Death
Major Arcana · number 13 · La Morte
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Death frightens only by its name: it speaks of an ending, yes, but of the necessary kind. Something in your life is closing, a cycle, a relationship, a job, a way of thinking that no longer serves you. If these days you feel that a support is falling away, or that a plan for love is coming apart, or that contrarieties pile up one after another, it is no accident and it is not your fault. It is not a sentence: it is ground being cleared. The practical advice: do not cling to what is already over. Close it properly, say goodbye with dignity, and let the empty space make room for what is to come.
Source: Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910) · read the original passage
Reversed
Reversed, Death brings not an ending but a paralysis: inertia, sleep, the feeling of walking like a sleepwalker through a life that never changes. Perhaps a hope died and since then you have been as if turned to stone, in love, at work, in the health you neglect. If you recognise yourself in this torpor, it is no accident: when a change is not welcomed, it stagnates. The practical advice is small and concrete: change one single habit this week, a schedule, a route, a phone call you keep postponing. The body wakes up before the head does.