The Death Card

The Ace of Spades. Traditionally, in Britain at least, the highest scoring and most ornate of the cards in the Devil’s Book, which is to say, in a pack of playing cards.

If you’re a fan of the new wave of British heavy metal bands in the mid-70s and early eighties — I’m talking, decades, here, not average ages of the band members, though probably that too, actually, at least for the ones who aren’t dead yet — that can only mean one thing: Lemmy, Motörhead, heavy metal umlauts, and one of the greatest songs by one of the greatest rock bands, ever.

But the Ace of Spades has other connotations, too…

The Devil’s (Picture) Book

The Devil’s book, also known as the Devil’s Picture book, was a term used by the Puritans to describe packs of playing cards because of their association with gambling.

For a similar reason, dice were referred to as the devil’s bones.

Ref: The Gentleman’s magazine, Vol. CCLXXXI, July to December, 1896, Diabolocal Folklore in Divers Places, p483, R. Bruce Boswell.

Not least insofar as being known as the Death card.

And that’s not just because that card is, arguably, one of the black aces in the dead man’s hand of aces and eights that wild-west folk hero and gun-slinger, Wild Bill Hickok, was holding when he was shot in the back of the head in a saloon bar in 1876.