Death

Major Arcana XIII, Death rides a pale horse bearing a black banner emblazoned with a white rose, the mystic five-petaled flower of transformation. Waite's Pictorial Key is explicit that this card signifies not physical death but the total and irrevocable ending of one phase so that another may begin — the great leveler before whom king and commoner alike fall. The card is intentionally unnumbered in some Marseille decks, reflecting a taboo around naming what it represents. Within the Fool's journey, Death is the necessary passage between the ego-dissolution of The Hanged Man and the reintegration that begins with Temperance.

Cross-Tradition Resonances