The death of Nelson

When the surname Nelson is used without further qualification, it typically refers to "Britannia's god of war," Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, whose birthday is tomorrow and who died in 1805 at the Battle of Trafalgar, depicted in this painting by William Lionel Wyllie (1851-1931).

Note Wyllie's unusual choice, in this painting depicting the death of Nelson, to portray the sea as yellowish-orange in color. A similar choice was made by Pixie Smith (1878-1951) in her design of the Three of Wands card for the classic Rider-Waite Tarot deck. Both pictures also show a yellowish sky and depict ships sailing from the right side of the picture to the left.

As WanderingGondola has noted, this is the only card in the suit of Wands to depict the wands planted in the earth as if they were trees -- young oaks, perhaps. The man's arm, extended to the right, makes a horizontal bar between two of these "trees," forming a capital letter H.

So, if you wanted to choose a single Tarot card to represent the death of Russell M. Nelson and the anticipated accession of Dallin H. Oaks to the Apricot Throne, you could do a lot worse than the Three of Wands.

Hours after the death of Russell Nelson, but hours before it had been reported by the press, I took two short naps with the above Tarot card under my pillow. I did not know which card it was, and my intention was to try to guess the card's identity by analyzing the dreams I had while it was under my pillow. I have, for complex psychological reasons, decided that this is a paranormal ability I ought to have and need to develop.

After analyzing my dreams, I came up with a ranked list of nine guesses as to the identity of the card. None of the nine was even the right suit. I declared the experiment a "complete failure."

My first guess had been the Hierophant -- a character who, much like the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is a pope in all but name. My second guess had been Death, with particular reference to the fact that the card shows Death coming for a mitered church leader.

One of my dreams had shown a pope dropping and breaking a pair of scissors, which one of the other characters in the dream called "death scissors." Prior to his ecclesiastical career, Russell Nelson was a heart surgeon, and surgical scissors were among the tools of his trade.

Another dream had a newly elected pope announcing a campaign to plant more trees -- including, implicitly, oaks.

The details of my dreams and predictions, all published before I knew of Nelson's death, may be read in my post "Nineteen years inside the sphere."