“How are the dead raised, and with what body do they return? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not brought back to life, is not brought back to life, is not brought to life, accept through death. And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be but grain. All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another of beasts, another of fishes, another of birds. There are all celestial bodies, and terrestrial bodies. So is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption. It is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power.”

The God of Death is also called Dharma. That is his name. Dharma means law, truth. This teaching is dharma. It is the law. It is truth. Any true teaching is dharma. Any pure action is dharma. Any wrong action is adharma, without dharma. The name Yama also means “to do.” So when you enter into any school of Yoga in the ancient traditions, the first thing you learn; yama and niyama, to do and not to do. And you are given vows. “Do these things and do not do these things.” By doing so, you enter into the path of dharma, right action, the path of death: the death of the ego.

These traditional yamas, or steps, start with Ahimsa, which is non-violence. Are we living with that guide? Are we acting in a non-violent way in our thoughts, in our feelings, in our actions? If we have violent thinking, anger, resentment, skepticism, fanaticism, which are all anger, which are all violent, we are performing niyama, wrong action.

Number two, Satya, truthfulness, to tell the truth in word and thought. Are we truthful? Are we truthful with ourselves or are we lying to ourselves? Are we deceiving ourselves? Do we justify ourselves? Justifications are lies. Do we ignore our mistakes and make excuses for ourselves? These are lies.

Number three, Asteya, to not enter into debt. I am not talking about money. I am talking about karma. Do not create karmic debt. Do not covet. Do not steal. Do not owe.

Number four, Brahmacharya, to have purity in our sexual energies, to be faithful. Truly, Brahmacharya means “to be faithful.” Someone who is married can be in Brahmacharya, being faithful to their spouse.

Number five, Kshama, to be patient, to be in the now, to be in non-attachment.

The sixth yama, Dhruti, to be steadfast, to be without fear, to be decisive. Interesting that that is the sixth yama, to be decisive. Of course, we know the sixth Arcanum is indecision so the sixth yama is saying: “Decide.” Choose your path and follow it, but in every moment.

The seventh is Daya; compassion. Everyone thinks they are compassionate, but what is compassion? Compassion is conscious love. Conscious. Sometimes conscious love looks like anger, looks like pain. The parent who disciplines his child does so with conscious love. The child does not like it. It is the same thing with God. In his love for us, God gives us debt, gives us our karma, God gives us suffering, gives us hell. Yama, the god of death, is the god of compassion. He is a dharmapala, a protector of the dharma, a dharma king. The Angels of Death do their duty because of compassion.

The eighth, Aarjav, honesty straight-forwardness, renouncing deception, renouncing wrong-doing.

The ninth, mitahar, moderate behavior, no gluttony.

The tenth, shachah, purity, chastity.

Arcanum 13 is Death, but it can also signify Something New, there may be Wealth, there may be poverty, it is a number of great synthesis. It contains the gospel of Judas. Judas represents the Death of the "I", the Gospel of Judas is that of Death, it is the dissolution of Ego. Judas symbolizes the Ego, which one must decapitate.

Death is the remainider of whhole numbers. When the mathematiical operation is completed, only the values of the consciousness remain. These values, when seen calirvoyantly, look like a legion of phantoms that continue living. The re-incarnation of the values is the mechanism of nature. Really, the Soul doesn't reincarnate, because the human being does not yet have their soul incarnated. Only the values reincarnate themselves.

Sources:
The Ra Material
Gnosticteachings.org - Arcanum 13: Immortality (Transcription)
Samael Aun Weor - The Initiatic Path in the Arcana of the Tarot and Kabalah, Esoteric Course of Kabalah, and Manual of Practical Magic
The Kabbalistic and Occult Tarot of Eliphas Levi - Daath Gnosis

[unity100]

Has anyone else noticed that the number of years that it takes to live through a grand cycle (25,000) is also the approximate number of days that a person lives each life? 25,000 days/365 days equals 68.5 years.

Not really, since it was noted that the normal lifespan should have been 900 years, but it was cut down greatly due to people treating each other as things to exploit.

[Ohr Ein Sof]

[quote='ilovekittiesbro' pid='284288' dateline='1605295696']

Not literal death... This card is broadly Death of the Ego. I would say Death of Desire.

Well, as you know that the Keys have an universal meaning as well. So, it actually could mean the death of the physical body complex but as in a graduation and not the entity repeating the density it is in currently. Once the mind has been transmuted the body soon follows this line of initiation therefore would make it ready for graduation. And I would like to add, we can only contain so much light in this physical vehicle; what changes one changes all three complexes on multiple planes as well not jut the 3rd density.

[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.”

[AnthroHeart]

I am intimately involved with Anubis (the god of death and guiding souls in the afterlife).
In coming to the intimate connection with him, I had to feel death on me, and embrace it.
We help each other.

[Nau7ik]

I am intimately involved with Anubis (the god of death and guiding souls in the afterlife).
In coming to the intimate connection with him, I had to feel death on me, and embrace it.
We help each other.

Mercury and Anubis are similar in some respects. They are both guides of souls in the afterlife.

On Key 10, the red figure is Hermanubis which represents the present stage of human development, going up the wheel. The Sphinx is the perfected Self which sits atop the Wheel having mastered it and then one, in perfect harmony, with the cosmic cycle. The yellow serpent is the descent of kundalini of the One Life (serpents have to do with kundalini/cosmic electricity) into form. So the Key is dealing with involution and evolution.

[dreamoftheiris]

Great stuff.

Just to add to the discussion of the Death archetype:

I think the Death card also symbolizes the "Death of the Will". Jakob Boehme says, “There is no other path to God than a new mind of the soul.” The Transformation of the Body can be seen then as the transformation of the will influenced by the lower, into the will influenced by the higher.

[Nau7ik]

Great stuff.

Just to add to the discussion of the Death archetype:

I think the Death card also symbolizes the "Death of the Will".  Jakob Boehme says, “There is no other path to God than a new mind of the soul.”  The Transformation of the Body can be seen then as the transformation of the will influenced by the lower, into the will influenced by the higher.

I think you are correct here but I would attribute this aspect to the Hanged Man, which precedes Key 13. Because the Hanged Man intimates that the human personality is completely dependent on the One Life. Our will is essentially the creator’s will. The death archetypes effects changes in bodily structure and force which make it an effective vehicle for this higher type of bodily transformation. Which depends on the conscious realization of self surrender to the cosmic will. The belief in a personal will is shattered (meaning that we have free will, but that free will does not originate in us.) this, then, allows for higher states of consciousness to be experienced.
After Death, is Temperance, the tempering of the personality. Opposing forces are brought into harmony and achieves a state of order. (14– the powers of 4 (order) expressed through the agency Of self consciousness.)

Great comments! Please excuse my ignorance... I am studying the Keys but I do not know them perfectly yet. These discussions help in developing understanding. You are free to disagree and challenge anything I say. That’s how we grow

A last comment: I’ve been told from my teachers that this Key, Death, has an important practical secret of occultism hidden within its design. I cannot speak on this because I haven’t learned it yet. I believe it has to do with transformation of the body. Actual minute, physical changes in the structure of body, the chemistry of the blood, the functioning of the organs. Paul Foster Case quoted Boehme in one of these lessons.

[zedro]

A last comment: I’ve been told from my teachers that this Key, Death, has an important practical secret of occultism hidden within its design. I cannot speak on this because I haven’t learned it yet. I believe it has to do with transformation of the body. Actual minute, physical changes in the structure of body, the chemistry of the blood, the functioning of the organs. Paul Foster Case quoted Boehme in one of these lessons.

Death is an interesting topic when it comes to the micro level. For instance, all our living cells that constituted our bodies 10 years ago have long died, and this process is required for the continued growth and evolution of our bodies. But at the same time, the raw materials get recycled and reconstituted over and over again, and yet the energetic fields that we produce from that biology evolve and are maintained uninterrupted. Now take all that and correspond it to the macro level, and it's exactly the same.

So perhaps the true power lies in understanding how we can use these elements of death to not only perpetuate life, but continually seed ones evolution from it.

[dreamoftheiris]

Great stuff.

Just to add to the discussion of the Death archetype:

I think the Death card also symbolizes the "Death of the Will".  Jakob Boehme says, “There is no other path to God than a new mind of the soul.”  The Transformation of the Body can be seen then as the transformation of the will influenced by the lower, into the will influenced by the higher.

I think you are correct here but I would attribute this aspect to the Hanged Man, which precedes Key 13. Because the Hanged Man intimates that the human personality is completely dependent on the One Life. Our will is essentially the creator’s will. The death archetypes effects changes in bodily structure and force which make it an effective vehicle for this higher type of bodily transformation. Which depends on the conscious realization of self surrender to the cosmic will. The belief in a personal will is shattered (meaning that we have free will, but that free will does not originate in us.) this, then, allows for higher states of consciousness to be experienced.
After Death, is Temperance, the tempering of the personality. Opposing forces are brought into harmony and achieves a state of order. (14– the powers of 4 (order) expressed through the agency Of self consciousness.)

Great comments! Please excuse my ignorance... I am studying the Keys but I do not know them perfectly yet. These discussions help in developing understanding. You are free to disagree and challenge anything I say. That’s how we grow

A last comment: I’ve been told from my teachers that this Key, Death, has an important practical secret of occultism hidden within its design. I cannot speak on this because I haven’t learned it yet. I believe it has to do with transformation of the body. Actual minute, physical changes in the structure of body, the chemistry of the blood, the functioning of the organs. Paul Foster Case quoted Boehme in one of these lessons.

Very interesting. I definitely agree.

I tend to think that the Death archetype also somehow represents the etheric or indigo body. The etheric can be thought of as a type of "scaffolding" upon which the physical universe is formed. The etheric body also supports, regulates, shapes, and animates our bodies.

Perhaps the skeleton figure represents this scaffolding somehow. Maybe it's the etheric body becoming fully transformed by the Divines presidence over the lower -represented by the figures of what appears to be the head and hands of royalty. Those people in those positions tend to have strong "personalities" completely separate from any notion of a God (as they tend to think of themselves as God).

[zedro]

I tend to think that the Death archetype also somehow represents the etheric or indigo body.  The etheric can be thought of as a type of "scaffolding" upon which the physical universe is formed.  The etheric body also supports, regulates, shapes, and animates our bodies.

Sorry if this was obvious to you and I missed a reference, but Death (or Transformation of the body) is in the 6th position of the octave, which follows the energy centers directly, hence the Indigo body. I really only follow the patterns but don't have a good grasp on unraveling the archtypes specifically, so that's pretty keen of you if you intuition led you there thru meaning (as opposed to my dumber paint by numbers/make a graph/matrix type associations lol)

[dreamoftheiris]

Ha - I don't think that's dumb to do a paint by numbers/graph association but I do think that the Archetypes do not follow the energy centers directly. Rather, they follow them somewhat in that the energy of specific chakras can be found in all the archetypes. However, that said, I do think that the process of going through the Mind can be seen as balancing the lower chakras and the body as primarily work in opening 6th ray. But you can find the energy of all the other chakras in each archetype.

Ra says, " Each archetype is a significant ding an sich, or thing in itself, with its own complex of concepts. While it is informative to survey the relationships of one archetype to another it can be said that this line of inquiry is secondary to the discovery of the purest gestalt or vision or melody which each archetype signifies to both the intellectual and intuitive mind.”

[Nau7ik]

A last comment: I’ve been told from my teachers that this Key, Death, has an important practical secret of occultism hidden within its design. I cannot speak on this because I haven’t learned it yet. I believe it has to do with transformation of the body. Actual minute, physical changes in the structure of body, the chemistry of the blood, the functioning of the organs. Paul Foster Case quoted Boehme in one of these lessons.

Death is an interesting topic when it comes to the micro level. For instance, all our living cells that constituted our bodies 10 years ago have long died, and this process is required for the continued growth and evolution of our bodies. But at the same time, the raw materials get recycled and reconstituted over and over again, and yet the energetic fields that we produce from that biology evolve and are maintained uninterrupted. Now take all that and correspond it to the macro level, and it's exactly the same.

So perhaps the true power lies in understanding how we can use these elements of death to not only perpetuate life, but continually seed ones evolution from it.

Amazing! You’re absolutely right, what you say is an important part of the Death card. You speak in a very eloquent way.

Transformations in consciousness will be made “concrete” so to speak with the imprinting of consciousness on the body. The olds cells are renewed in the ordinary course of bodily repair in sleep and replaced with new cells. “As Above, So Below.”

One of the means of overcoming death is understanding what death truly is. Words are failing me right now. You said it beautifully. I can’t add much to that lol

I did not understand the significance of “body” in Tarot for the longest time. It wasn’t until I started studying the Builders that I began to make progress in understanding.

[Nau7ik]

In response to zedro, I found some interesting comments which support your own:

”The forces of change which result in physical death are inimical only because we misunderstand and fear them. They are forces connected with reproduction, and by right use of imagination they may be tamed and transformed, so that they can be utilized for indefinite prolongation of physical existence. Death, like every other event in human life, is a manifestation of law. When we understand the law we can direct the forces of change so as to overcome death. Yet understanding never will be ours until fear, not only of dying, but of death itself, has been overcome by right knowledge, and by right interpretation of the phenomena of physical dissolution.
[...]
It is by death that social changes for the better come to pass. Old ideas pass away with the death of the persons who hold them. New ideas gain currency as the new generation comes to maturity. Thus the actual fact of death is an instrument of progress. And now the time is close at hand when man shall master the secret of death itself.”

—The Tarot by Paul Foster Case