It symbolizes a time of transformation and major changes in our lives; a period of metamorphosis and total change.  The 13th Major Arcana card also symbolizes the principle of letting go and moving on.  Death can indicate a total change or transformation, a metamorphosis.  The pressures of the current situation are becoming so strong that you are actually choosing to change things.  The old order needs to be destroyed in order for something new to arise from its ashes.  It may be showing that you are ready for a total change in your life.  You are embracing the experience or transformation and metamorphosis and will gain maximum benefit from it.  The old patterns or situations are being destroyed to make room for something brand new.  Renewed hope.

"Reversed:  You are going through an emotional or personal regeneration process.  Your circumstances may not be changing at all, but inside you are completely transforming.  You may be sensing a total psychological death and rebirth.  You are destroying one way of being so that a new way can be born.
Negative:  You may be destroying something unnecessarily.  Perhaps there is no accompanying rebirth or creation.  You are not ready for intense change on that deep and total level.  You're better prepared to rest and assimilate what you've already done, not to go through the demanding process of death and rebirth." - Gail Fairfield

Death triggers a lot of reactions in people and I'm no exception.  Sometimes I'm not sure if I believe death is simply an ending or it it really is just a major and dramatic transformation into a new and different level of existence.  I sense that it can symbolize a shamanic near death experience - a transformative process many cultures consider necessary for initiation into as a shaman.  In my life I can recall only one time when I truly believed I might die, well maybe two times.  The first was when I was about 11 or 12 years old and our apartment caught fire.  I woke up to a ravenous wall of flames licking their way across the ceiling of the room in which we slept.  I woke my sibling and we got out of the room just as a large beam collapsed on the bed we had just abandoned.  For that few moments between waking up and fleeing the room I thought we all might die.  But at the time I was too young to fully appreciate what that might mean.  It was more of an intellectual thought than a visceral sense.

The second time occurred when I was about 13 years old when I was attacked on my way home.  My attacker was intent on raping me.  I begged and pleaded with him at knifepoint to be released.  He decided that I should give him a blow job rather than attempt penetration in a dark alley.  In my head I decided that I would bite off his penis.  I was very lucky because a car stopped at the entrance to the alley and it spooked my attacker enough that he fled.  I went home and told my parents what had happened - only because I was late coming home and needed a reason.  I'm still not entirely recovered from that experience but one thing I took away from it was a determination never to let anyone victimize me again.  I will never plead for my life.  I will never let anyone take anything from me against my will.  Living with that for a second time would be too much.  Anyone who says that surviving is the important thing may be right but I am determined that my survival will cost the attacker.  I rose from the floor of that alley a very different person than I was when I was dragged into it.  I'm not claiming that it was a near death experience, but it definitely had a dramatic, life-changing and transformative effect on me.

On a less dramatic but deeper and more personal level this is something I'm going through right now.  I think in many ways I'm still figuring out who I am post-PAL.  It's not that I think my life is over by any means but it can be very challenging deciding what path to pursue next.  It's almost as if the process of transformation and rebirth is being stalled because I cannot decide what to do with my reborn self.  Once again, something I need to work out in my mind.

Looking at these two cards I am struck by the sadness and desolation on the Gaian image.  There is a sense of loneliness present but not despair.  It's almost as though those things have been left behind so that their former own can move on.  The boat and heron blend in so well with the surrounding landscape that it's easy to miss at first.  They blend in.  That makes me wonder what I"m not seeing about this process in myself.  What is being obscured by the foliage of my life?  And the Sacred Rose Death card showed a hooded figure holding a scythe and behind him a sunset is visible.  The one thing to remember about a sunset is that it is always followed by a sunrise.  No matter how long, dark or scary the night may seem, the sun will rise again.  And like the sun, I will rise again too.  To quote Imhotep in The Mummy movies "Death is only the beginning."