The Plot Involves the Tarot Card

One of the hoariest tropes in horror and suspense tales is when the Dana Scully-type man of reason finds himself, inexplicably, having a Tarot reading session for either himself or the dead. The (usually sensual-) card reader flips the final card and it’s old number XIII, Death, La Mort.

The audience reels back in horror and stares at the cranial portrait lain upon the tableau.

But we should be mindful that Death in the Tarot is not catastrophic ( The Tower is that one ), rather it’s the natural mowing under, the breaking apart of that which was before, in short it is the power which breaks the old so that the new can come. It’s the death in autumn, so that the stalks may be plowed under, it’s the death of primitive or childish ideas so that new ones may come.

Anatole France:

Tous les changements, même les plus souhaités ont leur mélancolie, car ce que nous quittons, c’est une partie de nous-mêmes; il faut mourir à une vie pour entrer dans une autre.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another

From Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard

• Mysticism

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