Death
Death is the card of transformation: a necessary ending that clears the ground for renewal, as one chapter closes so another can begin.
Major Arcana XIII
Upright keywords
- endings
- transformation
- transition
- release
- renewal
- clearing away
Meaning when upright
Death is read as transformation rather than literal mortality: an ending that is necessary, natural, and makes renewal possible. A relationship, job, belief, or phase of life reaches its conclusion, and the card counsels accepting this so that something new can follow. Its rider carries a banner bearing a white rose, and a sun shines between two towers on the horizon, pointing beyond the ending. The change may be uncomfortable, but it clears space for something truer.
On the card
- skeleton in black armor
- The one change no armor can stop, and the enduring structure beneath all outward forms.
- white horse moving slowly
- Waite's mysterious horseman who moves slowly: transformation as a natural, purifying force.
- black banner with a white five-petaled rose
- Waite's Mystic Rose, which signifies life: renewal hidden within the ending.
- fallen king with his crown on the ground
- Worldly power and status cannot resist change.
- bishop in gold vestments with clasped hands
- Waite's prelate awaiting his end: faith and acceptance before transformation.
- maiden turning away and child kneeling with flowers
- Waite's king, child, and maiden falling before the rider: fear of change beside the innocent openness that meets it without fear.
- sun shining between two towers on the horizon
- Waite's sun of immortality: the promise of rebirth beyond the ending.
- river with a small boat
- The flow of life and the passage across to a new state.
In Waite’s words
The veil or mask of life is perpetuated in change, transformation and passage from lower to higher, and this is more fitly represented in the rectified Tarot by one of the apocalyptic visions than by the crude notion of the reaping skeleton. Behind it lies the whole world of ascent in the spirit. The mysterious horseman moves slowly, bearing a black banner emblazoned with the Mystic Rose, which signifies life. Between two pillars on the verge of the horizon there shines the sun of immortality. The horseman carries no visible weapon, but king and child and maiden fall before him, while a prelate with clasped hands awaits his end.
There should be no need to point out that the suggestion of death which I have made in connection with the previous card is, of course, to be understood mystically, but this is not the case in the present instance. The natural transit of man to the next stage of his being either is or may be one form of his progress, but the exotic and almost unknown entrance, while still in this life, into the state of mystical death is a change in the form of consciousness and the passage into a state to which ordinary death is neither the path nor gate. The existing occult explanations of the 13th card are, on the whole, better than usual, rebirth, creation, destination, renewal, and the rest.
- Divinatory meaning
End, mortality, destruction, corruption; also, for a man, the loss of a benefactor; for a woman, many contrarieties; for a maid, failure of marriage projects.
- Reversed
Inertia, sleep, lethargy, petrifaction, somnambulism; hope destroyed.
Correspondences
- Element
- Water
- Astrology
- Scorpio
- Hebrew letter
- Nun (נ)
- Path on the Tree of Life
- Path 24: Tiphareth – Netzach
- Number
- Thirteen (1 + 3 = 4) dismantles the Emperor's fixed structures so that a new foundation can be laid; it is the pivotal transition of the journey's second stage.
To reflect on
- What in my life has already ended that I haven't let go of?
- What might grow in the space this ending leaves?
- What am I most afraid to lose, and why?
In your readings
Hasn’t appeared in your readings yet.
Ask about this card
Marguerite, the traditionalist, answers from Waite’s text, what is drawn on the card and its correspondences. You can choose another reader in settings.