Articles · Lessons
Death Tarot Card Meaning
The Death tarot card means an ending that makes room for something new: transformation, not tragedy. It's the most feared card in the deck and one of the most hopeful, which is tarot's favorite kind of joke.
Quick facts
- Number: 13, Major Arcana
- Upright: an ending, loss, transformation and renewal
- Reversed: inertia, stagnation, change resisted
What Death means
Death rarely means literal dying. It means a chapter closing: a job, a habit, a relationship, a version of yourself that's run its course. The card marks the passage from one state of life into another, and the renewal is built in. Something ends so something can begin.
Nervous about this card? We wrote a whole piece on why the Death card almost never means death.
Death reversed
Reversed, the ending stalls: inertia, stagnation, clinging to a state that's finished. It's often the harder version of the card, because the door is closing and you're holding it open.
What's on the card
A skeletal rider carries a black banner with a white rose while figures fall before him, and between two distant pillars, the sun is rising. The rose and the sunrise are the card's real message: what looks like an ending is drawn mid-renewal.
Death in a daily draw
Something is ending today so something new can begin. Let go of what's run its course. In the Toe Bean Tarot app, every card comes with its full meaning and imagery breakdown, so a scary-looking draw never has to stay scary, on Google Play (iPhone coming soon).
Death is card thirteen of the Major Arcana. Its dramatic sibling is The Tower, and the whole deck is in all 78 tarot card meanings.