Death

Scorpio holds the hour, the sign that knows how to let a thing go dark so something else may rise. Somewhere in today there is a door already closed behind you, though your hand still rests on the wood. The card inclines you to turn and walk. What ends does not end you; it clears the field, the way winter clears the orchard so the wood can bear again. The gift is the room that opens. The cost is real grief, and the plain work of setting down what you carried here. Name the finished thing today. Bury it gently. Then go on.

Scorpio holds the hour, and Scorpio knows the difference between a thing that is sleeping and a thing that is finished. Today you may notice the weight in your arms — some ending you have been carrying rather than laying down, kept warm past its season. The gift of this door is clarity: the corpse is nameable now, and naming is the first shovelful. The cost is that you must set it down yourself; no season, no other person, will pry your fingers open. Grief may follow the burial, and that grief is not a mistake. It is the ground closing over.