Legend: Death/ Gwyn AB Nudd & The Wild Hunt

snowy25

Somehow this card reminds me of a story from Stephen King.
Where a bounce of people are traveling in an airplane flying against time.
Behind them everything stops to exist, before them all is gone...

The flying horses remind me not only of this but also of the thunder before the weather changes.
This was my look on thunder as I was just a little child.
My parents told me there was a man on a wagon throwing lightning bolts and this was the noise I was hearing.
And then I looked at the sky trying to see the wagon.

The landscape in this card is cold and changing.
Making place for the new time to come.
Something has to die for the new to be born.
The old situation stops to exist and makes place for a new improved one.
But this will take time and can feel uncomverteble at first.
 

WalesWoman

Snowy said:
Something has to die for the new to be born.
The old situation stops to exist and makes place for a new improved one.
But this will take time and can feel uncomverteble at first.

Uncomfortable...yes, you, dear snow, have an uncanny knack for picking some of the most difficult and uncomfortable cards to work on. It's not that the Death card is uncomfortable per se, I just have a hard time relating to this image. I don't know that much about this, other than in stories I've read elsewhere.

These wild unearthly riders hunted down the unwary caught out at night, so no one wanted to be caught outside after dark, no one wanted to hear the huntsman horn, heralding that the quarry had been sighted, for then began the wild persuit and even wilder attempt to escape. In the story I read, somehow the people managed not to be sighted and so escaped, but once they saw you there was no place to hide, no way to elude them, no escape.

So it is with change, the necessary ones we don't want to deal with, the ones we may not want to change but have no other alternative, it is as inescapble as Death itself. Changes in our bodies, changes in our outlook and attitude, changes in our relationships, all the things that cannot remain static in order to grow or develop. We fear change because we can't be guaranteed that what will follow will be better than what we have right now, but if nothing changed...our lives would become stagnant and so cluttered with the same old same we might be buried in it. As comforting as the familiar can be, it can blind us to the possiblilities and potentials of what can be if we simply allow nature to take it's course. Life and Death are both natural, one just lasts much longer.

Well, I just noticed that with Death, the Major arcana has been completed! Now how is that for coincidence, completion of one thing and transformation...time to get back to the minors.
 

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snowy25

WalesWoman

This was a difficoult card for me not knowing it's story very well.
I'm glad the Majur Arcana is compete and am exited to read the other once later on.
Knowing by the other once there was much to learn from.

Snowy
 

WalesWoman

I had some more thoughts about this card...since these riders are flying above this crumbling ruin, that it could be getting some distance, gaining some perspective and seeing what needs to change, what needs to be discarded in order to begin anew.

The darkness limits our perceptions, and darkness is frightening, but that lightning again gives us flashes of insights. Gives us a new view, probably one of strong contrasts, more black and white than shades of gray, since Death gives us no leeway for waffling back and forth. It is or it isn't and once the process is in motion, there is no going back.

The huntsman's horn...sort of like the Judgement call. That horn seems to appear in many cards besides Judgement...it's in the Hanged Man and Death.
 

Sophie-David

WalesWoman said:
Life and Death are both natural, one just lasts much longer.
I'm not so sure about that! I think Death is just another form of Life. In both, the eternal Self continues...
WalesWoman said:
Well, I just noticed that with Death, the Major arcana has been completed! Now how is that for coincidence, completion of one thing and transformation...time to get back to the minors.
Actually we still have Lleu, the Sun to look at. :)
WalesWoman said:
I had some more thoughts about this card...since these riders are flying above this crumbling ruin, that it could be getting some distance, gaining some perspective and seeing what needs to change, what needs to be discarded in order to begin anew.
I wasn't sure, but I also thought they were riding above a castle ruin. As the observer we are a long way up with these riders. Its intriguing that A Keeper of Words describes Arthur as riding with the Wild Hunt, and also besieging Gwyn's castle - presumeably both were on the ground at the time. So we have the image of Arthur riding with Death, that Death is his comrade and peer, and at times his enemy. It seems to me to be quite a deep description of the life of a warrior, that for him life and death are each as close as the next breath. The thoughtful warrior realizes both his mortality and his eternity, and one hopes that he learns to live both in their fullest.
WalesWoman said:
The darkness limits our perceptions, and darkness is frightening, but that lightning again gives us flashes of insights. Gives us a new view, probably one of strong contrasts, more black and white than shades of gray, since Death gives us no leeway for waffling back and forth. It is or it isn't and once the process is in motion, there is no going back.
It seems to have been my challenge lately to defend the beauty of darkness - perhaps folks are impatient for Spring.:) I was glad that Anna-Marie had some words in praise of darkness:
The leafless tree speaks of the season - the darktime, the reign of Gwyn ab Nudd. The passage through the time of shadows brings insight, heightened psychic abilities, and depth. The veil between this world and the next is thin; it is the dark before the dawn.
Perhaps its just my mood lately, but I'm finding her prose for these recent Majors very moving.
WalesWoman said:
The huntsman's horn...sort of like the Judgement call. That horn seems to appear in many cards besides Judgement...it's in the Hanged Man and Death.
There is also an echo of the Tower in this card, a lightning storm, but not nearly as severe. Ah, but the horn! Yes, indeed a Judgement call, a beautiful symbol of transcendence. Ever since, years ago, I read Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever the image of the horn has haunted me. Its sound was the poignant call to glory, to meet fate with courage, to transcend even death itself. On many levels Arthur did just that - and so we still write about him now...
 

WalesWoman

Good thoughts, guess I'm a Sun child...and as you can see Math was not one of my best subjects since I counted the threads and missed one...The Sun of all things. LOL

Ok, philosophy time again, I do feel that Death is another form of birth, maybe not in human form, but going into some other dimension of being. We are made of light I think, all electro-magnetic energy, so I like that aspect of the lightening in the card. They do call it the spark of life...so it makes sense to me.

Death just lasts longer for those who have't experienced it yet...sometimes. I guess I was having one of my dark moments when I posted last on this. No matter how long we do live, it really is just a blink of time when you look at everything else. How many generations have passed between the time that castle was built and fell into ruin? How many different civilizations have seen a different landmark and contours, different stars in the sky? They seem static and ageless, but still are constantly changing, just in a way that we most often don't live long or have memories going far back enough. We tend to think of time marching slowly and steadily along, with everything remaining as it was from the beginning. The beginning of our history, the beginning of our creation? But it doesn't, our short little lifespans can't even begin to measure it and yet we have the audacity to think that we can somehow control it?

I'm thinking of what we are doing to our environment and what nature does to our environment. We can conserve and try to preserve, but we can't stop change from happening...whether it happens over eons or in the blink of an eye. You can never be fully prepared for any eventuality, there is no safe place to hide or avoid changes, all you can do is hope you can adapt the best you can and make the most from it.
 

Sophie-David

WalesWoman said:
Good thoughts, guess I'm a Sun child...and as you can see Math was not one of my best subjects since I counted the threads and missed one...The Sun of all things. LOL
Yes, I just realized what should have been obvious, but then I'm really only coming up one year old - from the time of the union - so there's so much to learn at once.;) Since you are a Leo, a Sun Child, you would tend to really appreciate the light. And since I am a Capricorn, an earth sign born in the heart of winter, and most of my personal planets are in the dark parts of the year, Aqaurius and Saggitarius on either side of Capricorn, it is natural that I find darkness nurturing. Its not only that Sophie is a creature of the night - which is why I thought darkness was important to me - its that even my Sun is low in the sky.
WalesWoman said:
Ok, philosophy time again...
I enjoyed your next three paragraphs wholeheartedly. This deck seems to bring out the best in us doesn't it, to stir up the creative depths...
 

Lyones

I noticed that in the Keeper of Words, Anna-Marie speaks a lot about the weather, and I can relate to the sudden change that can take place in the heavens, one minute the sun is out, and the next the storm clouds are rolling in. Some of the storms in my area are quite destructive, especially because of strong winds, which damage buildings, fences and trees - they can change the landscape as well as enforce maintenance and restructure. It also speaks of height, depth and shaddows which bring a three-dimentional aspect to the card.

One of the horses seems to bucking it's rider - it makes me think that it's not too pleased about being ridden in the sky and is trying to shake off what is unacceptable to it. It is also tempting fate I think, in that it's wild performance so far up is rather dangerous.

Physical Death is not a pretty sight, it is not a dignified state, nor does it allow us to have control over the physical being. It calls to my attention the fact that Death does not respect age, nor race, nor status - it faces every being at some stage, and cannot be avoided by pretending it does not exist or will not happen ... Having felt the loss of loved ones myself, and as the inexorable cannot be faught, I am more concerned with the void Death creates in the lives of those left living, of what the future holds - if we concentrate too much on what is stagnant, lifeless and depressing in our lives, of what we do not have, have lost, or cannot change, we do not allow ourselves the opportunity to move on in directions that are available to us. It is natural and healthy to grieve for what once was, it can bring cleansing and acceptance to the present, and compels us to new life-styles and functions.

The Death card can warn us of impending life-storms, to take precautions, to change attitudes ... I'm so pleased that The Sun is yet to be done in this study, as even when the storm breaks we know the sun will eventually come out and bring happier times with it.

I like the word Anna-Marie uses to describe the lighting bolts ... "jolt" ... as that is what I feel when I see this card come up in a reading, not knowing where it will strike - the lighting also makes me think of sharp pain.

The riders in the sky are a strange phenomenon - one wears staghorns and carries the horn of the hunt, another rides a stag. The ghostly dogs race next to the horses and one stops to sniff scent on the wind. The ruined castle and soul-collectors reminds me of the Biblical story of Egypt, where Death passed over the homes marked with protection, and claimed the lives of the first-born in others ... and yet, Gwyn Ab Nudd does not seem to be the instigator of death, but rather the collector of souls - of those that have already passed away, giving them protection, a place in the hunt, further purpose after catastrophy.