Death
The Death card is by far one of the most misunderstood and feared cards in the tarot, and for good reason: Death is often seen, especially in Western Culture, as the ultimate ending. But nature and the universe tells us that Death, while an ending, is also necessary for rebirth, renewal, and the rising of life. Certain species of coniferous trees cannot complete their life cycle until the intense and powerful heat of forest fires allow their cones to open and spread their seeds; these seeds fall into ground that, while superficially devastated, are wide open with land into which newly seeded sprouts can grow and prosper. When trees die and fall, their rotting bodies become incredible microcosms, entire worlds unto themselves of insects, bacteria, fungi, small mammals, and birds. The atomic elements that make up our bodies, our machines, the food we eat, and the whole world around us came from the violent deaths of countless stars that lived and perished for billions of years before our earth was formed. (While it may seem like a tired image, it really isn’t a stretch at all to say that we all ultimately came from stardust.)
The typical response to the common fears of the Death card is that it’s a powerful allegory, and while it may seem cliché at this point, there’s no denying that in a metaphorical sense, Death happens all around us: People change their minds or opinions on hotly contested topics, in some cases potentially doing entire 180-degree turns on their position. We may find others softening their hearts and willing to have important, difficult discussions after years of aloofness, rejection and cold silence. Others still may find themselves changing their positions because they have found themselves no longer on the sidelines, but fully in the thick of it — either personally, or seen in the struggle of someone they love or genuinely value. Relationships end and friendships dissolve, whether through distance or drama. Assumptions about gender or sexual identity become overturned and powerfully broken, and past beliefs may find themselves shattered after a lifetime of the status quo upheld.
In this case then, aspec people and queer people have a very unique connection to the Death card: the seemingly universal experience of aspec and other queer people, across all microlabels, communities, and identities, is an ending to their place in the sexual, relational, and gender norms that are especially powerful in society at large today. For some, this ending came very early in life, with a simple observation that they did not experience attraction or a desire for being paired with a “boyfriend” or a “girlfriend”, in the same way that their peers did. For others, this ending came much later in life, with a succession of events and experiences finally helping to put together the disparate pieces of their true sexual selves — a truth putting them outside of what was previously understood to be “normal”. For others still, it was a violent act of trauma which brought about this end.
(It’s worth remembering at this point that all of these paths are valid; whether they are people who have known that they have been ace all of their lives, or who have come to asexuality either in older age or out of sexual trauma, all aces are valid. The path to understanding one’s own sexuality and asexuality is as diverse and as personally unique as humanity’s own range of experience of sexuality and relationships.)
Regardless of when or how one finally comes out to themselves and/or others as queer, let alone aromantic or asexual, or on their spectrums of identity, there is that endpoint that is present. That point at which we can remember that before that time, we can say, “Back when I identified as cis or heterosexual…” But it is also that point at which we can remember saying, “Oh yeah, after that, I felt so much happier, like a weight had been lifted from my body…”
Looking at the Smith-Waite version of this deck, Death comes in on a pale horse holding a flag showing a white rose; often a symbol of purity and innocence, it shows how impartial death can be as a ruthless, equalizing force, and in turn how it can also be a force for wiping away purities, flaws and imperfections. In this way it can be seen as a powerful example of how death doesn’t distinguish based on earthy power, or monetary wealth. As we see in the foreground, with the king having fallen, it doesn’t matter if you are rich, poor, wealthy or penniless.
In much the same way, it doesn’t matter how important or sacrosanct an idea or assumption or belief you had, about your sexuality. When the energy of the Death card enters into our lives, we are urged to let those ideas go. Their time has passed, and with that, comes a time for new ideas, and new beliefs about oneself. The passing of the old, makes way for the growth of the new.
Which means for many, a time to finally let go of the assumption or idea that they were “straight”, or “cisgender”, or “heteronormative”; that they were or could be “normal”, like everyone else.
As with death in the physical sense of the word, there can be a great deal of pain, suffering, and sadness associated with this event. In my own experience, “grief” is the best word I can use to describe this feeling: Grief at the implosion of a long-term relationship (or marriage, in the case of others). Grief from suddenly being bereft of one’s sense of both self and identity, with nothing to fill the void left by what was there before. And also, grief at the loss of any comfortable narrative that could easily define who and what they are. Even in many stories I’ve seen on social media, people who had a sense of their asexuality at a young age say that they tried dating many times in later life, trying desperately to fit the peg of their squared sexuality in the round hole drilled out for them by their family, and society.
On another level, Death marks not just the feelings and emotions that come with the passing of someone’s allosexual and allonormative self. Death can also mark the realization that someone is not cis/cisnormative, or heterosexual/heternormative. For me personally, the destruction of my long-term relationship, and the toxic implosion of the one that followed after marked my continuing struggle with gender and my gender identity. While I still feel “cis” and “male” I more and more feel alienated from what “malehood” means in an increasingly toxic masculine world. For others, it could also mark another step into coming into themselves as trans or agender. Accompanying this was the realization that for a long time, I had the capacity to be attracted to men, or at least masculine-presenting people, just as I had the capacity to be attracted to women and feminine-presenting people. I had known this much, much earlier in life, but like many things in me that were gender or sexually abnormal it had been buried under the weight of decades of Catholic programming regarding sexual mores, and sexual conduct — including abstinence and chasteness, and further still under the years of intense Evangelical Fundamentalist purity culture beliefs that I took upon myself to better fit in with my friends.
The feature of the Smith-Waite death card that often draws my eye is the sunrise coming over the the horizon in the background. Pamela Coleman Smith’s linework traces an arc bounding the sun which links the two lone towers in the background — while there are many interpretations of these two towers, I feel like the sun and the two towers shows how the loss and desolation that accompanies death does concretely lead to brightness, a new beginning, and a unification of the conscious and unconscious self (which to my mind, the two towers represent here). They mark the right of passage that this card can strongly represent, the vital inflection point between was before, and what can happen in the future.
A common thread among many stories in the asexual and aromantic community is the switching on of the lightbulb when people discover the information and language that have grown and developed around asexuality, aromanticism, their associated spectrums, and the greater cultural set of phenomona we now gloriously call ace culture. “I used to feel like I was broken because I didn’t feel sexual attraction like people around me did, but now, not anymore” is the common refrain that pops up, one that I have encountered over and over again in books, social media posts, and forum threads. Almost to the point of cliché. But clichés are overused phrases that have lost their meaning and originality. In all of these stories, this phrase is one full of power and meaning for all of those who have used it. It marks a point in their lives that, far from being unoriginal, unifies them with others in what is seen as an unorthodox and unique departure from allnormative sexuality. If it seems overused, it is because we exist in a society that continues to force allonormative and amatonormative beliefs on sexuality and relationships on people, young and old alike. We exist in a society that by and large refuses to acknowledge aspec identities. If people are independently and repeatedly arriving at a sexual narrative of themselves that runs contrary to societies prevailing narrative about sex, then perhaps what has to change is the narrative of society, not the narrative of the people.
In other cards, like Chris-Anne’s extremely popular Light Seer’s Tarot, the Death card has been drastically reworked, with a result that I feel truly reflects this energy and vitality. Titled “Death-Rebirth” (stylized with an infinite lemniscate bridging the words “Death” and “Rebirth”), it shows a cloaked figure staring directly at us. We would expect it to be the skull visage of the Grim Reaper, the same Reaper we see in the Smith-Waite Tarot, but instead we see a portal into a lush, verdant forest, the morning sun’s light breaking over the tree canopy. When Death comes for us in the metaphorical sense, when we challenge ourselves to actually look it in the eye and truly see it for what it is, we come to realize what death can mean for our past selves and can offer to us in the future.
In Laura Zuspan’s sublime Luminous Void Tarot, the Death card is a stark and imposing skull, which almost fills the entire card with its naked presentation of the oblivion that death gives us. But look closer: across its brow runs a beautiful rainbow rendered in watercolour, ever so subtly casting itself across Death’s seemingly bleak face. I am especially drawn to this card in this deck because to me, it really sums up my own queer journey into asexuality so very well: amidst the destruction and annihilation of death, a promise of peace and a promise of joyous queer liberation.
Previous: The Hanged Man
Next: Temperance
