Unless you thresh wheat or cut grass with horrible out-of-date methods, the scythe is the tool of one figure: the grim reaper. Just as grains grow after spring snow melt, ripen during the summer, and then fall to the harvest every autumn, so too do all lives pass on this earth.
“In the life of a man, his time is but a moment,” writes Marcus Aurelius, “his being an incessant flux, his sense a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, his fame doubtful.
In short, all that is body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapors.”
For some, this is a source of fear and concern, but for others, this is a comfort. Those who bear the scythe tattoo know that all things must pass, and that, because it comes but once, our lives are the most precious things we will ever possess.
In Tarot, the Death card is not an ill omen like The Tower or The Devil. Instead, it marks the completion of a cycle and a new beginning. As life ceases in winter, it is reborn in the spring. Those who wear the scythe tattoo believe in our infinite ability to change, to kill that which we dislike within us, and allow our new, better selves to be born.
