A spacesuit floats in the void beside a Gemini capsule. It’s empty, the body gone missing – if ever one was there – and one last breath of air dissipates into the void. A chariot, at last, without a King to ride it.

The mirror of the King of (VOID) is the 99 of Wands. Transmuted through some super-science process into an ethereal thing we can dimly conceive of as a “star-baby”, the happy ending to this story of a lost astronaut is that he’s transcended, gone on to the beginning of a new life as incomprehensible to us as we are to a single cell of our bodies.

But of course another story, the sad ending, is that he’s just vaporized. That he’s dead and gone and left only this floppy, empty parody of what’s inside him hanging in the blackness of space. A lonely way to go. But isn’t that how we all ride through life? Ask his queen in the desert how much he talked to her.

This is a card of a departed soul, this is the card of less-than-a-ghost (for a ghost would be something there to interact with). Seen in some lights this is the card of absolute death, more bitter and lonely and empty than any of the other cards.

The djinn’s out of the bottle.

This card is a departed father. It is the wisdom you cannot pass on.