Nobody said transformation was pretty

Roots of Asia (AG Muller 2001)

 'Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,

The tree of life is blooming there.'

                                       ~WB Yeats

Today's draw from the Roots of Asia Tarot by Amnart Klanprachar and Thaworn Boonyawan is major arcanum number 13--Death. This is one of the most striking Death cards I have seen. We have two curious rock formations such as sometimes seen in images of Asia, but as the eye moves down the card, you realise that the landscape looks like a woman lying on her back, arms outstretched, knees up. The knees become the mountain formations. Growing from her heart centre is a tree. Her hair streams into the water. Her body is slowly being changed from its human form and becoming a natural landscape. You get the feeling that in time, she'll have disappeared completely into the land. At the top of the card, the sky is dark and there's a glowing orb, could be either sun or moon, encircled by three rings, then the curious wispy orange sky that features in nearly every card in the Roots of Asia pack. The woman's 'body' lies in an abundance of water in rivers, pools and streams, and on the twin peaks of the mountains, there are spectacularly high and dramatic waterfalls. A mist rises over the entire scene from the water. It is a card that is both earthy and ethereal.



The element of this card that I find most appealing is the tree growing from the heart chakra. To me, it is the Tree of Life, a concept that is present in some form in nearly all world religions. The Tree of Life is archetypal to the ancient religions of the world, the ecology of tree and water reflecting the interconnectedness of life on the physical plane, and our rootedness in forces unseen. The trees roots plunge into the earth and draw on the water, its branches reach toward the heavens, all representative to me of our physical and spiritual natures. And the place where these aspects of self converge, to me,  is the heart chakra. The little Tree of Life emerging from the heart chakra of the inert figure in this Death card reminds me that my essential nature is more than my physical body, and deathless.

The Divinatory Key to this card in the deck's LWB states:

'New opportunities and transformation. Redemption through putrefaction.'

The phrase 'Redemption through putrefaction' is unnerving. Putrefaction is not something we talk about much when we begin to wax poetical about the transformative powers inherent in the Death card, but it is an inescapable part of the process of death and rebirth. 'Putrefaction' is an ugly word. To a native speaker of English, just saying it makes you have that cloying feeling of nausea in the back of your throat, at least that's the case for this native English speaker. Putrefaction is the destruction of soft tissues in the body, resulting in the production of foul-smelling matter. It is not pretty. The figure in the card is not pretty. Her legs are turning to misshapen, melty-looking heaps. She's only got one breast left. Her arms are gone. Perhaps that miasma of mist rising up from the water is not entirely made up of freshness...And yet, there's a beautiful little green tree, topped with its own divine spark, rising from her heart, reminding us of all that we are that is beyond the confines of this limited and imperfect body, and its continuation after that body is long forgotten.

Nobody said transformation was pretty. But it IS beautiful.