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| Death: Persephone, goddess of
spring, was hanging around a meadow one day with a few nymphs and a pig farmer,
wishing her mother would let her have some cool friends, when, with a rumble
and a crack, her world ended. |
| It seems that Hades, god of the
underworld and our poster boy for death, had decided that his gloomy abode was
depressing even him. It needed a woman’s touch, only no woman in her
right mind was going to voluntarily live there. The only way for him to
get a wife was to kidnap one, and true to his usual luck, he chose the
beautiful Persephone, whom every other god had wisely admired from afar.
Wisely because Persephone’s mother was the powerful goddess Demeter, who was
quite civil as long as you didn’t cross her. Like, for instance, by
opening a fissure under her daughter and dragging her kicking and screaming
into the underworld. The pig farmer, who’d lost a couple of expensive sows to
the aforementioned fissure, ratted out Hades to the furious
goddess. And before the honeymoon was even over, Hades found himself with
mother-in-law problems of god-like proportions. |
| Demeter controlled the seasons, and
in her anger she made it perpetually winter, so that nothing could grow. The
humans started to starve and the rest of the gods faced a grim future with no
worshippers. Zeus, who had conspired with Hades on the kidnapping scheme,
finally had to tell him that he must return his wife. But when Hades went
to break the news to Persephone, she surprised him by immediately devouring a
pomegranate. |
| Now Persephone knew the rules: eat
or drink anything in the underworld and you’re permanently bound there.
But she nonetheless scarfed down the fruit, seeds and all. Why? |
| Persephone had initially thought
that her life was over when she was
taken by the fearsome god of the underworld. Which, in a way, it was,
because nothing would ever be quite the same again. But slowly, she began
to see that what had once seemed like the end of the world was actually the
dawning of a new and better one for her. It turned out that Hades was
also the god of riches and wealth, as he controlled all of the precious
substances mined from below the ground. He had decked out his new bride in
finery and draped her with gold and jewels. In fact, there were so many
of the latter scattered around that the two of them regularly played jacks with
diamonds and rubies. And let’s face it, a big bunch of diamonds makes any
guy more attractive. Not to mention that, once Persephone got over
weeping and wailing for her mother, she realized that it was kind of nice not
to have her every move overseen by someone who was, in the nicest possible way,
a bit of a control freak. Her little meal insured that, while she got to
visit her mom for part of the year, the rest of the time she could lord it up
as co-ruler of the underworld alongside her besotted, gift-giving husband. |
| The Death card rarely indicates actual, physical
death. Most of the time, it heralds the passing away of something old--a
destructive relationship, an unhealthy way of life, a job you hate--so that
something new can grow. This can be a little traumatic, as any massive
change always is. But eventually, you’ll look back on the death of your
old self with satisfaction, happier and freer in your new existence than ever
before. |
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Death Reversed: Hades, brother to Zeus and Poseidon, got kind of a raw
deal. Shortly after birth, he was
swallowed alive by his father Kronos, who had heard a prophecy that one of his
kids would someday overthrow him. So for
his formative years, Hades sat around daddy’s gut
with his siblings, contemplating life as an immortal canapé.
Once Zeus, the wiliest of the lot, managed to force his father to
regurgitate the family, Hades gladly signed up for the overthrow daddy
campaign. The brothers succeeded in their coup, but when it came time to divide
the spoils, namely earth, Hades came out on the bottom again. Literally.
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Instead of becoming lord of
the majestic sky, like Zeus, or of the rolling seas, like Poseidon, he was
stuck in the dark pit of the underworld with the fun job of overseeing the
Greek version of Hell. This, plus
serious mother-in-law issues, left Hades a tad bitter--which might explain why he
ran such a bent system. For their
heroes, the Greeks believed that death was just the beginning of a new and
better life in a happy place known as Elysium.
But for those who didn’t squeak in under the hero category, there were a couple of very unsavory
choices. They could suffer unspeakable
torment in Tartarus, reserved for anyone who had angered the gods (a rather
large number, considering that most ancient gods weren’t all that hard to
annoy). Or, maybe even worse, they could
drift around the Fields of Asphodel, where mediocre or cowardly souls discovered
that their reward for never going for the gusto was a mighty boring afterlife.
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| There’s not a lot written about the Fields of
Asphodel because not a lot happened.
Souls hung around as aimless ghosts, unable to remember
much of what had occurred in life. They
didn’t suffer actual torture, but they also had nothing to do for fun or anything
to break up the unrelieved boredom. Sort
of like work with no internet connection, a broken snack machine and a clock
that never says five PM. |
| The Death card reversed warns of a life in danger of stagnation because the risks necessary to
succeed are never taken. Yeah, your job
may pay really well, but is it boring you to death? Yes, that relationship is long-standing, but
is it really working for you anymore? Death
reversed acknowledges that there is something in the querent's life that has been sick
for a long time and needs to die if he is ever to truly live. |
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