The Many Faces of Holy Death: When the Goddess Chooses You

We don’t get to choose which face of Death we love. She chooses the part of us that’s ready to be made whole.

There are moments on the spiritual path when logic takes a back seat — when the call comes through the bones. It is perhaps not strange that this call comes through more strongly during Scorpio Season, in the run-up to Samhain/Halloween. The veil is palpably thinning now

Jump to the Holy Death Tarot Spread

For many of us deconstructing from monotheistic religion, the figure of Holy Death appears not as an idea we go looking for, but as a presence that finds us.

When She Chooses You

I didn’t set out to work with Santa Muerte this year. I’d had a brief “fling” with her before I’d fully deconstructed because she fit neatly within a ChristoPagan, “semi-deconstructed” Christian Witch label. But in 2025, I did the final bit of deconstruction from monotheistic religion and renounced my Christian baptisms (both infant and adult). I thought we were done. I put La Huesuda — the Bony One — in a drawer and tried to forget about her. Logically, I should have turned toward the Pagan gods and goddesses who fit more neatly within my new cosmology.

Except logic didn’t get the last word. The pull returned — softer, deeper, unmistakable. I realised I hadn’t chosen Her; She had chosen a part of me that still needed to be seen. That’s the mischief of the Death current: it doesn’t arrive to flatter an identity. It arrives to complete a metamorphosis.

And that’s where the psychology becomes impossible to ignore — because what returns, returns from below.

The Archetypal Pull of Death

In depth-psychology terms, Death — whether personified as Santa Muerte, Anubis, Hel, or Persephone — is an archetype rising from the collective unconscious. It’s the Self announcing transformation when the ego can no longer maintain its illusions of control.

This is why She rarely comes in the form we expect. The face of Death that draws us often bypasses our rational filters and cultural conditioning. You might study the Northern Mysteries and find yourself claimed by Santa Muerte. Or walk the Left-Hand Path and hear the tender whisper of a Marian apparition. The soul doesn’t speak taxonomy; it speaks symbol, dream, and need.

When Choice Isn’t Ours to Make

There’s a peculiar arrogance in believing we choose our gods. We think we’re ordering off a spiritual menu, but the deeper psyche — or soul — has been in conversation with certain currents long before our conscious mind catches up.

The deities who call us often embody precisely what our ego resists: disowned power, forbidden longing, unworked fear. In psychological terms, this is shadow integration. In spiritual terms, it’s devotion. To be drawn to Death Herself is to be drawn to wholeness — and there’s a linguistic wink here: in Swedish, hel means whole. It sits beside English hale, heal, and holy. Paradoxically, the Death current invites us to live undivided.

Etymology note: the goddess Hel likely stems from a root meaning “the hidden place,” while hel (“whole”) is a sibling within the wider Germanic cluster — different branches of the same deep tree. The wholeness link is symbolically apt, even if not the same strict root.

The Death Current and the Subconscious

The Death current moves in the deep waters of the subconscious — the realm of suppressed desire, ancestral memory, and unintegrated grief. When Holy Death rises from those depths, She wears the mask that best matches the soul’s language.

For some, that language is the gold-and-bone candour of Santa Muerte — devotional, communal, and unpretentious in Her intimacy with loss. For others, it’s the jackal-headed order of Anubis, the psychopomp who keeps the threshold. For yet others, it’s Hel’s cool instruction in the neutrality of endings and the sacred stillness of decay.

It matters less which face appears than what truth it mirrors — the truth long buried but now ready to return. You may love many faces, yet the one to heed is the one that pulls hardest at your heart. Choose with the heart, not the head; the ego-led intellect will always try to dodge the most transformative current.

Beyond Labels and Frameworks

Post-deconstruction spirituality reveals a hard mercy: Divinity isn’t tidy. You can renounce a baptism, shed a label, burn a creed — but archetypal forces don’t come back to you with the same measured reason as a former monotheistic religion. Pagan gods change costumes and keep speaking. A saying from Kemetic wisdom has always stuck with me that captures this beautifully: All the goddesses are all the goddesses.

In Mexico, Santa Muerte can be understood as a contemporary face of the ancient Death current — braiding Catholic imagery with pre-Hispanic strands (think Mictecacihuatl, Lady of Mictlan) and the European La Parca/Grim Reaper. She isn’t simply “the Aztec goddess in a habit,” but the current wearing a mask that speaks to modern people and their lived realities.

By the same token, Hel doesn’t “belong” only to the Norse any more than Anubis belongs only to Old Kingdom Egypt. Deities are how living currents meet a culture in a given time and language. The currents precede the cultures and outlast them. We meet a face; the force behind it is older.

When Holy Death Finds You

When Holy Death calls, the appropriate response is honesty. You may rationalise, categorise, or resist — She will meet you where you actually live: in longing, loss, fear, and love.

Perhaps that’s the quiet psychological truth: we don’t get to choose which face of Death we love, because love isn’t a choice; it’s recognition. The face that finds us is the one that mirrors the part of us most in need of integration — the part still afraid to die to what we’re no longer meant to be.

The Holy Death Tarot Spread

For when She has called your name.

Use this when you feel the pull of a Death goddess or psychopomp and want to understand what this relationship is awakening in you. Any deck works; decks with strong Death iconography, such as the Santa Muerte Tarot, can add texture.

1. The Mask She Wears — What aspect of Death is revealing itself to you now?
2. The Fear Beneath the Attraction — What hidden fear or feeling fuels your fascination?
3. The Lesson in the Shadows — What part of yourself is She helping you integrate?
4. The Offering She Seeks — What must be surrendered for this devotion to deepen?
5. The Blessing She Brings — What renewal or protection follows your surrender?
6. The Path Forward — How to honour this current daily without losing balance?

Journaling Prompts

• Which face of Holy Death feels most alive for you, and what emotions does She stir?
• How does the idea of hel (wholeness) change your perception of endings?
• What identity, story, or obligation is ready to die so that something more authentic can live?

Gentle Practice Suggestion

Light a white candle and a glass of clean water. Name what needs to end and what deserves to live. If you’re working with Santa Muerte, offer fresh flowers or a pinch of copal. Close by placing a hand over your heart and speaking: “May what is ready to die, die well. May what is ready to live, live fully.”

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