It is said that two peacocks guard the Gates of Paradise, a place to be found within the Self and in this life, not as an external realm attainable only after death. To truly live one must continually embrace death, recognizing that impermanence is a quality of the eternal. The cauda pavonis, or the peacock’s tail, is the color returning to the sky with the dawn, the sign that we have made it through the long dark night. In alchemy it is the symbol for the many colors that appear signifying the end of the Putrefaction phase and is usually described as occurring before the albedo, or “whitening.”