A Scorpionic Notion

I was all set to write something about Batman, when suddenly...

Last weekend, I was struck with a particularly Scorpionic notion.

I'm very particular about naming it a simple notion, as I don't have the magical instruction to construct a theory on this matter. But maybe, just maybe, this will set off a light bulb in someone that is better trained in Golden Dawn or Enochian magic or what have you. Or, more likely, this notion has already been notioned up by someone long ago in a faraway land, and that fleshed-out theory is already in existence.

Nevertheless! I will expound with abandon, and through a tag-team use of two particularly nerdy mediums: Comic Books and Foreign Film.

Mercury's still in Scorpio. So let's talk of death, the force which ferries us past the veil of this world. Scorpio's rulership is split between Mars, the planet of war, and Pluto, the planetoid connected to death and the deep subconscious. It is from the latter rulership that Scorpio becomes the sign best suited for dealing with death. Both in accepting it when it comes and in doing whatever it can to preserve life.

Once again, it is to the latter that we turn our attention: the preservation of incarnation. There are all sorts of myths and folklores around alchemists and magicians, who have tried to cheat death through potions or golden elixers, or the legendary "Philosopher's Stone," popularized recently in the Harry Potter novels and in Fullmetal Alchemist. We also have vampires and other monstrous entities, which embrace a half-death in exchange for eternal life.

But what if everyone's making it more complicated than need be?

What if the key to "beating death" is simply to tell it to fuck off?

Bear with me here...

Who canonized this guy?!

Most people view death as a pretty brutal, gruesome ordeal. Its manifestation in most media is characterized accordingly. In the old days, we had a black-clad, hooded skeleton wielding a Saturnine scythe. Or sometimes, a grim angel carrying a fiery sword - though this is usually reserved for large-scale, Biblical smiting. In any event, everyone fears a visit from the reaper, as they know it'll be the last person they ever meet.

In the world of Garth Ennis' Preacher, the spectre of death is known as The Saint of Killers, a sallow giant who looks and talks more than a bit like Clint Eastwood's famous "Man With no Name," from the trio of Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns. No scythe or sword for this otherwordly representative - having taken the position from the previous Angel of Death, The Saint had his flaming sword melted down and recrafted into twin six-shooters. When the hammers come down, the sound is enough to drown out thunder, and the rounds are powerful enough to pierce the armor of a tank.

Just like death, The Saint cannot be stopped; any conventional weapons simply brush off his thick hide. At more than one point in the series, an entire army stands between him and the man he is supposed to kill. A little less subtle than the normal Scorpio MO, The Saint merely chooses to plow through everyone in his path, killing all for the sake of eliminating his target. A hydrogen bomb is dropped on him about midway through the series' run - he stands unscathed amid the atomic fire, spits once, and says, "Not enough gun."

The series' protagonist, Jesse Custer, is the man who The Saint is trying to spring from this mortal coil. And he would have succeeded if it weren't for Custer's gift: in the first issue, he is granted the "voice of God," which means that if he speaks, any servant of the Almighty must obey. (Don't ask how he gets these powers. Just do yourself a favor, go support your local comic store by purchasing every single trade paper back in this series. It's fucking brilliant. Don't go to a chain bookstore, either. Be good. Support your local comic shops.)

Anyway, in the first arc of the story, The Saint has been unleashed on a mission to hunt down and kill Jesse Custer. When he finally catches up with him, the tense moment is met with an anti-climactic conclusion. As The Saint goes for his pistol, Jesse merely yells, "Back in the holster, fucker!" The Saint goes wide-eyed at the realization that he must obey. "Oh yeah. You heard." He stares daggers into Custer, tells him he's going to kill him, but ultimately is forced to retreat for the time being.

The Saint comes back eventually, but if Jesse tells him to jump, he simply has to. It's a matter of hierarchy.


A cheerful goth? No one'll believe that.

On the other side of the spectrum, we've got Neil Gaiman's Death, the second eldest of the seven Endless, beings that transcend the gods of the pantheistic traditions, and which have existed for all time. Death is the older sister of Dream, the focus and titular character of The Sandman.

Unlike The Saint, Death doesn't hunt anyone down. She doesn't even carry any sort of a weapon. She is represented as a kind and bright young woman, who greets the souls of the departed to ferry them beyond. She is pale, wears dark clothing, and carries a silver ankh on a chain around her neck. But, for being a personification of death, she is unwontedly full of spirit!

I have read somewhere that the idea behind this character was that you'd likely want someone like her to be waiting for you after the trauma of dying, and to guide you through the transition to whatever's next. I'll buy that, personally. I'd rather have a little sweetheart hold my hand than get skullfucked by...well, a skeleton.

Now, for as lovely a guide as Death is, she is still quite firm when it comes to performance of her duty. Whenever any of her "victims" cry out in protest that they just wanted a little more time, she tells them simply, "You had as much time as anyone else. You got a lifetime."

But in the world of The Sandman, there are three seperate incidents where Death did not ferry her intended guests. Or at least, three occassions where individuals were granted an extended stay.

There is a chapter in "Seasons of Mist" that focuses on a friendship between Edwin, the ghost of an English school boy who was murdered in 1916, and Rowland, a boy attending the same school in 1990. At the same time, Hell is closed for business by Lucifer, who is sick of ruling it. The result is, among other things, a lot of supernatural chaos on earth, including a mass malefic haunting of that very school. In the ensuing chaos, Rowland is killed despite Edwin's best efforts to keep him from harm. Now both boys are ghosts. When Death arrives to ferry them away, Rowland flatly refuses to go. Annoyed by this, she tells them she doesn't have time to deal with them right now, but she'll be back after she rounds up all the refugees from Hell. Thus, the boys cling to existence, non-corporel though it may be. They eventually get their own spin-off series, solving supernatural mysteries as The Dead Boy Detectives.

In this instance, Death is openly defied. The other two occurences involve a bargain. Torn from Greek myth, there is the story of Orpheus, who is Death's niece (Dream's son.) Against his father's wishes, he wishes to journey into Hades to retrieve his lost wife, Eurydice. In order to do so, he visits Death, who tells him that she will be able to grant his request, but that this will make him immortal, as only the ded or deathless can enter Hades. And though tragedy follows, the request is granted, and Orpheus becomes immune to Death for many centuries to come. He is only finally able to fully die when he begs his Endless father to help him do so.

Lastly, we have Hob Gadling. Hob is first seen as soldier of fortune in 1389 A.D., arguing with friends on the subject of death. In summation, his position is that he wants no part of death, and that the only reason anyone ever dies is because everyone else does it. It's a "mug's game," he says, a trendy thing to do. This catches the attention of Death and Dream, who happen to be enjoying a day in the mortal world. While not openly exposing their divinity, Death promises him that if he truly wants to be out of the loop, then that's how it will be. Dream promises to meet him in the same tavern in 100 years' time, and Hob gladly agrees. They continue the tradition of meeting every century, where Dream continues to offer him the prospect of death should he wish it. And though Hob is met with exponentially greater suffering and heartache than most men must endure, simply by the act of continuing to live (thereby outliving all loved ones, for starters,) he never takes the Endless up on their offer to die. He clings to life for as long as he can, no matter how difficult it gets.

The Swedes throw in.

More recently, I had the pleasure of viewing Ingmar Bergman's classic existentialist film, The Seventh Seal. Here, a knight has returned from The Crusades, only to find his home ravaged by plague. He has come from a place of slaughter into a land of pestilence - death has been by his side all along. At the beginning of the film, Death comes to him, pale and cloaked, and tells him it is his time. The knight delays his demise by challenging the spectre to a game of chess, which prolongs his lifespan at least until the conclusion of their match. This game is played throughout the remainder of the film. You have probably seen this parodied in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.

The knight desperately tries to fend off death until he can get an answer to his big questions: what lies beyond? Is there really a God? A Heaven? He is unwilling to go until he is sure there will be something waiting for him.

Seeing this film is really what got me thinking about this subject. This is the only example I've given where Death is represented as a being over which a mortal has absolutely no power. Why? Because it was written by existentialists. Existentialists do not recognize anything beyond the experiential, therefore, generally rule out any sort of higher power of any kind. When the knight tries to pump Death for information, asking him to reveal his secrets, Death says, "I have no secrets." Translation? When you die, you go in the ground and rot.

I, for one, am critical of this cynical worldview. Moreover, I find it limiting. Cutting oneself off from the prospect of the divine means cutting oneself off from power. To me, means throwing in the towel and giving up on life. And at the end of this film, that's just what happens. They all just give up and go with death because he says so.


Go away. I'm busy living.

If you're still with me, then thanks for your patience. Here's where my notion comes in, as well as the vague connection to Hermetic tradition.

In any grimoire that I've ever seen, in my very limited understanding of goetic conjuration and angelic magic, the basis of even being able to do such a thing lies in authority. In short, man has authority of both angels and demons. The Bible says so, too. That's why Jesus and his apostles can exorcise demons from the possessed, the reason that Legion was cast into the sea.

In all given examples, death is personified. In Preacher, The Saint of Killers is the new angel of death. Gaiman's Death is portrayed as being above any sort of deity, but there are cited examples wherein she cannot take someone (at least temporarily) because they do not wish to be taken. And though he is more nebulously portrayed in The Seventh Seal, Death can still be delayed upon request - who is to say that the knight couldn't have told him to piss off altogether?

Basically, I propose that we, as human beings, should hold some authority over this force of nature. If death is an angel, we should be able to tell him, "No. Don't feel like dying today." And he should have to listen. That's the way it's laid out.

I'm not saying that it's possible to escape death entirely - someday, after all, the sun will explode and that will be that.

But even when our bodies are no longer suitable to support life, I believe that we still don't have to go if we don't want to. Why else would there be so many ghost stories? I think ghosts are just people that didn't want to go, like the Dead Boy Detectives. They're dead, but clinging to whatever piece of the manifest they can hold onto. Kind of like a vampire. Kind of like a Scorpio.

"If this is all true," you may ask yourself, "then why doesn't everyone deny death?" Well, a lot of people don't think they can. A lot of people just assume it's their time. Or hell, maybe they're right to do so - after all, continuing to live can be a horrible thing. Not to be too unpleasant, but I have seen eldery relatives beg for death. Their bodies are shot, their friends are all dead, and their minds are starting to go. What's more, they may consider themselves a burden on their families. It makes more sense to go hang with the pretty goth girl than to mope around this dump and suffer more.

All I'm saying is that if you don't want your ticket punched, and you're truly down for more life, then by all accounts, and for as near as I can figure, you should be able to tell Death to come back and ask you again in 100 years time.

That's my notion. It makes sense to me, even if I don't have the magical language to back it.

It's a mug's game, man.