Death

Death is Major Arcanum XIII of the tarot, the name it bears in the Rider-Waite-Smith and other decks. In the Tarot de Marseille it is the only numbered card without a title, hence its French name L'Arcane sans nom, the Nameless Arcanum. A skeleton mows a field from which heads and limbs emerge. Upright, the tradition reads in it deep transformation, the end of a cycle, clearing away and renewal. Reversed, it suggests resistance to change or mourning that drags on. Tarot readers stress that it does not foretell a physical death.