The Death Tarot Card Definitions & Meanings

Death and transformation are the obvious interpretations. Death is related to Scorpio and the 8th House, which is about other people's money, secrets and sexuality. So, finding about into the sexual proclivities of someone is one interpretation. If you want to know what or where the secrets are, the cards around Death will give you a clue. This card has strong obsessional connotations. The money, values and sexuality of our partner is indicated. If the Death card is surrounded by Disks cards, this is a generally a good sign of improving finances.

• Rider-Waite - Death

  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.

  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 Card meanings

  Inertia, sleep, lethargy, petrifaction, somnambulism; hope destroyed.

• Book of Thoth - Death

  The Universe is Change; every Change is the
  effect of an Act of Love; all Acts of Love
  contain Pure Joy. Die daily.
  Death is the apex of one curve of the snake Life:
  behold all Opposites as necessary complements, and rejoice.

  Transformation, change, voluntary or involuntary, in either case logical development of existing conditions, yet perhaps sudden and unexpected. Apparent death or destruction, but such interpretation is illusion.

  More information

• Golden Dawn - The Child of the Great Transformers, Lord of the Gates of Death

  Time. Ages. Transformation. Involuntary change. Sometimes death and destruction, but only if borne out by the cards with it.

• Mathers - Death

  Change, Transformation, Alteration for the Worse

  Reversed Card meanings

  Death just escaped, Partial change, Alteration for the better.

• Etteilla - Death

  Mortality, Annihilation, Destruction. End, Deterioration, Rottenness, Corruption, Putrefaction.

  Reversed Card meanings

  Inertia, Sleep, Lethargy, Petrifaction. Annihilation, Somnambulism.

• Ouspensky: Card XIII - DEATH

  Another aspect of Life. Going away in order to come back at the same time. Completion of the circle.

  ---

  Fatigued by the flashing of the Wheel of Life, I sank to earth and shut my eyes. But it seemed to me that the Wheel kept turning before me and that the four creatures continued sitting in the clouds and reading their books.

  Suddenly, on opening my eyes, I saw a gigantic rider on a white horse, dressed in black armour, with a black helmet and black plume. A skeleton's face looked out from under the helmet. One bony hand held a large, black, slowly-waving banner, and the other held a black bridle ornamented with skulls and bones.

  And, wherever the white horse passed, night and death followed; flowers withered, leaves drooped, the earth covered itself with a white shroud; graveyards appeared; towers, castles and cities were destroyed.

  Kings in the full splendour of their fame and their power; beautiful women loved and loving; high priests invested by power from God; innocent children - when they saw the white horse all fell on their knees before him, stretched out their hands in terror and despair, and fell down to rise no more.

  Afar, behind two towers, the sun sank.

  A deadly cold enveloped me. The heavy hoofs of the horse seemed to step on my breast, and I felt the world sink into an abyss.

  But all at once something familiar, but faintly seen and heard, seemed to come from the measured step of the horse. A moment more and I heard in his steps the movement of the Wheel of Life!

  An illumination entered me, and, looking at the receding rider and the descending sun, I understood that the Path of Life consists of the steps of the horse of Death.

  The sun sinks at one point and rises at another. Each moment of its motion is a descent at one point and an ascent at another. I understood that it rises while sinking and sinks while rising, and that life, in coming to birth, dies, and in dying, comes to birth.

  "Yes," said the voice. The sun does not think of its going down and coming up. What does it know of earth, of the going and coming observed by men? It goes its own way, over its own orbit, round an unknown Centre. Life, death, rising and falling - do you not know that all these things are thoughts and dreams and fears of the Fool"?

• Thierens XIII. Death. Saturn.

  The picture speaks for itself — as indeed most of them do — but still there is more in it than we might suppose at first sight. Beyond all doubt it is a sort of allegorical representation of Father Chronos, Time, who, while creating, consumes his own children, and was very often pictured as a warning of death or a remembrance of mortality. But on the other hand Time marks the beginning, and birth is not less under his government than death. The ancient edition of this card shows the figure harvesting heads and limbs of human bodies upon a field. This may be an expression of an old superstition, which said that those limbs with which man sinned would grow out of his grave. Probably a distorted teaching of the Law of Karma or cosmic reaction, which is also ruled by Saturn, at least in the execution. And in this function he is the old God of Israel, whose law was "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."

  But Saturn is more. He is the planet or cosmic function (let us say planet for convenience sake) of Formation, which means also determination in Place and Time, limitation, definition, etc.

  Now let us see what P. says. He identifies the card with the principle of the Hebrew letter Mem, who "is a woman, the companion of man," and therefore gives rise to ideas of fertility, formation.

  "It is pre-eminently the material and female, the local and plastic sign, an image of external and passive action." It is really a great pity, that this occultist never realised what he was saying, astrologically or cosmically. "Mem is one of the three mother-letters."

  Saturn is the ruler of the Tenth house, Capricorn, which as such is called the house of the 'married woman' in Hindu astrology.

  That Saturn, the Christian Satan, has close relations with woman and even that he used her as his favourite vehicle or agent, is one of the Christian 'teachings,' in which we recognise distorted or perverted occult knowledge.

  Death certainly is only relative and the death of the form may mean the commencement of life on another plane. Birth down here may be seen as a sort of death of a higher existence. "The veil and mask of life is perpetuated in change, transformation and passage from lower to higher ..." (W.) Higher to lower as well. W. shows the figure on horseback, which is not inadequate for the ruler of Capricorn, which succeeds to Sagittarius: action and definition in space and time are born from thought. "... perpetual rebirth of the Being in the domain of Time." (P.)