The scariest card

No one wants to draw the Death card.  Even if you know nothing about the tarot, one look at that card,  and you feel deep unease.

But Tarot is a subtle guidance,  and death doesn't mean death is coming for you.  It means change is coming,  deep change,  transformative change.  I wrote a blog on butterflies and change and the death card in 2012 (which just goes to show how old this blog is!) and now I'm thinking of it again.

I used to tell clients that I was thinking of getting a word tattooed on each of my wrists - the right would say LIFE and the left would say CHANGE.  Life, Change.  Life, Change.  Just to remind me and them that all life involves change.  And often is it the resistance to change,  as opposed to the change itself,  that can hurt us the most.  (I couldn't find images of that,  but I did find lots of heart beats,  whose very syncopation says that all life involves the heart moving and changing beat,  so I used that image.) 

If you draw the death card,  change is coming.  Now we can discuss how to deal with it,  see if we can modify it,  but mostly see if we can surf it to get to the shore safely.  Things never stand still,  life is always in motion, and if we can accept that,  then the Death Card need not be so scary... 

How old do you want to be when you die?

Everyone has a secret number, the number they want to get to, before they die.  Recently I had a reading with a woman who is 78 years old.  She has some complex medical issues.  The cards saw pain and difficulty but then the possbility of a good recovery.   I asked her what number she wanted to get to and she said 93.    If she wanted to live to 80, then perhaps she wouldn’t want to spend 18 months in surgery and recovery, but if she wants 15 years, it is worth undergoing a painful surgery. 

Elizabeth Slettness

We often have these secret numbers in our head and we should take them into account when making decisions.  A friend of mine recently said that he wanted to live to 100.  That’s not my magic number; I worry about finances and frailty and human connection and I don’t think I want to get that far.  But if you do, you should start taking care of things now, so your foundation – health, wealth and community, is solid.

Lots of Knights…

I’ve gone through what every individual card means in this blog, now I am going through what clusters of cards mean… What does it mean if you have lots of knights in your reading? Again, I have to put in the caveat that the court cards are amongst the most complex of the tarot cards and need sensitive interpretation.

You put the knight cards in front of you and the first thing you see is a lot of young men on horses. There is an adolescent intensity here, a rushing towards something, a yearning. In their youth, they are not jaded or cynical, but rather they believe in their causes fiercely, and are willing to fight for their beliefs. And the most important thing the Knight needs to know, with all his action and his feelings – is he riding in the right direction?


The Knight of pentacles is stuck, needing movement, the knight of cups, also known as the seeker of hearts, is more deliberate, and often looking for love. The knight of wands is all energy but often not enough planning and the knight of swords is storming forth with anger and impatience. And all 4 are hoping to make it to Death, the other horseman in the tarot deck, who is riding in the right direction and is all about transformational change.

Not Death, but Change

Death (13)
Everyone flinches when they see this card, but it is not a card predicting an actual death! Rather, the Death card portrays symbolic death - a change or transformation. It's the death of the caterpillar to give birth to the butterfly. After this card, nothing will be the same.


I chose this tarot image because as the artist says, the Death card reveals a permanent change--and what is more permanent for a tree than being cut? But, she assures us, the wood will live on--in paper, furniture, the flame, or even as food for other plants.


Tarot looks at cycles, and in this card it tells us a cycle in ending, and simultaneously, that another is beginning. Of course some people fear change more than they fear death, so this is a card about facing fears, to see how we can grow. I just came across this fabulous quote - “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.” Richard Bach, which perfectly epitomizes this card.


Here is my favorite death card image:- which shows it how I think it is, as a gateway card. None of us know what's beyond the gateway, but our expectations reveal a great deal about us and how we deal with life...