The Devil: not a bad boy, just misunderstood?

HudsonGray

I look at the Devil as an internal card, something I'd need to be aware of inside that affects actions and outcomes.

It's like the junk drawer in the kitchen, or the closet you keep putting things in but never get around to cleaning out. It's always there and full, waiting for a good look-through but we never get the time or the inclination or just actually dread having to deal with what's in there.

Until you DO take the time to look, it's going to be affecting you in ways you may not like.

All the cards are 50/50 good/bad. Sometimes a person NEEDS that day off, or time to themselves, that candy bar, that book you wanted to read, and sometimes doing any of that impacts what you're supposed to be doing.

That's what the Devil card generally means to me.
 

Tanga

To me - The Devil can also mean - "it's time to let your hair down and have a bit of fun"...
Or maybe "you're about to be 'the Devil's Advocate' ".
These are "good" things. Lol.

Here's a really cute (and oblivious) Devil from Lo Scarabeo Fey Tarot:
 

Attachments

  • FeyDevil.jpg
    FeyDevil.jpg
    29.3 KB · Views: 274

Mittkait

The Devil card, in any deck, means emotional and physical obsession, narcissism, toxic materialism, penury, everything in the "party today, pay tomorrow" living.

When it comes up in a reading, it means there is something in life that is seriously out of balance and must be addressed.
 

euripides

The Devil card, in any deck, means emotional and physical obsession, narcissism, toxic materialism, penury, everything in the "party today, pay tomorrow" living.

When it comes up in a reading, it means there is something in life that is seriously out of balance and must be addressed.


The standard RWS card means this, in the conventional reading. But a point we're exploring in this thread is that this isn't always the case. In some traditions, the Devil is less about helpless addiction to the material world and more about deliberately embracing the physical. It means accepting the transience of life and as the saying goes, 'sucking the marrow from the bone, not choking on it'.

The Devil-equivalent in pagan traditions also has an important role in the fertility cycle.
 

Mittkait

The cards were forged in Renaissance, Christian Europe. The Devil means what it means.

What you want is for the devil to represent Dionysus. Even imposing that meaning on the card leads to the same interpretation.

Unless you feel that Bacchantes are just enjoying life while murdering any human or animal that crosses their path in the middle of their festivities to the wine god.

There are so many other cards in the deck that advise the reader to enjoy life, love and family.

The devil card is not one of them.

If the devil turns up in a reading about life. It means addiction in any form.
In a love reading, it means obsession and autocratic control of another person or the self.
In a family reading, it means abandonment and cruelty.

Doreen Virtue's decks try hard to change the Devil card into something less frightening. Doesn't work. The card is a warning.
 

Ruby Jewel

Ok so I'm playing the devil's advocate...

in the RWS the Devil is unrelentingly awful. There's no doubting the meaning of humanity enslaved by their desires, and they aren't pretty.

But wasn't Satan the most beautiful angel in heaven?

One of Ciro's devils is scorching hot, kinky and going up in flames. In the Rohrig, the Devil is the smooth-talking handsome dude in a suit, reminiscent of the seductive devil in movies, charming, sexy.

I feel I need to learn a lot more about pagan lore if I'm going to ever read successfully with my Druidcraft.

I've got a couple of decks where the Pagan tradition shows a very different side of the Devil. In the Arthurian tarot, XV is the Green Knight. In the Druidcraft, Cernunos god of the underworld - but also fertility, animals, and wealth. What an interesting discussion is to be had about these perspectives on sex, food, money and death.

The Christian tradition teaches that we rid ourselves of desire for material things - only the spiritual life matters. (I know this is a great simplification -) but Pagan traditions usually seem to root themselves in the physical world and see these things very differently.

Does your favorite deck have a different twist on the Devil (or his equivalents)?

The Devil is only as real as our addictions..... as in the loss of Temperance, which is the only card in the deck stronger than the Devil. When the Devil comes up in a reading, I say pay attention....problems abide.
 

euripides

The cards were forged in Renaissance, Christian Europe. The Devil means what it means.

European Christianity absorbed and changed a lot of Pagan symbolism. While it's true that the underworld gods of Greco-Roman traditions were a f*ing scary lot - basically you want to appease Hades at all costs and pretty much avoid speaking his name - they are still *not* the Christian Satan; pagan European traditions are different again.

You can be absolutist if you like, but I'll reserve the right to disagree.
 

Ruby Jewel

You ignore The Devil card at your own peril...I speak from multiple experiences....but one in particular turned out to be dangerous. I ignored it in spite of the fact that it came up for this person on every single reading I did on him, WITHOUT EXCEPTION. And I did several. I didn't want to believe it. Got rid of him because of it, decided I was an idiot so I changed my mind and took him back. I learned something....the cards don't lie. It is what it is, so don't try to analyze it so much. When it comes to being wrong about a card, this one is not an option.
 

Mittkait

I know what you are going through, the whole Sympathy for the Devil thing. it usually afflicts the young'uns.

You have to understand the structure of the cards. The Major Arcana is the alchemical journey of the philosopher's stone. It is about the acceptance of death as a natural cycle and also realizing that the earth and earthly things are not the be all and end all.

The devil is a gatekeeper card that wants to keep the seeker in the physical realm and cut him/her from the spiritual. It isn't there to teach a lesson. It is a malicious card that we must use as a warning sign.

It's really hard to explain further because you must start reading, not only about hermeticism but to undertake the journey of a classical education. To learn about the Quadrivium and that symmetry itself is beauty and reflects the mind of god. That is why you see in art the celebration of the golden mean in everything. Including the human body. Current culture teaches us to hate ourselves. When the ancient philosopher's thought that the symmetry of our bodies was proof of the divine.

The devil energy is against this philosophy. It wants you to hate yourself. It wants to use your power for its own ends. It wants to keep you in this lesser world from greater understanding. What better way than to tell you and others that you need to eat more, lust more, and have more.