The death card is always a good energy in any position because it means you’re shedding old skin and growing.
In the ‘death’ energy you may feel a kind of resistance as emotion, or chaos, comes up to be released.
Here is where passion can really be stirred up because we’re now feeling things die off that we were so attached to/ hopeful for before. We feel the ache of separation as nature cuts these cords for us. But also the revitalization of new energy coming in, new people, new synchronicities.
There is such a beauty in the death card because it symbolizes us liberating ourselves not by fighting, but by surrendering and opening. Here we are forced to trust nature to take us and evolve us.
The death archetype takes us into deep transformation, which is why people who give themselves fully to this energy are often the most alive and fully self expressed individuals.
The ‘self’ they experience is more like a costume being changed, therefore they are unattached to any identity, often open to flow with life force, sexual energy and inspiration.
Perhaps this link to sexual energy and life force is why the Death card corresponds to Scorpio in the zodiac. Scorpio has to do with uncovering truth, psychic evolution, mysticism, and occultism.
Use this archetype to help you let go of what needs to go, embrace endings, and see the truth of situations. This archetype helps build intimacy with reality and will help you let go of anything that’s unnecessarily suffocating you, or any unhealthy attachment holding you back from your true self.
Also, the Death energy removes ways of being that are no longer needed, so can indicate an ego death.
Ego Death
Death, in the Tarot, symbolizes nature’s way of severing ties. Sometimes we outgrow old identities, and like a snake shedding skin, we have to shake off the dead layer of ‘ourself.’ In doing this we may also lose things associated with the identity- friends, comforts, habits & actions just won’t feel in alignment anymore. And that’s ok.
Ego death is nature’s way of course correcting, or pulling our spiritual energy out of a bad investment. With each little death we feel pain and heart break as nature gently (or harshly!) pulls the plug on our ego projection, and plugs us back into life force, which is free from any mental construct, identity or projection. And here’s where it gets interesting.
Projection is a contracted/ concealed state of reality which constricts the soul and keeps our authentic self hidden from us. The ego reigns here in this contracted state, having full control.
Now, imagine navigating creative energy from this place- ripe with all the ego traps of control- temptation, attraction/ lust without love, being drained, denial of real joy, real self being controlled instead of being naturally expressed, loved and seen.
Then along comes the death process and she wipes out all strategies, clears you from all traps of control, and leaves you in chaos (uncharted, wild territory where ego can’t exist).
Now creativity is more like an invitation for this chaos (life force energy) to flow! We get to be real. Genuinely turned on. Letting the most real part of us be seen. We show up as a soul expanding, and are met by love.
So next time you get the death card in tarot, consider it a good thing- a catalyst for wildly receiving the truth of your essence which welcomes every angle of your natural, free flowing expression!
Note: In tarot we never read the death card as physical death unless the client asks specifically about a loved one who is in the process of dying.
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