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More Major Arcana Cards:
0 - The Fool
1 - The Magician
2 - The High Priestess
3 - The Empress
4 - The Emperor
5 - The Hierophant
6 - The Lovers
7 - The Chariot
8 - Strength
9 - The Hermit
10 - Wheel of Fortune
11 - Justice
12 - The Hanged Man
13 - Death
14 - Temperance
15 - The Devil
16 - The Tower
17 - The Star
18 - The Moon
19 - The Sun
20 - Judgement
21 - The World

Other Tarot Cards:
Suit of Cups
Suit of Pentacles
Suit of Swords
Suit of Wands

 

13 - Death

Death is one of the most feared cards in the Tarot Deck.
It is Card No.13 but is actually the 14th card in the Major Arcana of the Tarot because the first card of the Major Arcana is card no.0 - "The Fool".

Most of the fear associated with this card is based on mis-information or mis-understanding - probably due to the name of the card. It rarely refers to physical death. Instead, it is concerned with Transformation, and hence New Beginnings. The "death" is therefore the death of the past, which accompanies the birth of the new next phase.

Some older Tarot Decks include gruesome or distressing images on the Death Card. This practice is less common in more modern packs such as the Rider-Waite and Robin Wood Decks - both of these include detailed symbolic images - but nothing likely to cause nightmares ! Some other modern decks such as in the Golden Dawn Tarot Deck do include images of a skeleton, albeit depicted as artistic symbolism, not as a realistic "horror" image.

Some specific terms associated with "Death" Tarot card include:
Transformation, New Beginnings, New Opportunities, Detachment, Release, and, less succintly ... the end of one phase (of a project, a development stage, or of life) and moving onto the next phase.

 

The Major Arcana cards are thought to be the most powerful cards in the Tarot. They tell a complete story when arranged in upright and numerical order. It is a story of development and enlightenment, sometimes called "The Fool's Journey".

Some texts include meanings for "reversed cards", which apply when the cards are shuffled in both order and orientation. This doubles the number of possible "cards" in the deck from 78 to 156. (In terms of the probabilities of obtaining results by chance alone, it is not a simple doubling as once a card has been drawn it cannot be selected again in the opposite orientation in the same reading.)

Why doesn't this page include a picture of this Tarot Card ?