Major Arcana · 13
Death
L'Arcane sans nom, the nameless thirteenth (Tarot de Marseille) · La Morte (Italian tarocchi) · Child of the Great Transformers; Lord of the Gate of Death (Golden Dawn)
An armoured skeleton on a white horse, bearing a black banner with a white rose, while a king falls and others kneel. In the Waite–Smith tradition Death stands for endings, transition and transformation — rarely for literal death.
Upright endings · transformation · transition · release · change · clearing away · renewal
Reversed resistance to change · stagnation · fear of endings · lingering · slow transition · inability to move on
- Astrology
- Scorpio
- Element
- Water
- Hebrew letter
- Nun
- Number
- 13
- Golden Dawn title
- Child of the Great Transformers; Lord of the Gate of Death
- Yes or no
- No
Upright
The Death card is much feared and much misunderstood. In the Waite–Smith tradition, and in nearly every modern reading guide, it signifies the end of a chapter rather than of a life: a transition, a clearing away of the old so that something new can follow. Readers stress that it is almost never taken literally.
Love and relationships: a relationship changing form — a phase ending, a pattern being outgrown, or, sometimes, a parting that makes room for growth.
Work and money: the close of a job, project or way of working; restructuring; letting go of what is no longer viable. The change may be unwelcome at first but often proves necessary.
Advice: accept the ending instead of prolonging it. The rising sun at the edge of Smith's picture expresses the card's traditional consolation: transformation follows release, and what is cleared away leaves ground for renewal.
Reversed
Reversed, the Death card often speaks of an ending that is being resisted. Readers describe clinging to a finished situation, fear of change, or a transition happening slowly and painfully because it is not accepted. Some see a period of stagnation, as if life were holding its breath.
In relationships this may be staying in a pattern long after it has run its course. At work it can be reluctance to close down what has stopped working.
Not all readers reverse cards; many read an upright Death beside heavy or hopeful cards to judge how a change is being met.
The image
Smith's Death is a skeleton in black armour riding a white horse, his helmet topped with a red plume. He carries a black banner bearing a white five-petalled rose. Before him a king lies fallen, his crown on the ground. A bishop in a golden mitre stands with hands joined, facing the rider; a young woman kneels and turns her head away, while a small child looks up without fear. In the background a boat sails on a river, and the sun rises (or sets) between two towers on the horizon.
History
Death was a natural subject for the late medieval trump sequence, which drew on the Triumphs of Petrarch and the Dance of Death. The Visconti-Sforza card shows a skeleton with a bow; the Tarot de Marseille shows a skeleton mowing a field of heads, hands and feet with a scythe, and in many Marseille decks the card bears the number thirteen but no title, which is why French writers call it the nameless arcanum.
Etteilla and later cartomancers already read the card as change as well as mortality. Éliphas Lévi linked it with Nun, the Golden Dawn with Nun and Scorpio, and Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910) describes it as the passage of transformation from lower to higher. Smith's design, with the procession of figures from every walk of life, recalls the medieval theme that death treats king, priest, maiden and child alike.
Symbolism
The white horse signifies purity or the inevitability of the change; the armour shows that the force cannot be wounded. The white rose on black, which Waite called the mystic rose, stands for life and beauty within dissolution. The fallen king shows that power cannot resist this card, while the child's openness suggests that acceptance makes the passage easier. The river recalls the crossing to another state, and the sun between the towers points ahead to the Sun and to renewal.
Thirteen has long been thought unlucky in European folklore, but in tarot it follows twelve, the completed cycle, and opens the next. Scorpio, a fixed water sign, is associated with depth, regeneration and the mysteries of sex and death; Nun means "fish", a creature of the depths. The path joins Tiphareth and Netzach on the Tree of Life.
In a reading
Experienced readers usually explain the Death card carefully because of its reputation. With the Tower it marks a sweeping change; with the Star, hope after an ending; with the Five of Cups, grief that needs time. In an outcome position it asks what must be allowed to end.
Sources and further reading
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot — A. E. Waite, 1910
- The Game of Tarot: From Ferrara to Salt Lake City — Michael Dummett, 1980
- A Cultural History of Tarot: From Entertainment to Esotericism — Helen Farley, 2009
- Tarot for Your Self — Mary K. Greer, 1984