Card Story
The Death card shows the Messenger of Death – a skeleton dressed in black armour, riding a white horse. The skeleton represents the part of the body which survives long after life has left it; the armour symbolises invincibility and that death will come no matter what. Its dark colour is that of mourning and the mysterious, while the horse is the colour of purity and acts as a symbol of strength and power. Death carries a black flag decorated with a white, fivepetal rose, reflecting beauty, purification and immortality and the number five representing change. Together, these symbols reveal that death isn’t just about life ending. Death is about endings and beginnings, birth and rebirth, change and transformation. There is beauty in death, and it is an inherent part of being alive. A royal figure appears to be dead on the ground, while a young woman, child and bishop plead with the skeletal figure to spare them. But, as we all know, death spares no one. In the background, a boat floats down the river, akin to the mythological boats escorting the dead to the afterlife. On the horizon, the sun sets between two towers (which also appear in the Moon Tarot card), in a sense dying each night and being reborn every morning.
“A sun sets, a day is born.”
— Maori proverb
“Life and death are illusions. We are in a constant state of transformation.” Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
