Description
The Death card usually depicts a skeleton, sometimes riding a horse but more often wielding a sickle. Surrounding it are dead and dying people from all classes, including kings, bishops and commoners. The Rider-Waite tarot deck depicts the skeleton carrying a black standard emblazoned with a white flower along with the Crashing Towers from The Moon with The Sun rising behind them in the background. Some decks, such as the Tarot of Marseilles, omit the name from the card.
Rider-Waite symbolism
The king is trampled by a reaping skeleton horseman, as the Pictorial Key to the Tarot describes him, which appears to be a personification of death. The fall of the king may represent the importance and magnitude of the critical event of this card, or that death takes us all equally.