My Journey with the Tarot’s Death Card
Alright, let’s talk about the Death card in Tarot. When I first started messing around with the cards, pulling this one seriously freaked me out. I mean, it’s got a skeleton, sometimes on a horse, looks pretty grim, right? My first thought was always, “Oh no, who’s going to die?” It’s a pretty common reaction, I think.
I remember doing a reading for myself way back when I was worried about some changes happening at my old job. Pulled the Death card. My stomach just dropped. I spent the whole week looking over my shoulder, half-expecting some kind of disaster. Nothing really bad happened in the literal sense, thankfully, but the anxiety was real.
So, after a few scares like that, I started to actually look into it a bit more. Not like heavy studying, just reading bits here and there, seeing what other folks thought. I noticed a pattern. Most people weren’t talking about actual, physical death. They kept mentioning things like endings, transformation, change, letting go.
It took a while for that to sink in. The big change for me happened when I finally left that job I mentioned. It wasn’t a sudden thing, more like a slow realization that it just wasn’t the right place for me anymore. It felt like an ending, for sure. And you know what? A few weeks after I decided to leave, just shuffling my deck absentmindedly, out popped the Death card again. This time, it didn’t feel scary. It felt… right. Like, “Yeah, okay, this chapter is closing.”
Since then, my whole view on this card has shifted. I’ve seen it come up when:
- I needed to break a bad habit.
- A friendship was naturally fading away.
- I had to clear out old beliefs that weren’t serving me.
- A big project finally came to an end, making space for something new.
It’s about clearing the decks. You can’t start something fresh if you’re still holding onto all the old stuff. Think about winter – things have to die back so new growth can happen in the spring. That’s kind of how I see the Death card now.
So, nowadays, when it shows up in a reading, I don’t panic. I get curious. I ask myself, “Okay, what needs to end here? What am I holding onto that it’s time to release? What space is being cleared?” It’s still a powerful card, definitely makes you pay attention, but it’s not the doom-and-gloom thing I first thought. It’s more like a signal that a necessary change is happening or needs to happen, paving the way for whatever comes next. It’s just part of the cycle, you know?
