Death & Connection to Nature (Podcast)

Death & Connection to Nature (Podcast)

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Lupa is an artist, author and amateur naturalist in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of a number of books published by Llewellyn including her upcoming book Nature Spirituality From the Ground Up: Connect With Totems in Your Ecosystem out in January 2016.

Lupa is an artist, author and amateur naturalist in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of a number of books published by Llewellyn including her upcoming book Nature Spirituality From the Ground Up: Connect With Totems in Your Ecosystem out in January 2016.

For those unfamiliar with Tarot, the Death card can feel ominous and terrifying. What if there was a deck that faced it directly and in every card of the Major and Minor Arcana?

In this brave new Archetypal Tarot podcast, Death is embraced early on with an interview with Lupa Greenwolf, artist and creator of the Tarot of Bones .

Lupa is the author of a number of books including her upcoming book Nature Spirituality From the Ground Up: Connect With Totems in Your Ecosystem out in January 2016.  Lupa is also working on a new tarot deck The Tarot of Bones, a natural history themed divination deck, which will make its debut in the summer of 2016. The full 78-card deck will feature photography of Lupa’s artwork made from animal bones and other natural materials.

Cyndera and Lupa discuss stones, bones and how relating with these natural presences can deepen the human connection to nature. A naturalistic interpretation of the Death Card allows us to get in touch with the ignored presence of Death in our lives and how it relates to our current relationship with the environment.

Topics covered in this podcast:

– the process of working with animal remains as an artistic and spiritual medium

– how to make art for both major and minor arcana

– How to work with Death in tarot readings and combat superstition

– How encountering bones assists with deepening a connection with nature

Tarot-of-Bones_magician

The Magician Card of The Tarot of Bones, featuring nature-found moss and a corn snake skeleton.

 

 

Death – Superstition and Psychology

Death – Superstition and Psychology

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“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”   ~Joseph Campbell

Who knew that Death could be so funny?  But here it is, card number 13 in the Major Arcana.  Join Julienne and Cyndera as they look at the archetype of Death from a symbolic and psychological point of view with a dash of added humor. Learn why this inevitable stage for the Hero isn’t the end but an important element to the rest of the journey.

The Death card liberates all that has reached its end, and cuts away stagnation so that life can continue. Beyond the literal interpretation of this card, there is a rich array of deaths that visit in our daily lives: the end of jobs, relationships and also the visitations of depressions and other forms of “falling apart.” What advantages are there to dismemberment and disintegration?  How do Zombies and Batman play a role at exploring this the ultimate mystery of life – it’s end.  Or is it the end? You’ll just have to get the podcast and find out.

PS: Listen to all the way to the end for a surprise (and possibly a laugh or two).

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

Key Words:

  • Ending of a cycle – Loss – Conclusion – Sadness
  • Transition into a new state – Psychological transformation
  • Finishing up – Regeneration – Elimination of old patterns
  • Being caught in the inescapable – Good-byes – Deep change

Film / TV References:

The Dark Knight Rises (2012
Sean of the Dead (2004)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Bones (2005-present)
Dead Like Me (2003-2004)

Julienne’s rendition of Card 13: Death

Yet through depression we enter depths and in depths find soul. Depression is essential to the tragic sense of life. It moistens the dry soul, and dries the wet. It brings refuge, limitation, focus, gravity, weight, and humble powerlessness. It reminds of death. The true revolution begins in the individual who can be true to his or her depression. Neither jerking oneself out of it, caught in cycles of hope and despair, nor suffering it through till it turns, not theologizing it – but discovering the consciousness and depths it wants. So begins the revolution in behalf of soul.

~ from Re-Visioning Psychology by James Hillman

The Holy Longing

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the mass man will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you,
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making sweeps you upward.
Distance does not make you falter.
Now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven’t experienced this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.

Goethe
(translated by Robert Bly)

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