Death in Tarot: Meaning, History and Jewellery for the Symbols of Arcana 13

The Death card in Tarot does not predict anyone dying. It speaks of completion: something old has ended, the new shape has not yet settled. A skeleton on a white horse, a black flag bearing a white rose, a fallen king beneath the hooves. The image looks grim, yet it reads as a passage.

This is one of the most misread cards in the whole deck. Let us be clear about the main point straight away: there is no evidence that cards predict anything at all. Tarot is a system of symbols gathered from European iconography and myth. Its value sits not in fortune-telling but in the precise visual language people used for centuries to describe great change.

What follows, in order: where the image came from, what each of its elements means, which real traditions stand behind it, and which pieces of jewellery carry that symbolism.

Arcana 13 in the History of the Decks

The thirteenth card holds a special place, and superstition is part of the reason. In most early decks the card carried no caption. Where the Lover, the High Priestess and Justice each had a name, the thirteenth position showed only an image and a number.

This was no accident. The number thirteen had been marked by fear in medieval Europe long before Tarot existed: thirteen at the table of the Last Supper, Friday the thirteenth as an ill omen. To name the card was to say the word out loud.

The earliest surviving decks were made for the Milanese courts of the Visconti and Sforza in the middle of the fifteenth century. There the figure is a skeleton, sometimes with a scythe, sometimes with a bow. The image grew out of the Danse Macabre, the dance of death, which flooded European art after the plague. The epidemic of 1347 to 1353 killed between a third and a half of Europe's population in a handful of years. Whole towns emptied. Art answered with a run of pictures in which death leads people of every rank into a single round dance: a duke beside a ploughman, a pope beside a beggar. Death levels everyone.

The Marseille deck, standardised by French craftsmen in the seventeenth century, kept the namelessness: above a skeleton mowing a field of hands and heads stands only the number XIII. But look closely. Between the cut limbs, plants push up from the earth. The idea that later decks would spell out, that destruction and growth run side by side, was already built into the picture.

In 1909 the artist Pamela Colman Smith, commissioned by Arthur Edward Waite, drew a deck that changed everything. The card now carried a plain caption: DEATH. Death was given a name and a reworked meaning, and modern readings rest on it. Smith deserves to be named in full: she was long kept in Waite's shadow, though it was she who drew all seventy-eight cards. A professional illustrator and theatre designer, she created not a frightening picture but a thought-out symbolic programme.

In the Thoth deck, developed by Aleister Crowley with the artist Frieda Harris in the 1940s and published after his death in 1969, the card gained another dimension: a skeleton with the traits of a scorpion and a sickle, set against decay and sprouting growth. Crowley stressed the Egyptian layer, death as the dying and rising Osiris.

Three traditions, three images of one card: the nameless figure with a scythe, the rider on a white horse, the scorpion skeleton. All three say the same thing.

Waite-Smith Iconography: Reading the Symbols

The Death card in the Waite-Smith deck is hard to mistake for any other. Behind the grim image sits a careful programme in which every element is deliberate.

The Skeleton in Black Armour

Death appears not as a person and not as a shadow, but as a skeleton in full knightly armour. The armour carries a double meaning. On one hand it is protection: the knight is invulnerable, change comes to everyone and cannot be talked out of arriving. On the other it is weight: armour presses down, it takes effort simply to bear it. The skeleton itself is what remains once the surplus has gone. Flesh, status, roles fall away; the bones stay. In memorial culture the skeleton is not the fear of death but a reminder of the essence.

The White Horse

The skeleton rides a white horse. For Waite white stands for purity and inevitability, not cruelty. In European iconography a white horse reads as a sign of nobility: not a warhorse and not a workhorse, but the horse of a ceremonial procession. Death as transformation rides openly, with dignity, rather than creeping round a corner.

The Black Flag with the White Rose

On the flag is a white rose of five petals against a black field. The black ground is mourning and a farewell without illusions. The white rose is beauty that exists in spite of everything. The five-petal shape ties to the number five, a symbol of change. Together they say: change happens, and there is a beauty within it. The same rose appears with the Fool and the Magician, each time as a sign of pure intent.

The Fallen King and Those Around Him

Beneath the horse's hooves lies a crowned figure, a dead king. Nearby a woman with her head bowed, a child looking at the rider without fear, a little further off a bishop with hands clasped. Four roles, four reactions. Power falls first, because it clings to form harder than anything else. The woman grieves but does not die: the image of those who remain. The child is not afraid, because it has not yet gathered the illusions that must later be surrendered. The bishop has found a shape in which to meet the inevitable. This is a direct inheritance from the dance of death, but Waite shifts it from horror to archetype: each of us meets change in our own way, yet no one can step around it.

The Rising Sun Between the Towers

On the horizon beyond a river, between two towers, the sun rises. It rises; it does not set. This is one of the most important elements: a new day after the night of completion, the move to the next state rather than a finale. The two towers mark a threshold, a point of crossing. The river behind the procession is the image of a continuous flow: life runs on, even when one particular shape of it ends.

The Dance of Death: Where the Image Came From

The Danse Macabre was a culture's answer to catastrophe. After the plague of the mid-fourteenth century, death was everywhere: in emptied houses, in mass graves. Artists and the Church offered an image of a death that levels everyone, at once a warning and a comfort.

The most famous series belongs to Hans Holbein the Younger: the "Totentanz" of 1523 to 1526, forty-one woodcuts published in 1538. Death appears in every scene in a new guise: playing a lute for the pope, lifting a child from its cradle, leading a merchant out from behind his counter. No role protects, no piety buys its way out. For Holbein death is not a monster but a brisk next step.

The Italian tradition of the Trionfo della Morte, the Triumph of Death, finds its sharpest form in the fresco at the Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, painted around 1446: death as a triumphant rider tearing through a crowd of the noble and the common alike. This iconography passed straight into Tarot. By the time Pamela Colman Smith drew Arcana 13, the image already had a century and a half behind it.

The thread running through all these pictures: death is neither an enemy nor a punishment but part of how the world is built. It cannot be bribed or postponed. That made the image frightening and freeing at once, since equality before death loosened the rigid tensions of medieval society.

Memento Mori: The Real Tradition Behind the Symbol

"Memento mori" is Latin for "remember that you will die". In the Roman tradition this was not a gloomy slogan but a practical tool. By one account, during a general's triumphal procession a slave stood beside him in the chariot and repeated the phrase. At the height of success the man was reminded of his own limits, to hold him back from pride.

Mosaics from Pompeii showed skeletons holding cups at the banqueting table, often with the caption "Carpe diem", seize the day. They were set in dining rooms: everything is fleeting, so enjoy it while you can. In Rome the philosophy of the feast and the philosophy of death were inseparable. The same idea went into intaglio rings carved with skulls, found across the former empire.

The Stoics built a whole system out of it. Seneca wrote to Lucilius that everything else is borrowed and only our time is truly ours, and that while we put things off, life slips by. Marcus Aurelius returned again and again to the thought of his own limits, not as a threat but as a footing: knowing about death helps you set priorities straight. Epictetus, a former slave, drew a line between what is in our power and what is not: death is not in our power, so fearing it is pointless, and the real evil is the fear of death that stops us living.

Later Montaigne titled one of his essays "That to Philosophise Is to Learn to Die". In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries European painters created the vanitas genre: still lifes with skulls, flowers, clocks, sheet music. Everything beautiful set beside the inevitable. Art about the fact that the worth of a thing and its ending exist at the same time.

All these traditions say what Arcana 13 conveys visually: knowing about an ending does not kill joy, it makes joy sharper. This is history and philosophy, not a promise that a piece of jewellery will change anything.

Victorian Mourning Jewellery

Victorian Britain built one of the richest material cultures for working with loss. After the death of Prince Albert in 1861 Queen Victoria wore mourning for decades, and her example set the standard.

Mourning jewellery of that era is a genre in itself with its own materials. Jet, a kind of fossilised wood from Whitby in Yorkshire, gave a deep anthracite shine and went into brooches, lockets and bracelets. Its mining at Whitby grew into a whole industry. Black agate, with its dull dark colour, read as fitting for grief. Hair of the dead was sealed under glass in lockets: a way to keep the physical presence of a loved one, a norm rather than a macabre detail.

Skulls and skeletons in jewellery of this tradition carried a specific memento mori meaning, not Gothic decoration. A small gold or silver skull on a signet ring reminded its owner of transience. Modern pieces with blackened metal, skulls, jet and severe lines are direct heirs to this genre, which is nearly two hundred years old.

Caring for Jewellery with This Symbolism

The symbolism of Arcana 13 has its own materials, and each calls for its own handling. Oxidised silver, jet and matt dark stones behave differently from familiar polished gold, and ordinary care can ruin them.

Blackening on silver is not a separate layer of paint but a thin film of silver sulphide on the surface of the metal. It holds in the recesses of the design while wearing off the raised areas over time through friction, and that is the intention: a blackened skull or ouroboros is meant to let the relief stand out light while the shadows stay dark. The chief enemy of blackening is abrasion. Cleaning pastes, scouring powder, wipes with a polishing treatment strip the film in a few strokes, and the design fades into an even shine. Blackened silver should be cleaned only with a soft cloth and warm water with a drop of soap, no brushes and no dipping in ready-made silver dips: those dips dissolve the sulphide film, which is exactly what they are made to do.

Jet, the material of Victorian mourning jewellery, is not a stone at all but compacted wood, in effect a kind of coal. It is light, warm to the touch and soft: around 2.5 on the mineral hardness scale, roughly a fingernail. Jet scratches easily, dreads a knock, dislikes sharp swings of temperature, and cracks from the dry heat of a radiator or direct sun. Clean it only with a dry or barely damp soft cloth, no soaking in water and no chemicals at all. The old jet brooches and lockets that survive to this day did so precisely because they were never washed and were stored apart from metal and hard stones that would scratch them.

The general rule for all this dark symbolism is simple: keep each piece on its own, in a soft pouch, not in a shared box where metal knocks against metal. Take it off before the shower, before sport, before sleep. The body and perfume oxidise silver fastest, so a piece that lies on the skin all day darkens unevenly, and that is fine for blackened items but unwanted on smooth gold.

What to Engrave on a Piece for Arcana 13

Engraving turns a symbol into a personal mark, and for Arcana 13 the most fitting choice is not a name but a marker of passage. The most precise option is a date of completion: the day an important stretch ended, a job was left behind, a divorce went through, a chapter closed. Not the date of a loss as grief, but the date of a turning point as fact. Such a date is read by you alone, and it turns the piece into a private calendar of change.

Of the short inscriptions, the ones older than Tarot work best. Memento mori and carpe diem are Latin formulas with two thousand years behind them, tested by meaning rather than fashion. For anyone who has come through a hard period and emerged different, the Latin resurgam, "I shall rise again", suits well, a traditional inscription paired with the phoenix. Long motivational phrases and other people's quotations are best avoided: on a small surface they look cramped and date faster than the metal does.

There are technical limits. The inside of a ring usually holds between fifteen and thirty characters with spaces, depending on size and font, so a date or a single word almost always beats a sentence. On blackened silver the engraving is done before the blackening, so that the fresh cut of metal darkens too and the letters do not glint bare against the surface. Jet cannot be engraved: the material is too brittle and crumbles under the graver, so the inscription is moved to the metal part of the setting or locket.

Parallels in Myth and Nature

The theme of transformation through completion is so universal that no developed mythology is without it.

Persephone among the Greeks is carried off into the underworld, eats pomegranate seeds and so spends part of the year below and part above. She did not die forever but became a goddess who knows both worlds. Osiris among the Egyptians is killed by his brother, cut apart, gathered back together by Isis, and rises again as lord of the afterlife: death changes the role rather than destroying it. Inanna in the Sumerian myth descends into the underworld, at each of seven gates is stripped of a token of power, dies and returns, but altered: the knowledge of losing everything becomes her strength.

The most literal example is in nature. The caterpillar inside the cocoon dissolves almost entirely, and from that solution the butterfly is built. The same genetic material, a different form of life. The Greek metamorphosis means "change of shape", and that is fact rather than metaphor. Arcana 13 describes exactly this: not annihilation but rebuilding.

The Phoenix Through the Ages

The phoenix is one of the few symbols to pass through cultures with its meaning almost unchanged. In Egypt the Bennu bird embodied the god Ra and the daily cycle of the sun, dying in the west and being born in the east. Herodotus, in the fifth century BC, recorded a tale of a phoenix arriving once every five hundred years, and added honestly: "I have not seen it myself, only a picture." Early Christians saw in the phoenix a ready image of resurrection and placed it on sarcophagi and mosaics. In the Renaissance the phoenix entered the heraldry of families declaring their rebirth after catastrophe; it was used by the Medici, and Elizabeth I was portrayed in its image. In alchemy it became the symbol of the rubedo stage, the final step of transformation.

Anyone choosing the phoenix as a personal symbol chooses a precise thing: the fire was part of the process, and without it the new would not have been born.

Jewellery for the Symbols of Arcana 13

The symbolism of Arcana 13 found material form in the memento mori tradition, which is older than Tarot. These pieces do not frighten; they return you to the present.

The skull: what remains. Skulls in jewellery appear from the sixteenth century, with their peak in the Victorian era. In the Stoic tradition and in Arcana 13 the skull carries not fear but precision: it is what remains once the incidental falls away, role, status, accumulated grievances, outdated fears. Everyone's bones are built the same way, and that levels people.

The phoenix: fire as renewal. A direct embodiment of what the card speaks about: the old form breaks down, the new one rises from the same place. It suits anyone who has come through a hard period and emerged different.

The hourglass: time as a cycle. When the sand has run out, the glass is turned over and everything begins again. A classic vanitas image, echoing the cyclical nature of Arcana 13.

The ouroboros: the snake biting its tail. One of the oldest symbols of the cycle, found in Egyptian, Greek and alchemical texts. A circle with no beginning and no end: the end gives rise to the beginning. By its shape it sits perfectly in a ring, which is itself a circle.

The butterfly: visible metamorphosis. Behind the outward lightness sits a radical change that happens in the dark and silence of the cocoon. In the context of Arcana 13 the point is not the beauty but the very fact of the transformation.

How and With What to Wear the Symbolism of Arcana 13

Arcana 13 is a personal sign rather than a showy one, and it makes sense to wear it that way. For everyday a pendant with a skull or an ouroboros on a thin chain slips under the collar of a jumper or shirt and stays your own mark, seen only when you move: it explains nothing to others, yet it is always close. For evening the logic is reversed: a bare neckline and smooth fabric give the pendant room, and a phoenix or a butterfly is worth carrying over the clothing as a meaningful accent. An ouroboros ring is self-sufficient; it is worn on its own, without neighbours, so the circle reads whole.

Metal sets the mood. Oxidised silver pulls the image towards the severe and graphic, closer to the Stoic restraint of the card. Warm gold softens the symbol and fits it into a dressier look. And the main rule for symbolism like this: one leading image is almost always stronger than a set. A stack of three symbols reads as decoration, while a pendant of transformation wants to be the only one, so it stays a personal story rather than an ornament.

The Card's Meaning: Upright and Reversed

Upright, Arcana 13 means completeness, a clear end to a cycle and acceptance of change. Something ends with no way back, and at the same time something begins. In practical reading the card confirms more often than it warns: it turns up when the parting has already happened, the job is already lost, the move has already taken place. The person who sees it in a spread usually already knows what it is about. The card gives that knowledge a name and offers it to be read as transformation rather than catastrophe.

The second layer of meaning concerns letting go. Often change is delayed not because the old is unready to leave, but because the person holds on to it with both hands. Fear of the new, habit, the illusion of control. In that reading the card is an invitation to release what is already dead, to free up space.

Reversed Death is resistance to change. The person sees that the old has ended but cannot or will not accept it, and goes on living a scenario that no longer exists. Sometimes the reversed position reads more gently, as a quiet, gradual ending with no rupture. In both cases the heart of it is the same: the change is already under way.

It is worth keeping in mind: all of this is interpretation of a symbol, not prophecy. A card in a spread works as a mirror, reflecting what the person already knows about their life. There is no evidence that it determines the future.

Its Place Among the Other Arcana

Arcana 13 stands between two important cards. The preceding Arcana 12, the Hanged Man, shows a figure upside down: a voluntary letting go, a pause, a view from another angle. The following Arcana 14, Temperance with its angel pouring water between two cups, carries the meaning of balance and integration after a great change.

Death stands at the centre of this three-step passage: first the letting go in silence, then the irreversible ending, then the recovery of a new balance. After Temperance the path continues: the Devil with the theme of attachment and the illusion of chains, then the Tower, then the Star with its hope. Death is not the end of the journey but a turning point in the middle: seven more Arcana follow it.

In combinations the card shifts its shade. Beside the Tower (Arcana 16) it describes a destruction sudden and radical: an outside blow has set off an inner change. Beside the Star it gives the opposite, comforting image: renewal follows the ending. Beside the World (Arcana 21) it means the completion of a great cycle with full acceptance, coming out whole on the other side.

Who It Suits and How to Give It

Jewellery with the symbolism of Arcana 13 is a delicate thing, and the main point is to feel the moment. It is chosen by people drawn to the idea of passage and change, not to gloom. A skull in the memento mori tradition suits a person of a philosophical cast of mind, who will value the meaning rather than flinch at the image. A phoenix is good for someone who has taken an important step forward. An ouroboros is for someone thinking about cycles.

As a gift such a symbol calls for tact. Do not give it to a person in the sharpest part of grief or fresh loss: any philosophy would then be read the wrong way. And never give it with the words "this will help you get through" or "this is a symbol of your loss". Better to keep it neutral: "this is a symbol of change and a new stage". A gift to yourself is especially fitting here: a piece you choose for yourself at the end of an important stretch carries your own meaning rather than someone else's reading.

FAQ

Is it true that the Death card in Tarot foretells something bad?

No. This is one of the most stubborn myths, and it ties back to the early decks leaving the card unnamed, letting fear fill the gap. In the Waite-Smith system, the basis of modern Tarot, Arcana 13 describes the end of a cycle and the move to something new. The card does not say "you will suffer", it says "something is ending". And it is worth remembering: the cards have no predictive power; they are a language of symbols, not a forecast.

What does Arcana 13 mean in a love reading?

Usually something in the relationship has ended or is ending. More often it is not the couple itself but a phase of it: a period, a role, a familiar pattern. Frequently the card appears when a relationship moves to another level and its old shape leaves to let a new one appear.

Is it acceptable to wear jewellery with the symbolism of the Death card?

Yes. The memento mori tradition to which it belongs goes back several centuries. Wearing a piece with a skull, a phoenix or an ouroboros means remembering the value of the present, not upholding an aesthetic of fear.

How does Arcana 13 differ from the Tower?

The Tower (Arcana 16) is destruction that is sudden, painful and external. Death (Arcana 13) is the end of a cycle, which can be quiet and even voluntary. The Tower demolishes; Death transforms.

What does the reversed Death card mean?

Resistance to change: the person sees that something is ending but holds on to it out of fear or habit. Sometimes it points to a drawn-out passage that moves slowly and against resistance.

Is the Death card connected to the real death of loved ones?

In the traditional reading, no. Experienced card readers treat it as a metaphor for any serious ending, not as a sign of a physical outcome.

How do I choose a piece for the symbolism of Arcana 13?

Start not from the look but from what you want to express. Came through a loss and out the other side: a phoenix or a butterfly. Want to remind yourself of the value of the present: a memento mori skull or an hourglass. The theme of cycles matters: an ouroboros. Wearing a piece whose meaning is clear only to you is perfectly fine.

Do I need to understand Tarot to wear such a piece?

No. The symbols work apart from the system. The skull as a reminder of mortality existed long before Tarot; the phoenix as a symbol of rebirth appeared in myth millennia before Waite. Tarot gathered these images together, but they live a life of their own.

Why was the Death card unnamed in early decks?

Because of the superstition around the number thirteen and the reluctance to name death aloud. Namelessness was a cultural norm. Waite was the first in the modern tradition to give the card a name, turning fear into archetype.

Conclusion

We live in a culture that is bad at speaking about endings. For birth, marriage and death there are rituals and words. For the great in-between changes, divorce, a change of profession, a move, a recovery, there is almost nothing. Arcana 13 gives this a language: great transitions are part of life, they happen to everyone and deserve dignity rather than shame. The king lies beneath the hooves of the white horse. This happens to kings. This happens to everyone.

Jewellery with this symbolism, the memento mori skull, the phoenix, the ouroboros, the butterfly, the hourglass, is not jewellery of death but jewellery of change. A material reminder that out of endings the new is born. Great transitions deserve a sign of their own, one you carry with you.

About Zevira

Zevira makes jewellery by hand in Albacete, Spain. Death in Tarot is the card of transformation, and our memento mori pieces are not about gloom but about the Stoic tradition: remember your limits in order to live better.

What you can find with us under the symbolism of Death as transformation:

• Memento mori pendants with a skull in the Victorian tradition
• Phoenix pendants as a symbol of rising from the ashes
• Hourglass pendants as an image of the cycle
• Ouroboros pendants as an image of eternal return
• Butterfly pendants as metamorphosis without the black

Each piece is made by a craftsman by hand, with the option of personal engraving. We work with 925 silver and 14 to 18 carat gold.

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