Death and Butterflies

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
Richard Bach

When people draw the quite scary death card, I always assure them that the Tarot, which is fundamentally optimistic, sees Death not as an ending but as a transformative experience - the death of the caterpillar to become the butterfly.  But of course, when we are caterpillars it’s hard to imagine that such a transformation can take place, and anyways, once it does, we won’t be caterpillars any more..  

Or as George Carlin puts it - The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity.  Of course the essential question is, how does one become a butterfly? “You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar,” writes Trina Paulus. All deep change involves some loss… at the end we know it is worth it, but I know it’s hard to let go of the caterpillar sometimes.