FAQ — The Devil

Short answer (validated yes/no table): YES, you will be enlightened.

The Devil is not primarily a figure to fight: it is a fire to steal. The force it embodies — instinct, desire, attachment to matter — is neither good nor bad in itself. What distinguishes the two bound figures from the great figure that dominates them is not the nature of that force, but the relationship one has with it. Endured passively, it imprisons; understood and passed through, it becomes the very instrument of transformation.

This figure directly quotes the Baphomet drawn by Éliphas Lévi in 1856, itself inspired by The Devil of the Tarot de Marseille. The five-pointed star on its forehead, point upwards, is connected with it as a reading of occult wisdom — deliberately distinct from the inverted pentagram associated with modern Satanic imagery, which is much later than Lévi's drawing.

They remind us that no hold over us is a permanent state: what closes today opens again tomorrow. The Devil shows a phase, a breath — not a sentence.

Because nothing in this card truly prevents them from leaving except the idea that they cannot. The bond, rendered as a rope and engraved medallion, is conceived as a pact or commitment rather than a punitive chain — the two figures could untie it, but they do not yet see that.

The winged staff entwined by two snakes, a symbol of the healing art: a sign that the same instinctive force that can enslave can also, when turned around, become an engine of transmutation and healing.

This pedestal superimposes the two forms that the canon separately associates with The Devil — the sphere of the Tarot de Marseille and the cube of the Rider-Waite-Smith — rather than choosing between them.

A card with a double reading. It may indicate a hold that has been recognised or remains unnoticed — a dependency, an attachment, a fear dictating more choices than one would care to admit — but it can also point, more positively, to a powerful life energy to channel rather than fear.

It often evokes a first gesture of liberation — becoming aware of the bond even before it is undone — or, conversely, a temporary return to a hold one thought had been overcome.

No, not entirely. The Tarot de Marseille places a simple pentagram on the figure's head, without a marked orientation; the Rider-Waite-Smith inverts it, point downwards. The DAL chooses a third path, faithful to Lévi's original drawing: one point upwards, read as light and occult wisdom rather than as an inverted symbol.