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Double loop in the Zodiac


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XIII

נ Death
Transformation, change, voluntary or involuntary, in either case logical development of existing conditions, yet perhaps sudden and unexpected. Apparent death or destruction, but such interpretation is illusion.
נ

ATU XIII

Death

The Child of the Great Transformers.
The Lord of the Gate of Death

Pronounced Noon, and means a "Fish".

The correspondences again appear to follow the astrological interpretation, which is Scorpio, the reptile fabled to sting itself to death.
Mars rules Scorpio, and its Greek God is, therefore, Mars; its Roman God Ares. Apep, the Egyptian God, an immense serpent, is attributed here. Kundalini is the Hindu Goddess representing the creative force (libido), coiled up as a serpent at the base of the spine, in the so-called lotus of the Muladhara Chakra.

Its magical formula is Regeneration through Putrefaction. The alchemists of old used this formula mainly. The first common matter of their operations was base, and had to pass through several stages of corruptions or putrefaction (or chemical change, as it would be styled to-day), when it was called the black dragon-but from this putrid stage, the pure gold was derived.

Another application of the same formula applies to that psychological state of which all mystics speak, viz.: the Spiritual Dryness or "The Dark Night of the Soul", wherein all one's powers are held temporarily in abeyance gathering, in reality, strength to shoot up and blossom forth in the light of the Spiritual Sun. Its sacred animal is, therefore, the Beetle, representing the Egyptian God Khephra, the Beetle-God of the Midnight Sun symbolizing Light in Darkness. During the mystical state referred to, the whole of one's inner life appears, in the most heartbreaking manner conceivable, to be torn asunder.

The Tarot attribution, XIII -Death, continues this conception, picturing a black skeleton mounted on a white horse (reminding us of one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) armed with a scythe mowing down all and everything with which he comes into contact.

Its Yetsiratic title is "The Imaginative Intelligence", and its jewel Snakestone; colour Beetle-Brown; perfume Opoponax; its plant Cactus and all poisonous growths.