Tarot: Symbolism of the Death Card

The thirteenth card of the Major Arcana, the Death card is perhaps the most feared and misunderstood cards of the Tarot. To the misinformed, the Death card is a horror to avoid while the initiate will view it as merely the harbinger of change and transformation.

Description: The most common representation of the Death card is a skeleton armed with a scythe or sickle. Often there are people from all walks of life also present.

Placement on the Tree of Life:

The Death card is associated by members of the Golden Dawn with the twenty-fourth path of the Tree of Life which connects the sephirah Tiphareth with the sephirah Netzach; it is also associated with the Hebrew letter Nun, and the zodiac sign of Scorpio.

Esoteric Titles: The Child of the Great Transformers; Lord of the Gates of Death.

Keyword: Transformation

Interpretation:

The Death in a reading very seldom means actual physical death.

When well-aspected in a reading, Death can represent fertility, renewal, creativity, and voluntary change.

When ill-aspected in a reading, Death tends to indicate stagnation and lack of change.

When the card is aspected neutrally, Death can indicate destruction, apparent loss, involuntary change, the end of something, or possible illness.

Symbolism:

The typical representation of the Death card has its roots deep in human history. One constant of life, and human history, is that someday you too will die, as will also all the rogues, holy men, and rich and poor. Death is an equal opportunity harvester. From the beginning of humanity, we have known that the sun-bleached bones of a human skeleton has meant that someone has died.

When humanity moved to towns and cities, we stepped away from nature, but our artists took the symbol of the skeleton along with us, putting it in art as a reminder that things change and people die. The "Memento Mori" is a common element found in classical art.

The Death card is the Memento Mori of the Tarot deck. It is the reminder that we are still capable of being affected and transformed no matter how well we entrench ourselves in the material world.

The zodiac sign associated by Golden Dawn with the Death card is the zodiac sign Scorpio. This sign rules sex and transformation besides the surface death that the card openly displays. It also rules creativity. We become most creative when we are forced to, as the old saying goes, "Necessity is the mother of invention." And Death would be its father.