Death and the Grinning Skull
Tarot Thoughts
In my Tetragrammaton article I looked at Death in the Tarot, these are some longer notes on Death, skeletons, and Scorpio.
The Skeleton is, ironically, the part of our body with the greatest longevity. Long after our flesh rots away, our skulls will be smiling for Aeons. The skeleton is, as Nick Land puts it, the “relatively dead part of an organism”1, which is what allows it to survive decay.
Henry Miller writes brilliantly of Death in the Tropic of Cancer:
Clearer than all I see my own grinning skull, see the skeleton dancing in the wind, serpents issuing from the rotted tongue and the bloated pages of ecstasy slimed with excrement. And I join my slime, my excrement, my madness, my ecstasy to the great circuit which flows through the subterranean vaults of the flesh. All the unbidden, unwanted, drunken vomit will flow on endlessly through the minds of those to come in the inexhaustible vessel that contains the history of the race. Side by side with the human race there runs another race of beings, the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses, take the lifeless mass of humanity and by the fever and ferment with which they imbue it turn this soggy dough into bread and the bread into wine and the wine into song. Out of the dead compost and the inert slag they breed a song that contaminates. I see this other race of individuals ransacking the universe, turning everything upside down, their feet always moving in blood and tears, their hands always empty, always clutching and grasping for the beyond, for the god out of reach: slaying everything within reach in order to quiet the monster that gnaws at their vitals.
The adoption of the Punisher skull by cops is more than an identification with the tough, bad-good guy, it is a willing entry into a cult of Death. One might say, “it’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.” and Lao Tze would agree with you.
"If people don’t fear death
How will you frighten them with death?
If people always fear death
And I seize and execute
Anyone who does anything new,
Who will dare to move?
There is a public executioner who kills.
Killing on behalf of the public executioner,
Is called cutting wood on behalf of the carpenter.
In cutting wood on behalf of the carpenter,
There are few who escape hurting their hands."
-Tao Te Ching chapter 74
That “someone” is of course, the Tao.
革
The Serpent and the Scorpion shed their skin, when we die spiritually, we do as well.
After all the skins are shed, our skeletons will remain. 革 is the name of the 49th hexagram of the I Ching, it depicts an animal hide.
Beyond leather and hide, it also means to change, though not like the Change in the I Ching (the Book of Changes) which is 易, a vessel being filling and pouring forth, which of course has more in common with Rider Waite’s Art, or the constellation of Aquarius. The change of 革, is a change from one state of being into another. From life to death, from imperial rule to republic, from republic to communism, as 革命 (Revolution) says “Change Fate”.
When we die regularly, we can change our fate.
The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism