This is a portrait of Death, the way I see her. I think this card, more than any other, illustrates the possible variations that go into the spirit of every single card in the Tarot. Death is such a simple concept, the end of life, and yet it has so many faces! It is an ending, a beginning, a great loss and a mercy, there is the Grim Reaper separating our souls from our bodies with a skillful arc of his scythe and there is the gentle grandmotherly figure who eases us out of this world.

Many people consider Death one of the greatest mysteries life has to offer and yet we don’t spend nearly as much time marveling over what we were or where we came from before conception. Then it has a virtual fount of meanings in the esoteric, metaphoric, symbolic and iconographic form. The end or change of anything, even things which apparently have never had life to begin with, such as a job, or an era. Perhaps we sense that they all do have life, everything has a beginning middle and an end. Like the wheel of the year we grow, fruit, harvest and go back into the earth.