Meaning
Smith's Devil is a horned figure with bat's wings and goat's legs squatting on a black block, an inverted pentagram on its forehead, one hand raised and the other holding a torch pointed at the ground. A naked man and woman, with small horns and tails, stand chained to the block, but the chains hang loose about their necks. Waite calls the figure the Dweller on the Threshold, the chain of material life, and the pair are, he says, as if Adam and Eve after the Fall: they could lift the chains off.
The Golden Dawn gave the card Ayin, a simple letter glossed as eye, and the sign Capricorn, and titled it the Lord of the Gates of Matter, the Child of the Forces of Time. On the order's tree it is path 26.
We read the card as what binds: appetite, habit, fear and the bargains a person makes with them, and the loose chain that could be lifted off. Waite's fortune-telling list for it runs from ravage and violence to fatality, and ends, in his words, with that which is predestined but is not for this reason evil; it is quoted below as history.
In the birth cards
The Devil belongs to Greer's sixth constellation, with the Lovers, 6. It is the Personality card of everyone whose total is 15, with the Lovers as Soul card, on 3.6 percent of the days from 1900 to 2030. A 15-6 reaches both cards of its constellation and so has no Hidden Factor in Greer's chart; the Devil is the Hidden Factor of a single 6 instead, on 7.6 percent of days.
As a natal-chart card the Devil is the Sun-sign card of Capricorn: the person in Figure 1 of the Tarot page has the Sun at the very end of Capricorn and so the Devil as Sun-sign card, beside the Four of Pentacles for their decan. As a year card it comes 10 times in the 201 years from 1900 to 2100 for a 15 June birthday.
History and names
The Marseille decks call it Le Diable, a winged devil on a pedestal with two small figures tied to it; Court de Gébelin's plate of 1781 shows him so. The finest of the Milanese sets of the 1450s, the Pierpont Morgan-Bergamo, has no Devil, as it has no Tower, and no one knows whether the two cards were lost or never painted.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Golden Dawn title (Book T)
- “The Lord of the Gates of Matter; the Child of the Forces of Time” sourced
- Waite's fortune-telling list (1911), upright
- “Ravage, violence, vehemence, extraordinary efforts, force, fatality; that which is predestined but is not for this reason evil”, quoted as history; Waite called such meanings artificial and arbitrary sourced
- Greer's name for the constellation
- Relatedness and Choice (1987, 2021) sourced
- Our line for the birth-card chain
- 15-6: Choosing love over fear our construction
- Sun-sign card
- For the Sun in Capricorn; also the Moon card and the Rising card for Capricorn sourced
- In the Visconti-Sforza cards
- Missing from the Pierpont Morgan-Bergamo set of about 1451; whether it was ever painted is unknown sourced
How the schools read it
- Game decks (15th to 18th century)
- Le Diable, a winged devil with two small chained figures; the card is missing from the finest Milanese set of the 1450s.
- Golden Dawn, Book T
- Ayin, the eye, a simple letter, and the sign Capricorn; path 26. Book T titles it the Lord of the Gates of Matter, the Child of the Forces of Time.
- Waite and Smith (1909 to 1911)
- The Dweller on the Threshold and the chain of material life; the man and woman are like Adam and Eve after the Fall, and their chains are loose.
- Mary K. Greer (1984 to 2021)
- In the constellation of 6 with the Lovers. The Personality card of a 15-6, a chain with no Hidden Factor, and the Hidden Factor of a single 6.
- EsoTerrier
- Read here as what binds: appetite, habit, fear and the bargains a person makes with them, and the loose chain that could be lifted off.
Claims about it
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The Devil warns of violence or a fated misfortune.
falseWhat the record shows: Those words are in Waite's fortune-telling list, which ends by saying the fated thing is not for that reason evil. We quote it as history.
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Ayin and Capricorn are the Devil's ancient correspondences.
disputedWhat the record shows: They are the Golden Dawn's, from about 1888.
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A person with the Devil as a birth card is prone to addiction.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: No study links birth cards to any trait or behaviour. The card is a theme to recognise.
