Death/Nameless Arcana: Cleaning up the Mess
Above: The card with no name from the Tarot de Marseille (Jodorowsky version).
We stare death in the face with climate change, and yet we keep on doing the things that cause it, because its effects are slow to the eye, easy to ignore. (For most of us, anyway … but that’s changing.)
If we were told that we had to stop burning fossil fuels, producing plastics and cutting down the rainforests or we would all die next week, it would all stop. But (and as much as I do believe that everything we buy is a vote for that service or product) the fact is that the capitalist systems that we operate within offer damaging pathways that we can’t always avoid. Ethical choices tend to be pricier than unethical choices; not everyone can afford to be ethical. So why are these systems allowed to continue? Because it’s slow: they can pretend it’s not happening.
In the Jodorowsky version of the Tarot de Marseille deck, Death – or the Nameless Arcana (the card has no name in many old decks) – uses his scythe to clear the land of all that went before. The severed heads of kings and queens are trodden into the earth. The ground is scorched black. Yellow plants, representing something bright and intelligent, grow back in its place.
In the Waite-Smith, the same pillars that show up in the Moon card are here, in the far distance. Instead of the mysterious Moon, though, we can see the Sun either setting or rising. The Pope begs for mercy before Death’s horse but I think that horse is going to trample on him regardless. It’s ironic, really, that this card shows the Powers That Be suffering, as they will probably be the last to feel the effects. Perhaps that is this card’s psychic message, encoded unconsciously so many years ago. Perhaps it shows the final clearout of the scythe.
And yet, as I write all of this, I carry the guilt of preparing to take an unnecessary flight half way across the world. Yes, that’s me. I also drive a little car into the city and back, from my more distant country village, once or twice every week. I don’t know where my food comes from half of the time, and a lot of it comes wrapped in horrible plastic. Although I feel like I make many little choices every week that respect my love for the planet, frankly I am a lousy example of ethical choices, and most of us probably are.
I could move out of my village and live somewhere with public transport. But who will move in to replace me, and how much will they drive compared to me? I don’t think that stopping everything and hiding at home is the way to go, but doing a hell of a lot less of everything is definitely the way forward. I can try my best to do that, whilst recognising my failures every time I make a conscious choice to fail.
The ground is blackened, burned, scorched in Death/Nameless Arcana. Death will come with his scythe to clear up our mess. New species will evolve, perhaps including humans. (We are not necessarily done for, although our ‘way of life’ is.) Perhaps we are making way for stunning and gorgeous creatures that are unfathomable to our imaginations to manifest by killing off the stunning and gorgeous creatures that are here in abundance, the way the dinosaurs made way for mammals to thrive. Perhaps not.
We are not the makers and destroyers of life itself. We are not deities: we do not have that kind of power. Death is the energy that will clean up our mess when we are no longer capable of messing up the ecosystem any more than we already have. The Empress will do what she does and create new forms of life. Emperor energy will govern a new ecosystem. That’s how it works. It is probably not a coincidence that Death and The Empress both have the number three in their cards: three and thirteen. They are intrinsically linked; they are partnership forces, like Brahma and Shiva, working together until the time comes when our planet is no more.
That’s all for now, friends. Thank you for being here – and please check out my Therapeutic Tarot Sessions and my courses embracing Tarot and Nature if you’d like us to work together. You can also sign up for the Tarot Blog newsletter (different to my main newsletter) below to receive occasional email updates (roughly monthly) with the latest posts.
Smiles from Scotland,
Stephen
