img by me
This post isn’t happy. If you’re easily influenced or impressionable I don’t think you should read, but I need to spit this out.
It all comes from a nightmare I had some months ago. Which is weird as it is, because generally i do not remember my dreams.
To cut it short, it was a very sad dream: I was dying and I had all the time I wanted to think back to people I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to, and to all the things I would have loved to do but never had the chance to.
I woke up utterly depressed.
I avoided thinking about it for days, but I ended up one sunday thinking about it all, writing down the most depressing stuff I could think of. There were plenty.
Then I realized that that nightmare wasn’t all bad.
I thought about baroque architecture and its two most used expressions: memento mori and horror vacui.
Horror vacui, just to give you my two cents about history of art, literally means being afraid of the emptiness, therefore the need, in baroque style, to fill up any little space with decorations (the fact that usually just the facade was this decorated, is something we’re not interested in right now).
The other expression means “remember you have to die”. Happy, isn’t it? But this explains the abundance of skulls, skeletons, dance macabres & co, to make people remember to behave properly in this life, to be rewarded in the afterdeath.
Ok, it’s all so interesting, now shall we discuss how all of this may help in these cases?
It may be useful because to me, this nightmare was some kind of alarm, it was my own memento mori, the classic life is short, live it now (yeah, they also had another latin writing tempus fugit, time runs).
Of course I know I’ve been lucky in having just a nightmare and nothing worst.
It’s always: “untill you smash your head againts it, you don’t grasp it really”.
Ironically enough death is the only certainty we have in life, and to live lightheartedly we tend to forget or ignore it, but to be left astray when the grim one steps beside us -for any reason. So I’ve decided I’m going to eliminate the fear of voids by filling up my life with all those things I always wanted to do, by constantly staying in touch with people I love (and telling them I do).
Heck, I’ve hung a huge skull in my bedroom not to forget!
Now I’ll quit depressing you, and I’m going to tell you a little bit about the ace of spades and the card XIII in tarots, the death. Ok, we’re still ontopic!
BUT!
Did you know that the ace of spades is the highest card of the deck? The one that has the higher value.
And let’s get this straight, usually, in deks, it’s the better looking one!
In tarot deks, even though it looks and sounds scary, the card of Death usually has a positive meaning: a radical change, a new beginning, healing (ironical, uh?).
If we want to keep up with parallelisms the ace of spades in tarots is one of swords, and it is the pure power of intellect, intuition, innovation, mind, intelligence, creativity.
Powerful and rich messages (the name of the god of the underworld, Pluto, means richness, wealth) in disguise, maybe because it takes courage and bravery to trust your own mind and jump into change?
After all who stops is lost 😉
Let me share some links with you, to cheer you up after all this! I’ve found the first video thanks to Corinne, from Frock and Roll, the second one is quite unrelated, but it was a well needed and due quote!
It all comes from a nightmare I had some months ago. Which is weird as it is, because generally i do not remember my dreams.
To cut it short, it was a very sad dream: I was dying and I had all the time I wanted to think back to people I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to, and to all the things I would have loved to do but never had the chance to.
I woke up utterly depressed.
I avoided thinking about it for days, but I ended up one sunday thinking about it all, writing down the most depressing stuff I could think of. There were plenty.
Then I realized that that nightmare wasn’t all bad.
I thought about baroque architecture and its two most used expressions: memento mori and horror vacui.
Horror vacui, just to give you my two cents about history of art, literally means being afraid of the emptiness, therefore the need, in baroque style, to fill up any little space with decorations (the fact that usually just the facade was this decorated, is something we’re not interested in right now).
The other expression means “remember you have to die”. Happy, isn’t it? But this explains the abundance of skulls, skeletons, dance macabres & co, to make people remember to behave properly in this life, to be rewarded in the afterdeath.
Ok, it’s all so interesting, now shall we discuss how all of this may help in these cases?
It may be useful because to me, this nightmare was some kind of alarm, it was my own memento mori, the classic life is short, live it now (yeah, they also had another latin writing tempus fugit, time runs).
Of course I know I’ve been lucky in having just a nightmare and nothing worst.
It’s always: “untill you smash your head againts it, you don’t grasp it really”.
Ironically enough death is the only certainty we have in life, and to live lightheartedly we tend to forget or ignore it, but to be left astray when the grim one steps beside us -for any reason. So I’ve decided I’m going to eliminate the fear of voids by filling up my life with all those things I always wanted to do, by constantly staying in touch with people I love (and telling them I do).
Heck, I’ve hung a huge skull in my bedroom not to forget!
Now I’ll quit depressing you, and I’m going to tell you a little bit about the ace of spades and the card XIII in tarots, the death. Ok, we’re still ontopic!
BUT!
Did you know that the ace of spades is the highest card of the deck? The one that has the higher value.
And let’s get this straight, usually, in deks, it’s the better looking one!
In tarot deks, even though it looks and sounds scary, the card of Death usually has a positive meaning: a radical change, a new beginning, healing (ironical, uh?).
If we want to keep up with parallelisms the ace of spades in tarots is one of swords, and it is the pure power of intellect, intuition, innovation, mind, intelligence, creativity.
Powerful and rich messages (the name of the god of the underworld, Pluto, means richness, wealth) in disguise, maybe because it takes courage and bravery to trust your own mind and jump into change?
After all who stops is lost 😉
Let me share some links with you, to cheer you up after all this! I’ve found the first video thanks to Corinne, from Frock and Roll, the second one is quite unrelated, but it was a well needed and due quote!
I want to live now.
