My Death Card Year

Eclipse Recovery, Addiction, and Calling Back the Muse after Abuse

This eclipse season was hard. Then again, perhaps that’s growth as I’ve been monitoring my emotions during eclipses for the past few years, and never noticed a difference in the "energy” that all my favorite astrologers and witches described. This year there were indeed sudden endings and beginnings.

“Magic is shifting consciousness at will.” — Starhawk

I needed to do this after an activating encounter on the eclipse.

Although I know eclipse energy is chaotic, I felt inspired to create my own spell which I performed in the woods by rushing water. I’ve performed anger releasing spells in this same spot over the years. Power had accumulated there.

I don’t want to share too many details about it, but it involved white roses and my embodied connection to them. In the Rider Waite Death card, a white rose blooms on Death’s black flag signifying the transformation Death can bring.

White roses bloomed on my desk as I wrote the title poem of my book Samsara. Writing this poem was like dreaming with my eyes open.

Samsara

The butcher wraps the stars in newspaper

The young woman offers her breast through prison bars

How many have sailed beneath this shuddering arc?

Maybe the nomads have welcomed the children into the ocean

Last prediction of aborted clarion 

Mouthing serpents

My belly dreams a buoy

Worshipping, that’s the most potent

You’ll find a chirping stone that won’t shut up

Stoke the pollen, burnish the constellations

My tongue fevers yours into

A boat looks away, blushing

It’s sunny in the angel brains

The babies of the dead have had their incubators turned on

White roses were my favorite flowers for many years. My now ex-fiance bought me white roses often.

The relationship began as a fairy tale with a toxic twist. We met in Prague with its castle and magical astronomical clock. It seemed like fate because he was from Iowa, where I’d wanted to do an MFA for many years. I didn’t think I’d get in given its prestige. He encouraged me to apply. The fly in the ointment was that he was recovering from a cocaine addiction. He moved back home to Iowa to live with his parents and pay off the 20k in debt incurred.

I was 25 years old and he was 34. I was naive to think he had really quit.

When I got into the MFA program in Iowa, the synchronicity again felt like fate. He was supportive and kind during these years. We got engaged in the spring semester before graduation, and moved in together. A slow cycle of abuse began that was difficult to escape, especially on the low pay of an adjunct professor’s salary. After a traumatic break-up, I couldn’t stand the sight of white roses. They became emblematic of grief and loss to me.

I felt punked by Spirit, just like when my dad died when I was seven years old.

It was too painful to buy white roses for over a decade. But I bought them for the full moon. They were the most beautiful, wild bouquet I’d ever witnessed. This felt like a high five from the Universe.

I remembered that I had bought that first bouquet by myself for myself. My muse had emerged from the twilight like a tentative deer or a shy child who nestled in my lap as I wrote. She heard the song of the white roses and added her voice to the chorus.

“The Flower Seller” by Diego Rivera

I wish I could end this post on how I’ve transformed during these first few months of my Death card year. I’m sure I have in ways that perhaps that feel too small to notice. For one, I can withstand the terrible beauty of white roses. This pain even is a privilege, as is the time, space, and safety to grieve. I can hold hands with my muse, my ghosts, my demons, my inner kiddos, and keep walking forward. But not before I gather them all in my arms and weep.

Dear reader, how was eclipse season for you? Have you ever lost and recovered your muse? What brought her back? I’m also curious to hear from anyone who has lived through a Death card year!