 
typical
symbols of the
DEATH card
- Banner
with a Five Petaled Rose - symbol of Mars
and the life force.
- Cave
Entrance - may be a reference to Dante's journey into the underworld, the Mystic’s “dark night of the soul,”.
The logical path from the Death card to the Moon, Sun, and New Jerusalem symbols at the top of the background cliff.
- Four
Figures - temporal and spiritual, male and female, old and young - death comes to everyone.
- A
Fallen King is being trampled.
- A
child.
- A
woman possibly representing the Strength
card.
- A
Bishop in a miter hat shaped like a
Fish, denoting the end of the Picsean age.
He may also represent the Hierophant card.
- Path and
Tower atop a Cliff- the mystical journey to the New Jerusalem. In Renaissance art, the “new earth” (i.e. following the apocalypse) is typically represented as a city, the New Jerusalem. This representation
also appears on 15th-16th century World cards.
- Pillars
- these must be passed for one to reach
immortality. These are the same as those seen on
the High Priestess card.
- Priest's
Staff - worldly power that is lying on the
ground.
- Red Plume
- as in the Fool card.
- River - indicates the constant
circulation of the life force into
materialization and out again. The river
Styx that the Greeks believed led to the
underworld.
- Skeleton Riding a Horse - Death, more
the Apocalyptic version than the standard
skeletal reaper.
- Sun - represents immortality.
|
Textbook
of the Tarot by Janet Berres of the International
Tarot Society
A Complete Guide to the Tarot by Eden Gray
Sources of the Waite/Smith Tarot Symbols
info
page home
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