✦Archetype and General Meaning
The Devil card is a cosmic joke, because the devil here does not actually exist as an independent force trying to devour the soul, he is a representation of our own chains that we put around our own necks. In Jungian terms, it is the archetype of the Shadow (that which we are ashamed of in ourselves and repress into the subconscious). The Lord of material phenomena. It reveals the brutal truth about the human ego's attachment to the illusion of possession and power. However, if you stop running from your "devil" and invite him into consciousness, you gain a powerful, wild, and intensely creative source of life energy.
✦Psychology and Inner World
You have a powerful magnetism within you. People with the Devil's vibration are highly sensual, sharp, endowed with a gallows sense of humor, and an outstanding talent for operating in the world of finance and matter. You get bored quickly with the "well-behaved" world. You often break norms; you are drawn to the mysterious, the extreme, and the forbidden. Your interior is a veritable cauldron of passions, both the luminous ones and the most despicable ones. You possess the gift of piercing through other people's illusions, you immediately see their petty selfishness and fears, because you know your own so well.
✦Potential
By taming the Shadow, you gain power over matter that other, more spiritual signs lack.
- ◆Business and financial genius: You very quickly figure out what can make you a lot of money. The material world is your element; you can operate within it ruthlessly.
- ◆Charisma, desire, passion: You can be vital to the point of madness. Your animalistic energy makes it impossible for people to take their eyes off you (the vibration of sexual attraction and personal magnetism).
- ◆Courage of liberation: You do not let others impose their paradigms on you, your desire to experience life shatters systemic lies.
✦Shadow
By definition, this entire card symbolizes the fall into matter, so the "shadow in the shadow" is a true imprisonment. This vibration (when you don't work on yourself) pulls you into addictions (alcohol, sex, power, work, money). It is a toxic attachment to other people who hurt us, sadism or masochism, stepping over dead bodies out of greed, or finally, total enslavement by your own selfishness, satisfying only primitive whims while simultaneously feeling a terrible, inner emptiness and darkness.
✦Relationships and Emotions
Relationships under the sign of the Devil can be absorbing, passionate, extreme, and... incredibly toxic. Sex plays an absolutely crucial role here. You may have a tendency to attract manipulative partners, or you yourself become a jealous controller (an energy vampire). Being in a healthy relationship with a vibration of 15 requires radical honesty and communicating your deepest, almost impure sexual and psychological desires without shame (to throw them out of the Shadow zone). Then the partnership turns into a tantric power instead of slavery.
✦Symbolism
- ◆Baphomet (Goat of Mendes): A symbol of nature, the material and instinctual animal, half human, half beast.
- ◆Chains around the necks: If you look closely at the man and woman illustrated on the traditional card, their loops are loose, they can pull them over their heads at any moment, which means that enslavement (to the devil, addiction, debt) is only in their psyche!
- ◆Right hand gesture: The reverse of the Hierophant's blessing, and also the "V" sign from left-hand path magic, signifying a hidden, dark, and inverted spiritual force focused on the selfishness of matter.
- ◆Torch pointing downwards: Fire (spirit, illumination) wasted and descending solely to inflame matter, burning up urges instead of elevating to higher realms of consciousness.
✦Example of Action in Life
Being in a very prestigious corporate position, someone (with a weak Devil) allows the massive annual bonus promised every year (which they never receive, because the boss promises it "for next year") to keep them in a team they hate working with (the chain of greed). They remain in captivity by their own choice (because they could take off the chain at any time and go for a lower salary, but to a cool smaller company). An integrated Devil sees this, throws off the chain, and says: "I don't give a s***, my freedom is more important than your money," and then, based on their lust for success and knowledge, founds a powerful competing corporation, furiously poaching clients from the old firm.