I stumbled upon this delicious gothic prompt in my Tarot group: “The card most likely to wander in the graveyard at midnight.”
It was meant in good fun, but the question caught my imagination.
I couldn’t narrow it down to just one. Death seemed obvious; after all, the graveyard is his playground. The Hanged Man struck me as another likely visitor, searching for a new vantage point among the shadows. Judgement could easily find a quiet stone to sit upon, asking whether a life has been well lived. And the Four of Swords, always drawn to rest and retreat, might curl up beside a marker, not for eternal sleep, but for a temporary pause in the stillness.
It was a light-hearted prompt, yet it opened into something deeper. When I pictured these cards together in that midnight graveyard, I no longer saw a place of fear. I saw what I’ve come to call the Illuminal Library. This is a place where the dead whisper reminders to the living, where silence transforms into a text, and where each gravestone serves as a page in a book filled with life lessons
The Graveyard as Illuminal Library
When I sit with the image of tarot archetypes wandering a graveyard, I don’t see a horror scene. I see a library; quiet, timeless, filled with texts written in stone and silence. A graveyard is, in its own way, a place of study. It holds not only the record of lives lived but also the lessons of impermanence and presence.
In this imagined Illuminal Library, each card I chose takes on a role. Death is the librarian, not grim but patient, reminding us that endings are doorways, not just closures. The Hanged Man drapes himself from the branches of an old yew, content to dangle in suspension, because among the graves he sees life from an angle most of us avoid. Judgement is quieter here than on her card—no trumpet blaring—just a thoughtful presence, sifting through the questions: Did I live fully? Am I awake yet, or still half-asleep in my own story? And the Four of Swords rests in the cloistered peace of the place, not to surrender life, but to restore it, taking comfort in silence that the living world rarely offers.
If I had to add one more companion to this midnight gathering, it would be the Moon. That card already belongs to thresholds, illusions, and shadows. The Moon drifts through the library like a trickster archivist, ensuring nothing is read too literally and that mystery itself remains part of the teaching.
Taken together, these figures transform the graveyard. No longer a site of dread, it becomes a school of perspective, a library of endings that points us back toward how to live…
Lessons from the Dead
If the graveyard is an Illuminal Library, then the question naturally follows: what book might we find there, written by the dead for the living?
I imagine it would not be long or elaborate. The dead don’t waste words. The message would be simple and direct: Live the life you came to live. Live it without fear.
Perhaps that is the only lesson worth passing on. Not rules or doctrines, but a reminder that every heartbeat is already slipping into memory. Life isn’t a rehearsal. You don’t know how many pages are left in your story, which makes the current page sacred.
And sometimes the book doesn’t even need a paragraph. I imagine turning the page and finding only two words scribbled there: Tick-tock.
It’s both a warning and an invitation. The clock is always moving, but that doesn’t diminish life; it heightens it. When we understand time as finite, the ordinary moment gains weight. A walk, a meal, a conversation, even silence itself: all become rare treasures, because one day they will end.
The 5:50 Story
This lesson is not abstract for me. Years ago, while hiking with friends in the Cotswolds, one of my buddies got a sudden text: his dad had just died. The news came as an unexpected shock. The rest of the group carried on, while I walked back to the car with my friend. Along the way, we tried to make sense of what had just happened, though of course there was no sense to be made.
Somewhere in that conversation, a thought came out of my mouth that I hadn’t rehearsed: we never know if we have five minutes or fifty years left to live. So it’s best to live life to the fullest. Maximise every moment.
That phrase—five minutes or fifty years—stuck with me. It condensed into a shorthand for me: 5:50. Since then, it has returned to me in strange ways. I often glance at a clock and see it glowing back at me, a small but insistent reminder. Call it coincidence if you like, or synchronicity if you prefer. To me, it feels like a living message: Be here. Be present. Don’t postpone.
5:50 has become my personal memento mori, my private tarot card. It echoes the wisdom of the samurai, who taught that one should live each day as if already dead1. When you do that, fear loosens its grip, and even the most ordinary act takes on an intensity. Drinking tea. Writing a sentence. Saying goodbye. Each one matters, because it may be the last.
The 550 Card
If 5:50 were a tarot card, it wouldn’t belong to the Major or Minor Arcana. It would sit outside the deck entirely, ever-present, like the quiet hum beneath every reading. It doesn’t take a turn in the shuffle because it’s always already there.
I picture it as a black card with a digital clock glowing in green: 5:50. Around it, faint ripples spread outward like circles in water, suggesting that each moment touches every other. A single white feather drifts across the image, light and ungraspable, reminding us of both mortality and grace.
The meanings are simple. Upright, it calls for presence, courage, and urgency: you don’t know how much time you have, so live now. Reversed, it warns against procrastination and distraction—the ways we lull ourselves into believing time is endless.
More than a card, though, 550 is a companion. It doesn’t interpret the spread; it interrupts it, whispering: Yes, but how much time do you think you have? It is the tick-tock in the background of every choice, the reminder that possibility is finite.
In that sense, 550 is the clock on the wall of the tarot hall, keeping time while the Fool leaps, the Lovers embrace, and the Tower collapses. It belongs to no suit, no sequence, but without it, the whole deck would lose its edge.
Final thoughts
What began as a playful question about tarot cards in a midnight graveyard turned into something much larger. Death, the Hanged Man, Judgement, the Four of Swords, and the Moon all had their place among the gravestones, but the graveyard itself became something richer. It became the Illuminal Library, a place where silence speaks and the dead offer reminders to the living.
And among those reminders, one stands out: Tick-tock. The clock is always moving. Whether we have five minutes or fifty years left, the call is the same: to live fully, to show up, to treat each moment as rare and unrepeatable.
For me, that reminder has taken form as the number 5:50, a personal tarot card that sits outside the deck. It is not a card of prediction but of presence. It doesn’t tell the future; it insists on the present.
The Illuminal Library, the graveyard, and the 550 card are all reflections of the same truth: life is fleeting, and that is precisely what makes it precious.
The invitation, then, is simple. Notice the tick of the clock. Don’t wait. Step fully into the life you came here to live.
- Musashi emphasises the samurai principle of approaching each action as if it were one’s last, a cornerstone of bushido philosophy. By accepting death beforehand and living as though already deceased, the warrior eliminates fear and hesitation, enabling total focus and decisive action. This mindset encourages treating each moment and task with ultimate seriousness and presence, as there may be no second chance.
This philosophy influenced not just combat but all aspects of a samurai’s life—calligraphy, tea ceremony, and daily conduct were all to be performed with the same mindful intensity, as if each act were the final one. ↩︎
