The Devil

Symbols

• Inverted PentagramThe five-pointed star of the elements reversed — matter placed above spirit, the weight settled on the floor of the world.+

  The upright pentagram shows spirit governing the four elements; inverted, spirit is cast to the single lowest point — not fallen, merely upside-down. Attachment itself is an order, only misplaced.

• Downward TorchA flame forced to burn downward — knowledge turned to light up the feet of appetite, not the stars above.+

  Waite gives it as 'a great flaming torch, inverted towards the earth'. In Éliphas Lévi's Baphomet (1856), a figure Waite knew as Lévi's translator, the torch burns upright between the horns; here it has moved to the hand and been turned down.

• Slack ChainsThe iron loops are wider than the necks. Some read that slack as a door never locked; the older reading calls it the very chain of material life. The shackle is on the body and in the mind; the key is long forgotten under the pillow.+

  Waite's account ends on a turn: the one exalted above them 'is not to be their master for ever. Even now, he is also a bondsman'. Both chains run to a single ring on the front of the altar he stands on.

• The Naked PairTradition reads this pair as the innocent two of the Lovers come back, now with small horns budding and tails lately sprung. The echo of a relationship, in changed air.+

  Waite calls them 'Adam and Eve after the Fall'. Their tails carry the two trees of The Lovers: the woman's ends in grapes, like the fruiting tree behind her there; the man's in a flame, like the burning tree behind him.

• Bat WingsBird wings belong to sky; the bat's belong to night. Not a fall from heaven — a kingdom self-built in an underground cave.+

  Waite gives him 'wings like those of a bat'. The pairing is old: Dante's Lucifer, frozen at the bottom of Hell, has wings with 'no feathers', fashioned like a bat's (Inferno XXXIV) — the opposite of the feathered wings of the deck's angels.

• The Black AltarThe square altar — matter's four elements at their most unyielding. What is enshrined on it is not a god, but the creed of possession.+

  Waite calls it an altar, but Smith draws a bare black block against an equally black ground. Nothing is offered on it; the only thing set upon it is the figure himself, perched on top.

• Goat Head and HornsA goat's head with great horns on a half-human body — Waite's 'Horned Goat of Mendes'.+

  Mendes was a city of the Nile Delta whose people, Herodotus writes, held goats sacred. The 'Goat of Mendes' entered occultism through Éliphas Lévi, who in 1856 gave that name to his winged, goat-headed Baphomet.

• The Mercury GlyphAt the pit of the stomach, the sign of Mercury — crescent, circle and cross stacked into one mark.+

  Waite places 'the sign of Mercury' at 'the pit of the stomach'. Lévi's Baphomet carries Mercury's emblem lower, as a caduceus at the loins; this card raises it to the belly and reduces it to the planet's sign.

Story

This picture is built in tiers. High in the centre the horned figure is perched over everything, wings spread wide enough to close off the top of the card like a roof; below him, at the foot of the altar, two small naked figures stand one on each side. The eye drops from his face to theirs and then has nowhere left to go: no horizon, no sky, no ground running into the distance, only solid black pressing in from every side. Nobody struggles. The chains hang, the hands stay still, and the scene has the airless calm of a room no one has tried to leave.

Correspondences

Shadow

Related Cards

The Lovers

The Tower

Strength

Combinations with this card