I’m often asked by those unfamiliar with the Tarot “What if I pull the Death Card or something?”  Or the more general version of the same fear “What
if I pull bad cards?’  Is the Death Card really so bad? Are there such things as “bad” cards?  Such questions get to the heart of what frightens
most people about the thought of getting a Tarot reading.

What if you pull one of the scary cards?  What if you pull more than one?  It can be frightening, but are they really so bad?  Let’s take a closer
look at three of the scariest cards in the deck and
see.  It might surprise you but there are a lot of
positive messages even in the darkest of Tarot
imagery.

#13 - The Death Card

Topping this short list of scary Tarot cards is the
one that people fear so much, a number of
designers have actually changed its name.  The
Death Card.  It stands alone as the card most
feared.  It’s the one most often shown in the
movies or on TV and is always followed by some
horrible turn in the plot.  But in a real Tarot reading is it really so sinister?  Does it mean someone’s going to die? 

No it doesn’t.  It hardly ever means physical death.  That’s why some card designers have decided to rename Trump #13 Transition or Transformation or not name it at all.   And the new names are apt.  Generally speaking this card refers to an important transition or transformation taking place in one’s life.  It points to a big change.  Big changes don’t come without dislocation, some of them difficult.

But even changes you look forward to often require the end – or death – of something for the new to be born.  School ends and you leave your friends and student life only to embark on your professional life, where you’ll meet new friends and develop a new life.  Moving to an exciting new city is typically a great experience but requires you to say goodbye to family and friends and security of home in order to get to the bright lights.   Even something so universally sought after as finding a partner and having babies requires you to end a previous way of life in order to begin a new one. 

Endings are necessary for beginnings to take place.  The Death Card represents a big end to a big phase in your life.  Nothing will be born until death takes place and this card alerts us to the beginning of a new beginning.

The particularly paranoid may have noticed that when I said that #13 doesn’t mean physical death, I added the word ‘hardly’.  I did this because sometimes the Death card does mean an actual physical death.  Death happens in life and the Tarot cards reflect life. 

In my experience, however, the only times this has been the case has been when the client already knows that death is around – either someone was very ill, or there had recently been a death in their lives, or they’d been thinking about death a lot for some reason.  In these cases, it was because they wanted to look into these events or thoughts that the client wanted a reading in the first place.

Having said that, I want to stress again – the Death Card almost always represents a major transition in someone’s life.  Very, very, very rarely does it mean physical death.

#15 - The Devil Card

Trump #15, otherwise known as the Devil, is the second on our list of most dreaded Tarot cards, at least for the newbies.  It can also be quite disturbing to people with certain religious backgrounds.  For these reasons, among

others, this card has also had its name changed many times.  Some alternate descriptors have been Temptation, Materialism, Conditioning, Devil’s Play and the Obsessive.  It’s depicted as everything from an underground winged monster with two human captives in chains to the Big Bad Wolf and a Chocolate Cake with legs.

I think it’s becoming clear that the Devil in the Tarot deck isn’t much about God’s archenemy the fallen angel Lucifer.  Typically, the Tarot Devil is much more

mundane and represent our physical needs, urges, drives, and desires.  In its most unpleasant form, it can represent addictions, obsessions and/or an inability to see beyond the purely material.  It can point to a serious fissure between one’s spiritual and physical self. 

This last explanation is especially relevant when looking at the underground winged monster with captives.  If you haven’t noticed already, in the Smith-Rider-Waite deck and many of its clones, there’s a striking similarity between the Devil Card and #6 – The Lovers. 

Perhaps the most important difference is that in the Lovers Card, unification is taking place between the players and various levels of consciousness.  With the Devil Card, separation or an apparently forced union of these same elements is what’s being depicted.  Such a connection between these cards shouldn’t be much of a surprise, 15 or 1 + 5 does equal 6 after all. 

The Lovers join voluntarily, the Devil plays around with that union.  In real life, even the happiest of unions can sometimes feel like bondage.  But sometimes bondage is fun (or so I’ve heard) and that brings us back to the purpose of this essay - to highlight the positive aspects of the scary cards. 

The Devil can be a 'good' card too.   Take ‘materialism’ for instance – is it always a negative?  Sometimes to get the job done you have to be obsessive and seriously focus on the physical.  In such a case the Devil Card can represent a time when you’re heavily concentrating on the material because it’s a time when that’s what’s lacking. 

As well, the Devil Card can represent a serious time of romping in the physical – i.e. sexual play, decadent food and/or inebriation.  It can recommend letting your hair down and having a good time without worrying about every little thing. The Tarot Devil is known for his sense of humour and encourages laughing at oneself and one’s situation. In this case the Devil is more like the Roman god Bacchas than Christianty's evil Satan.

As with everything, overdoing it is what’s trouble, whether it’s drinking, drugging, shopping or reading texts on world peace and the saints.  When you see the Devil Card, pay attention to what you’re doing and if you need to unhitch yourself from some obsessive wildness, do it.  But if you’ve been needing to let loose and have some fun, go to it.  The point is that if you’re doing anything too much – seemingly 'good' or 'bad' – try getting some balance.

#16 - The Tower Card

Finally we come to the third scariest card in our list - #16 – The Tower.  Some people might be more frightened by the 10 of Swords or even the 3 of Swords.  A guy lying on the ground with 10 swords in his back or a giant floating heart pierced through with three large
daggers are both very disturbing images.  But for
me, the Tower Card is even scarier.

The Tower Card is most often depicted as a fortress
of sorts being struck by lightening.  Human figures
are often seen flying from the windows.  This horrific
image is meant to alert us to the likelihood of
some shocking event that knocks us from our
foundations.  The negative aspects of the card are
apparent – none of us like getting thrown out of our
fortress.  But as with the other cards, there is
more than one take on this imagery.

The Tower Card can be and often is your friend. 
Sure we can do without catastrophic calamity
but is that what the Tower always means?  In fact, is that what it usually means?  Aren’t there other situations that can seem shocking and potentially life altering without being horrible? 

How about finding out someone you really like is in love with you when you had no idea?  Or that some new idea you just had ends up being so groundbreaking you’ll be leaving all your competitors in the dust.  Or that wreck of a car you’ve been driving gets smacked in the parking lot and your insurance company gets you a new one. 

You can be shocked for many reasons, and when it happens it’s difficult and potentially destructive to hold onto old ways of thinking.  Sometimes shock is a good thing. It can shake you out of outmoded ways of thinking and behaving and shake you into some fabulous new ways of thinking and behaving. 

The Tower helps crash the old down, letting the new rise up like a phoenix.  Eventually the new tower will also have to come down, as with time, it too will become overly stacked and rigid.  Ideas and ways of living can become so entrenched they start to enslave us.  When lightening strikes, we might initially feel insecure as the bricks around us crumble, but destruction is the beginning of freedom and can be as desirable as it is inevitable.

Ultimately, with the scary cards, as with all the cards in the deck, when making an interpretation, your understanding of a particular card will depend on what question you’re asking.  If you’re using a spread, the position in which the card falls will also be crucial.  As well, the cards that surround it will be vital to understanding what a particular card is trying to tell you.