☽︎Sky and Signs

Tarot · The Major Arcana

Death

Death: A skeleton in black armour rides a white horse carrying a black banner with a white rose; a fallen king lies before it, a bishop, a young woman and a child are in its path, and on the horizon the sun rises between two towers.

The picture

A skeleton in black armour rides a white horse carrying a black banner with a white rose; a fallen king lies before it, a bishop, a young woman and a child are in its path, and on the horizon the sun rises between two towers.

The meaning

In the tradition the Death card is almost never meant literally. Readers take it as the end of a chapter that makes room for a new one. It stands for transformation, for letting go and for a passage that belongs to life. Behind the rider the sun is rising.

Reversed

Reversed, it is read as holding on to something already over, or a change that comes about slowly.

In love

In love it is read as the end of an old phase, often as a fresh start within the same relationship.

At work

At work it stands for a conclusion, a restructuring or an area that changes at the root.

As your card of the day

Something may come to an end today. What you let go of makes room for something new.

This card stands for change, not for misfortune. Ask yourself today which old habit you no longer need.

The Major Arcana are the 22 trump cards, from the Fool at zero to the World at twenty-one. The tradition reads them as stations on a life's journey: large themes that touch everyone at some point.

Picture: Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, 1909, public domain (Wikimedia Commons).