DEATH AND ITS AFTERLIVES IN THE TAROT

Rachel Pollack

Does this emphasis on awareness move us away from the idea of a literal life after death? I would argue no, for it seems that the duality of literal vs. metaphoric, experience vs. philosophy, is one of the traps the Devil uses to hold us back from knowledge of our true selves—whether before death, or after. The whole movement of these last cards is to carry us beyond duality.

If the Sun was the light of revelation, Judgment is the sound. Together, they raise the dead. We then face a choice, an act of free will. Liberation or a conscious return to the physical realm of the senses. The choice is free. Instead of return the soul may separate from the Wheel and enter a wider World, reunion with our divine origins.