Card 15: The Devil

The Devil card in tarot is often feared and misunderstood, but it actually represents an invitation to find freedom and break the chains that no longer serve us. In this episode, we will explore how the the Devil card from the third line in the Major Arcana (the Evolution Line) calls us to look beneath surface appearances to find our authentic truth. We will see how to engage with this great liberator with autonomy and honesty, not fear and dogma.

Main themes discussed in the episode: 

• The Devil as the first card in the "evolution line" of the Major Arcana
• Finding your autonomous center between internal truth and external experiences
• Looking into the underbelly to see causes rather than consequences
• Breaking chains that others, society, or ourselves have placed upon us 

• Symbolic elements: chains, masks, locks and keys, connections to the zodiac sign of Capricorn, the Hebrew letter, and the Greek God Pan
• Harnessing free will to create your path and honor your evolution

Thanks for listening!

Links:

My Links

The Devil Blog Post

Buy My Tarot Key

Major Arcana: A Poetry Collection

The Letter Ayin

Background track is Devil Done Me Wrong by Will Harrison

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to the Devil Card
• 9:39 Understanding the Three Lines of Tarot
• 17:20 The Devil's Numerology and Liberation
• 28:42 Breaking Chains and Finding Autonomy
• 36:25 Looking into the Underbelly of Self
• 42:46 Symbolism in Different Devil Depictions

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:46

Hello and thank you for tuning in to the Wolfchild Magic Podcast. Thank you so much for being here. My name is Ashley, your tarot reader, mountain witch and overall wolfchild, and I am so excited to be sitting here and doing a deep dive with you into one of my favorite tarot cards of all time. The Devil is such a beautiful and incredible tarot card but, like many of the cards in the deck that have a very distinct edge, the Devil is often feared, it's often seen in a very negative light and it's often shunned in tarot readings. People don't want to work with this card. My goal with this card and with every card in the deep dives is to help you see how to reclaim this tarot card, to work with it, to sit with it, to not hate it or be afraid of. You are looking to learn the tarot from a more wild, primal, organic and intuitive point of view. I would recommend going back and starting with the Fool. I do have a deep dive on every card, starting with the Fool and now going into the third line of the Major Arcana, which is the Devil. If you have been here with me for a while, if you like anything that I have put out on this podcast. Please consider rating or sharing or anything in the algorithm ritual. This is the best way to show your support for the Wolf Child Magic podcast. It's the best way for this podcast to grow and it is so appreciated. Thank you so much. Cards like the devil are exactly why I started doing the deep dives, because I wanted you to come with me, walk with me in a more liminal, energetic and organic space where we're not just taking what we read in a guidebook or taking what we see at face value with these cards, really investigating them, sitting with them, opening into their energies. Now, not every guidebook is awful, as we're going to talk about with some of my decks. There's some really good ones. The devil is one, though, that sometimes I really struggle with how it's talked about, because it does create a level of fear, and I created the deep dives, like I said before, so that you don't fear them, so that you know deeply how to connect with this card and how to work with it. But before we get into the devil himself with this deep dive, I want to do a little snapshot into the three lines of the tarot, because now we are here, we are now in the third line, which is what I call the evolution line.

Speaker 1: 3:34

Naming the three lines of the major arcana is not something that I invented. There are so many different tarot readers that have attributed their own names to these lines and the names illustrate how that tarot reader sees and works with the three lines and how they view the three lines working together. Now some of the names I've seen have been like id, ego, super ego, life, death, rebirth. I think one I saw was self, community and world. I could be wrong on that, but again it's kind of the same thing that we see some similar themes.

Speaker 1: 4:12

The reason that I have gone with creation, destruction and evolution is because my whole platform is heavily focused and leans heavily into a wild reclaiming energy and attitude and point of view. So to me it makes the most sense to name these three lines of the major arcana with what we see happening in the real world, because when something is created, then something else either has to be destroyed or eventually what was created will have to be destroyed. But in either way, in order to evolve, something is created, which means equal and opposite. Something else has to be destroyed in order for the evolution to kind of take place Now in a more spiritual, energetic sense, we have some leniency and some leverage with that and obviously it's not taking place over millions and millions of years. But I think you get my point here that when we look at creation, destruction and evolution from a spiritual point of view, we see it how becoming something.

Speaker 1: 5:27

With our evolution, so with creation, which is the first line, the magician to the chariot, something's being created. The energies are rippling out, they're expanding, they're building on something. In the destruction line, it's being destroyed, it's being let go, it's being relinquished, there is a death cycle that is happening and that starts with either strength or justice and ends in temperance. And now with the devil, in the third line, we are in the space of not creating or destroying but becoming. We are in the space of evolving, of rewilding, of aligning whatever.

Speaker 1: 6:11

Put your adjective, put your verb there. That is what is happening in this line and the fool as card zero is one that we keep coming back to as this homecoming. And we arrive at the apex of manifestation with the fool and we are represented with that threshold and from there the journey kind of continues, is done or changes. I mean the fool kind of constantly comes in and out of these three lines, but that's the main layout and working with the three lines and I didn't mention this, but I do have the blog post linked in the show notes so that you can kind of follow along.

Speaker 1: 6:51

You can return to this when you need a little bit of a quick reference. We also have every single devil from every tarot deck I own in this blog post. I think I'm going to have to start pairing the images back or just not going into the symbolism as much because it's starting to get excessive. Symbolism as much because it's starting to get excessive. But more than anything, I just want you to know that by the time you're done with this audio, I want you to know how to work with the devil, because he's again, he's incredible. He's not to be feared. He has such a negative energy to him. There's a fear that surrounds him that only feeds into the very invitation that he's trying to invite. So it's kind of this on the nose sort of narrative that we give him. But one of the things that I want to kind of highlight here with the devil is the numerology. Let's just kind of start there.

Speaker 1: 7:46

So if we look at 15, we have ones which speaks to new beginnings. It speaks to this seed, energy and initiation. We see that with the devil being at the beginning of this line. And fives speak to change, challenge, freedom, independence, curiosity. With fives there's an edge and a little bit of a conflict or a confrontation with them, a challenge with them, because we have, we have to move across the threshold of discomfort and find ways to move through discomfort and not turn away from it. This is going to be one of the biggest things that we tap into with the devil as we get into the devil. But if we add those two together we get the six, which corresponds to harmony, love, beauty, charisma, nurturing, and there's also, with the six, an ability to uplift and empower the downtrodden.

Speaker 1: 8:47

The other thing that the numerology of six speaks to is the lovers. The lovers reside at number six in the major arcana, in the creation line. So when the lovers come forward again, go back and listen to that full, deep dive. But the lovers speak to how we join in a sacred, in a divine way, to something else. It is not about romantic love, just as the devil is not about addiction. We need to stop placing such finite narratives around these cards, because it's so much more than that. And when we try to box everything and shove all these narratives and all these specifics into this one little thing, we really do a detriment to the tarot. But in general the lovers speak to us, joining in a sacred way with something else, through the act of choice, through what we value, in a divine way we are moved into a better place when we join and connect to things that we love in our life. So again, it could be romantic love, it could be platonic love, it could be so many things.

Speaker 1: 9:57

And here, with the devil, we see where we have to look at these connections in new and old ways. We need to go into kind of the underbelly of ourself and of our situations, of our experiences, of our patterns, of our behaviors, of our choices, of our understandings, to see if those connections hold true, because the two lovers in or the two people in the lovers look like they're kind of the same people in the devil card, in the writer weight. When the devil comes forward, we have to first and foremost see and look with very clear, honest, dedicated eyes into a space that goes beyond just seeing to see, but seeing to understand. And we'll talk about that when we get to the Hebrew letter of the devil. But I just want to put this in there right now that in many ways the devil speaks to this sense of initiation and of new beginnings, but in deeper, more in-depth ways, with having embraced the change, the challenges, the freedoms, the independence and the curiosities that come with the fives within that sense of numerology. So I just wanted to throw that in for you. And just another brief note when we look again at the devil coming as the first card in the evolution line, this speaks to a form of liberation and the breaking of change. And we see that in how the layout unfolds, because the card that again comes before the devil is temperance, and temperance is an alchemizing of the spirit card.

Speaker 1: 11:46

When temperance comes up in a reading, it's speaking to the cycles of loss and release that lead to us stepping into this bigger part of ourselves, and again I have a full, deep dive on that. But as we're hinging from this loss to rebirth or from this destruction to this evolution, temperance comes in and says that if we allow ourselves to kind of just let go, surrender, be open and be vulnerable to the world, to spirit, to divinity, to god, to whatever your specific kind of name you want to put in there, that's going to help us allow this breaking of the chains to just keep happening because we're willing to now take it from the external world into a very internal place with the devil. So temperance is coming in and saying divinity is going to help us build into something bigger than what we were before the loss with, like the death card and the destruction line occurred. So if we let our spirit be the anchor, we are going to find that we can face things that we never thought we could because of the loss and the destruction that we've gone through. And we're going to use that as a way to hinge into the devil, to say our spirit is the anchor. Now I can really look internal and understand and find these chains and break them.

Speaker 1: 13:20

And then the devil falls, follows us to show us where these other chains have this hold on us. These chains could be anything, it does not matter. And the devil is there to show us that these are chains that some of them we have been holding and have been tethering us down for a long time. And the devil also shows us that when we break these chains, there is a liberation, but there's also a needed sense of of curiosity of where this chain was placed, like why was this chain placed on it. Was it something that we were told we had to be when we were little? Was it something from society? Was it something from our very selves, from a hard part in our life? You know, we need to have a curious mind when looking at these chains so that we don't place these chains on ourselves again, or at least that we try not to.

Speaker 1: 14:18

One of the other things with the devil is says that we must undo these chains and liberate ourselves so that we can continue on our journey towards our divine evolution. So we need to be willing to let this kind of pivotal hinging moment from the loss of the death card that goes into temperance, like I talked about, where there's that alchemizing of spirit. And now we're here at the devil, we're almost kind of in a sacred pause as well, because we have to kind of be willing to do some of this work, and it doesn't just happen with the devil. The first way that I read the devil is that it is about finding your autonomous center, finding that freedom in between your internal truth and outward experiences, relationships, manifestations, your external world. So the devil is here to invite you to find that truth within and to find that truth within between your internal truth and your external experiences, because we are always going to have some things that kind of tether us to certain situations. That's just kind of the way it is. But are those tethers, are those chains in alignment, like if we wanted to be, let's just say, a parent, and so we were willing to tether ourselves and kind of have that chain of parenthood because that was what mattered more to us than traveling the world. Let's say, I'm just throwing this out there. That is going to be a chain, but that is a chain that you willingly place and you don't regret, and even on the hard days you would make the same, you would make the same choice, because there are always going to be things like that.

Speaker 1: 16:07

But we want to see where the alignments are happening and we also want to see and this is going to be a symbol that we see a lot with the devil is where are we placing a mask or where do we need to reveal a part of ourselves that is more authentically us? Masks are going to show up a lot in the devil, because masks are a form of a chain, they're a facade, they're kind of a deception, because it hides something underneath and sometimes a mask is there to do the speaking for us or to portray an energy for us, but are we placing masks on ourselves because we want to be part of a group that wouldn't accept us? So we're pretending that we are this person, whatever it is we're doing. When the devil card comes forward and as we start to move into the third line in the sense of evolution, we have to have that deep liberation of letting go of these chains that we were carrying, that aren't in alignment and can we let our real self move in this world? And a lot of times that is where the fear comes in, because we want to not be vulnerable, we want to not be exposed, and yet the devil says this is where we have to be, because that is our autonomous center and we shouldn't hide that, even if there are others who don't enjoy it. That is not something that we should hide for the sake of another person.

Speaker 1: 17:39

I think this is where some of the edges start to come in with the devil, because for a lot of people, this is a hard choice to make, because the choice is do I liberate myself from a truth that is not mine or do I place this chain on me, so that in some ways my life is easier, so that in some ways, these other parts of me that are maybe afraid or don't want to have this, this challenge or this burden, that burden is gone, but now I'm wearing this chain, and this chain is tethering me to a situation or to a life that I didn't really want. I wouldn't have chosen this in another situation, in another form. An edge with the devil comes in the form of being the other, being something that doesn't fit into the normal respectable, into the wanted or into what is seen as maybe right and good, and that is where the devil becomes a liberator. Because we have to make this choice, knowing that that narrative is going to be there, but that that narrative is false. In society, the devil is seen as like a boogeyman or a scapegoat, and a scapegoat is. If we just look at the history here, it says the term scapegoat originates from a hebrew day of atonement ritual in leviticus, where one goat was sacrificed and another was symbolically burdened with the community sins and driven into the wilderness. Translated as a scapegoat by William Tyndale in 1530, and later a scapegoat, the word's meanings evolved to describe an individual or group unfairly blamed for the problems of others. This ancient practice of shifting blame is also explored in Psychology as Scapegoat theory, which explains how people misdirect their aggression and frustration onto innocent targets. And this is where the devil is so pivotal. When we actually take the time to look at the chains that we have placed on us and we remove those chains, it liberates us, it fre frees us because we are no longer accepting this narrative, like that narrative can still be said about us, but we're not accepting it as a truth, or we're not trying to play ball, we're not trying to get into this place and into this situation or into this group, like we are going to just live our truth, find our people. And it liberates us because then it removes other chains attached to it, like maybe shame or guilt or a fear of rejection, like it frees us from so many other things that could be placed on us. So just for example I just want to highlight this because it really is pivotal to kind of what we're talking about Patriarchy has made women the scapegoat for everything.

Speaker 1: 20:37

If a woman has a healthy sex life, then she's a slut, but if she's a virgin, then she's not fun. If she's too thin, she's not pretty. If she's too big, she's not pretty. If she's too thin, she's not pretty. If she's too big, she's not pretty. If she has kids too young, that's a problem. If she has kids too late, that's a problem. There's so many ways in which paper, in which patriarchy wants women to fit into this very tiny narrow box that she has to have kids, but she can't gain the baby weight or show any signs on her body that she ever was a mom. You know, like there's just no way of winning in this system.

Speaker 1: 21:14

And so women have been like all right, I'm out, bye, like I'm not going to do this because I can't win and I can't live a life that I want to live because you're just going to shame me for something else. If I'm perfect over here, I'm not perfect here and I'm not playing this game anymore, because women are not dating the way that they used to. They don't need men for many things mostly like financial and independence, wise, and the birth rates are dropping. Now, again, there's a male loneliness epidemic and all these men are wondering why women aren't choosing them. When they were subpar men and before that choice had to be made because women didn't have that independence. And now women are choosing that and willing to just have their friends and to have their life and to not have these people who would become burdens, and yet we're still wrong for it.

Speaker 1: 22:07

I bring that up in relation to the devil, because this narrative of what I just mentioned with patriarchy and women shows that you could have all the chains in the world on you and there's still going to be someone or a system or a structure or a part of society that says you're not tied down enough. So the devil comes in and says why are we doing this? Like they can try to place these chains on us. I'm not playing this game anymore With the devil. We have to be willing to not take things at face value. We have to be willing, as I said before, to sit with the self and see where the truth lies, because only when we sit in that truth we will see where the chain is and we will be able to break it.

Speaker 1: 22:57

This is not always easy work, though, because this could include some very deep shadow work. This could include work that is connected to the inner child, that brings up some painful memories. This could include looking at some of the hardest parts of our lives. This is not going to be the easiest thing. However, it's needed because we won't be able to understand and use that in our evolution if we don't have an understanding. So the next way that I read the devil is that we need to look into the underbelly. We need to see the cause and not the consequence of a situation, of a memory, of a pattern, whatever it is, to gain understanding and guidance for our transformation and for our evolution.

Speaker 1: 23:44

So again, we can't take things just at face value. We have to be willing to sit in this deepness of self and look at the truth, no matter how ugly it is, because only there are we going to find the source of where the chain is. To put it another way, if your car is making a really weird noise, you could simply, you know, turn up your radio so you don't hear the noise. You could open the windows, you could just pretend and block out the noise and say it's not there, but what you should be doing is having someone get under the hood and look at the car to see what's making that sound, because it could be nothing, but it could be something. That's going to be a huge problem and be really expensive if you don't have someone take a look at your car and working with the devil is the same thing and it shows up in the same way.

Speaker 1: 24:37

The way that we grow and evolve is not to dismiss our emotions, our memories, our patterns, our behaviors, our experiences or the shadow, or the most beautiful parts of us, like we need to be willing to see that the shadow could contain some very beautiful gifts. We need to recognize where our gifts and our shadow lie and not dismiss that. We evolve by looking at these things and shed light on them. We evolve by being willing to not dismiss but to call in, and many people do not want to do this because then they have to confront their own bullshit. They have to sit and say there's no more scapegoats to be had, because you've blamed everyone in the world for your problems and yet you're still unhappy. It's you, this is your bullshit, this is a you problem. But these type of people who don't want to do this work at all would rather blame everyone else and never take responsibility, even if this means every relationship in their life suffers, even if they never have any sort of meaningful connections. People like this do not care because they don't have the balls really to look at what is within the self and use that as a form of deeper guidance, of deeper evolution, and reclaim themselves in a wild way.

Speaker 1: 26:04

And the devil says that we have that power to evolve and to transform and to ultimately become in co-creation with our desires, our wants and our futures. It's not entirely in our control Nothing is but we see what we can bring to the table and we can't be in co-creation if we don't bring our own asses to our own tables, sit down and eat from the menu of truth. You know what I mean. Like we can't do any sort of co-creation if we're not willing to confront and look at what's going on beneath the surface. This is where people blame the devil as this horrible evil card, because he brings up these energies. It's not the devil's doing. The fear becomes heightened because we fear fear. I think a perfect example of this can be found in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Even though JK Rowling is an absolute cow, I still love these stories. I love the books, the movies. I think they're incredible and I want to share this one scene from the movie with you, and then we'll talk about it.

Speaker 2: 27:22

It would be obvious. I assumed it would take the shape of Lord Voldemort. I did think of Voldemort at first, but then I remembered that night on the train and the Dementor. Well, I'm very impressed. That suggests that what you fear the most is fear itself. This is very wise. Before I fainted, I heard something A woman Screaming. Our Dementors force us to relive our very worst memories. Our pain becomes their power. I think it was my mother the night she was murdered.

Speaker 1: 27:58

So here we see Harry, who, of course, has had some of the most traumatic things happen to him as a child, and the dementor that he faces is a personification of the most horrible, depressive, melancholic and lonely feelings that we can have as humans. They represent our worst nightmares, they represent our saddest moments, our most traumatic moments, and they bring that in a human to the surface and then they feed on that. As Professor Lupin said, and what Harry is saying here which is why I think it speaks so beautifully to the devil is that he could fear this wizard who is so evil and is trying to kill him and has been trying to kill him since he was a baby. And he actually doesn't fear that. He fears the feeling of being alone. He fears fear, and when he hears his mother screaming in her last moments, that's what he fears the most, because he feels hopeless and helpless and weak. He lives his most traumatic experiences that have left him alone in this world. But then we go on to see that when he actually starts to confront his worst moment with his happiest moments, that is where he gets his Patronus charm, which is a spell that acts as a shield for the Dementors, and his Patronus all Patronuses take the shape of an animal and Harry's Patronus is a spiritual, energetic embodiment of his father, with it being the stag, and so this highlights that even in Harry's darkest moments, not only do love and protection prevail, but that his traumatic moments, as traumatic as they are, are also filled with love. They're filled with a sense of connection. And when he starts to understand that he confronts and overpowers the Dementors and it's the same thing with the devil that once we start to actually look at these things that we hold within us and the dementor is just a personification of this trauma that harry obviously holds within when we start to look at that and we start to really confront it we're not trying to shove it away, we're not trying to it, we're really confronting it. For the first time we see how we actually can flip the narrative and we can gain a deeper understanding. And that is where the guidance and the transformation and the empowerment, the breaking of those chains can be found.

Speaker 1: 30:41

And the devil does not have to represent merely our deepest, darkest, most traumatic moments in life. The devil can represent everything that is good about us, that we have maybe placed into shadow, certain aspects of ourselves that we held as maybe a child or in another life that we have lost. The devil can represent some of the most beautiful aspects of us as well as some of the darkest, and it just kind of depends on when you work with this card, where and how you want to navigate that in that sense of introspection. But the devil is not only just darkness and sadness and trauma and depression. The devil is also some of the most beautiful parts of us and we just want to integrate all of that back into a more whole self and that is where the evolution starts to really take place.

Speaker 1: 31:31

The last way that I read the devil is that it speaks to a need or an action of harnessing your free will to create your path, honor your evolution and step into your wild reclamation. Help us step into a space of being able to co-create and take part in our future. Not everything is in our control and the devil knows this because of everything that we've gone through with the creation and the destruction line. When we step into the evolution line, the devil is not saying that everything is, you know, in our control. There are certain things that happen in life that we can't control, but we have much more control and much more power than we often give ourselves credit for. The devil says that you have everything you need to begin this wild reclamation. We have everything we need to harness our free will to remove those change and to step into this space that is co-creating a future that we want, and we've already done so much on our journey. So moving into the first um, so moving into the evolution line, like I said before, means that we're now becoming. We're not creating, we're not destroying, we're becoming and as we are becoming, we have to recognize where our sway, where, where our push, where our pull, where our influence leads us into a space of being able to become what we are seeking, what we need and what has been our calling, our purpose. What has been this energetic shift in us that keeps moving us down this path? That is what we are working with when we step into the devil and work with the devil card.

Speaker 1: 33:28

The way that we do this work, the way that we step into our evolution, wildly reclaim ourselves, co-create and take part in our future, harness our free will, is that we need to have this sense of that internal awakening and we can only get that when we sit with the self and do that internal exploration. We cannot let others or ego or systems decide how we engage with our world or how we show up in our lives. Only we can do that and we have to do that, even if it's from the people who love us most, they care about us the most, most, that are in our corner, the most we have to remove that chain. And I'm not saying remove the chain as in the attachment, I mean maybe a little bit in the attachment if it's like very codependent, but not the relationship and not the connection. But we need to recognize where we need to have a sense of that autonomy. We need to show up and speak that energy into existence for ourselves. We have to remove the chains that others, the past society or systems have placed on us, even if it's from a place of love. Again, it's not always just bad and doom and gloom, but we have to sit with that and see where we've let this happen or it was forced upon us, whatever it is, and we have to start to move from within. And we can only do that when we are willing to get really fucking real with our internal stuff and no one else can do that work for us.

Speaker 1: 35:03

So just to recap and again, you will find this on the blog and also if you would like to purchase my tarot key, I literally pull each key piece of each card from my tarot key. You can purchase it on my website. It's $12 for the main ways I read each of the cards, so it is absolutely a bang for your buck. It is linked in the show notes if you would like to purchase it. But the main invitations with the devil just to clarify and make this kind of concise again is finding your autonomous center, finding freedom in between your truth and your external or outward experiences, your relationships and or your manifestations. Looking into the underbelly of the cause, not the consequence, to gain an understanding and guidance for your transformation and then finally harnessing your free will to create your path, honor your evolution and wildly reclaim yourself. I also just want to mention a few little pieces of information around the devil, just to kind of help solidify some of this information I've been giving you.

Speaker 1: 36:12

The Hebrew letter excuse me, for the devil is ayin. It's a silent letter and it translates to eye or human eye. The letter means seeing without speaking and in this context with the devil, it speaks to seeing in a way that is watchful, seasoned to the depths, to gain understandings, both spiritually and physically all things we have just been talking about. And the letter also can translate or mean spring or fountain, and references the source of life, the ability to cry and pour forth, and a place of deeper mystery and connection to divinity. So I found this article and I think it's pretty helpful. I will have it linked in the show notes. It's from Hebrew Today and it says that the word is means sight, and so just from the name of this letter we can understand that it symbolizes the world of sight. However, it does not only refer to regular physical sight. According to the wisdom of the Kabbalah, however, it does not only refer to regular physical sight. According to the wisdom of the Kabbalah, through regular physical sight, we can reach an internal and spiritual form of sight.

Speaker 1: 37:15

Someone who has this letter in their name is a big-hearted person with a constant desire to help others. They identify and empathize with the distress of the unfortunate. They are people without an ego and all they want is to see that things are good and go well for others. Many of them become teachers or guides. They have a strong imagination and inner strength. In biblical and literary Hebrew, a spring, which is a Mayan, is also called an ayin, and if one looks at a spring from afar, it reflects the sky and appears as if it's an eye seeing the view. This teaches us about creativity and thinking outside the box.

Speaker 1: 37:54

The eye reflects our emotions. According to eastern wisdom, the eyes also reflect our physical and psychological health. In fact, there is an entire branch of Eastern medicine based on this concept. Yet, despite all the benefits of the eye, there are also detriments. The most prominent of them is that the eyes cause people to be jealous of others based on what they see. Therefore, those who have the letter in their name have to be careful of this.

Speaker 1: 38:26

So this represents this dual nature with the devil Again, that we have this sense of being able to really see. We have this ability to look inward, to have a more whole, a more all-encompassing form of sight, to more chains. If we feel a sense of jealousy or a sense of feeling unworthy, or a sense of greed or shame or any of these things that you know are deep within the psyche, that can hold us down. So we want to be mindful and that's where the devil has this edge. But it's also a very beautiful liberation as well. We also see this with the zodiac sign that is attached to the devil, which is Capricorn, and this says here Capricorns are known for being hardworking, disciplined and ambitious, possessing a practical and goal-oriented nature that drives them to achieve success. While they may seem serious and reserved, they are also intensely loyal and protective of their loved ones, showing deep affection through actions rather than words. But some key weaknesses can include stubbornness, pessimism, workaholism and a tendency to be inflexible, and I also read that some of the weaknesses can also be a tendency towards obsession, like we saw, unhealthy attachments and desire above everything else.

Speaker 1: 39:46

We also have a connection between the devil and Pan, the half-man, half-goat creature from the Greek pantheon, and it says here I just googled this quickly and it says that the connection between the Greek god, pan and the Christian devil stems from the historical process of demonization, where christianity reframed pagan deities, including the horned, half goat pan, to discourage their worship. Pan's wild, untamed nature and his association with instinctual energy, music and the natural world made his imagery a target for, for being incorporated into the devil's form, giving the devil a horned goat-like appearance that symbolized. And then it also says here that Pan often represented the archetype of the unconscious, because he was so primal and carnal and raw that, as we have started to become more evolved humans, the shadow side of the self, containing our hidden fears, our desire and some of our raw psychic material and some of our more primal, untamed wild natures, was repressed into the shadow because it was deemed inappropriate by modern society. So I think that again, that just shows that with the devil, a lot of the fear, a lot of the stigma that comes with the devil has its own chain, that there's this irony that when we work with the devil, we're working to remove chains that don't serve and we see how these chains have been placed on this archetype. And that can help us in reading this card, because it shows us that the liberation is removing narratives that don't serve. We need to be connected to our shadow, we need to be connected to this more primal nature within. We need to reclaim some of those things, to be more whole and integrated in the self.

Speaker 1: 41:50

So now let's move on to some symbolism, but for the sake of time I'm only gonna speak on a few of the cards. I do recommend going and looking at the blog post because you can see every single devil card from each deck that I own. But for the sake of time, it's just starting to get a little cumbersome because there's so many images to go through, so I'm only going to pick a few that I think really highlight some things that really speak to the devil. The first one is from the Ostara Tarot. It is the very first one that you'll see in the blog. This is my favorite depiction of the blog. It's just beautiful and it's actually the image that made me buy this deck way back in the blog. This is my favorite depiction of the blog. It's just a beautiful and it's actually the image that made me buy this deck way back in the day. But we see this bug-like skeletal creature dressed very handsomely and he has gathered and put all of these animals and these people in these different decorative jars, and this shows a sense of hoarding and coveting. What I love about this is that it asks us to consider this impulse that we have to hoard, to gather, to covet and to hold on to certain things in our life, and to question is this in our best interest? Should we be holding on to all of these things or should we let some of these things free. I love that depiction because it asks us to consider these questions and some of them may be quite hard, that there are things we want to hold on to but we just can't anymore if we want to evolve. The next one I want to highlight is the Shadowscapes tarot. It's about halfway down in the blog, on the right hand side, and in this image we see this pan-like creature with these huge, almost dragon, bat-like wings and it has horns and it's weaving this like spider web and it has the heart in the spider web and you even see these little fairies are starting to kind of get sucked into this pole, into this orbit. And he's standing on a little mound and there's like a bird coming. But then if we look beneath the mound we see this human. She's naked, she's exposed and she's very much in a pose of despair, of depression, of hopelessness. There's a chain around her wrist that leads to a lock. Locks and keys are going to be a symbol. You see a lot in devil depictions because again it shows that unlocking and breaking of chains. But if you look above her you see that the key to this lock is actually in the mouth of this jester. I find this symbolism to be absolutely brilliant. Because, on one hand, the jester in medieval courts was someone who held no power, they had no social standing whatsoever. But because they existed within the orbit of royal courts, but they didn't hold any power, they were able to do and get away with certain things like making fun of the king when other people would never dare say these things to the king. Like you could be killed because of some of the things you just said to this person. And here's a person with no social standing that's able to make fun and poke fun at the king and get away with it. So that shows a breaking of chains in that sense. What I also love about this depiction is that it also, to me, shows the power of humor that sometimes one of the best things we can do when we're in this state, like this woman is here, is bring some humor into it, and there's a need for a comical side. I mean honestly, just little side note here. When I was going through the grief after my cats, one of the only things that really helped me was George Carlin's stand-up comedies. I have his full set. He's my favorite comic and that was one of the only things that pulled me out of my grief and my deep pain was just laughing at some of the most absurd and funny jokes that he had to say. So I think that that's a beautiful reminder here with the devil, that sometimes the breaking of the chains in a certain sense is just finding a sense of humor in the situation. Sometimes we need to bring that in to break the chain of our emotions. And the last one that I want to mention is the Devil from the Spirit Animal Tarot. Next, image down when you scroll on the left hand side, and this is Goat Shadow, god of Liberation. This is an incredible tarot deck. I'm going to do a review on it, but if you are looking for some good tarot decks with a good guidebook, this deck is top-notch. But the goat represents the collective scapegoat, as we talked about, but also as an animal with the ability to traverse difficult terrain, the goat can also see what the natural and wild energies within that are helpful or the ones that are leading us astray, and again, that's a question we always need to ask ourselves. And the chain shows this sense of self-imposition. It's either a very heavy metal chain or a beautiful flower lei that symbolizes beauty, welcome goodwill. And when we are working with the devil, we are always going to be connected to certain things. To have no sense of attachment is very hard to do in this world. Not saying that it can't be done, but it's a very specific type of lifestyle. We want the chains that we put on ourselves to be the flower lays, not the metal ones. Like if you choose to be a parent, because that is something that you want more than anything in this world, that's a beautiful thing, and for you that would be the flower lay. For someone like me who does not want children, that would be the metal chain. And so we have to consider what chains we are placing on ourselves, and is it the flower lay or is it the metal chain? And how do we align most of our choices to more of that beauty and good fortune and goodwill? So those are the decks that I wanted to mention, but for the most part, many recurring symbols you will see within depictions of the devil will be chains, which are obvious symbolically, masks which represent that external persona but may also not entirely reflect or speak to an internal entity. Sometimes masks are needed and good, because they reveal an internal truth in a safe way, but sometimes it is also to conceal and to hide, and again, you just need to know when working with masks which which one is which, and then locks and keys, like we talked about. So I encourage you to look at your depictions of the devil and see what you see. I will be creating a chat on my Patreon that is free for everyone so you can contribute even if you're not a patron to Wolf Child Magic, to let us know what depictions you're working with and what you see in your decks. I'm now going to read my poem the Devil, from my book Major Arcana, a poetry collection. So I want to say thank you now to my patrons, so we end on that poetic note. So I want to say thank you to Deb Guy, bobby McDermott, lisa Zimmerman, nicole Smith, tracy Lanham, kim Hartnett, chris Rhee, miranda Snow, colleen Toohey, charlie Ruggles, shannon Konendyk and Makai Rose. Thank you all so much for your support in me and in Wolfchild Magic. It means the world. And now here is my poem, the Devil, from my book Major Arcana, a poetry collection the Devil. I fell into this heedless volcano birthing me into this strange place. Cut loose from earth's umbilical cord, my veins are fire. I am a child of the primordial dawn, able to see the temple of stacked mountains who breathe their miles with ease. This is where the gods know my name. This is where devotion is perilous, because even the mighty ones are mortal. These spirits can be cherished but never saved. One day they will become something else or nothing. So I run with the wild horses as they proclaim the distance laughable. Give them a real challenge. They taunt at the horizon. Here, the hunt and the health of the land are the deciders. Life and death speak the same language, their starved stories only fed by being retold again and again. So that I remember to let slip the seductive and beastly tremble, to shed the skin, so that I am new, to begin again. Thank you.