Divi-Nation--The Devil

The Devil is possibly foremost among the Difficult Cards. Whenever I get this card in a spread, I say, "Shite." Historically, this was the Quintessential Bad Card. If you got the Devil in a spread, you knew something bad was either coming your way, or was already happening and you just hadn't noticed it.

Now, we are all very PC, including the Tarot, and we don't talk about bad and good anymore. So often, a really terrible thing will give rise to something really good, and a really mean person will make us grow, so it's hard to pigeonhole people and events.

The traditional symbolic rendering of the Devil is a horned figure, with or without cloven hooves, carrying a pitchfork, who goes around saying "HAHAHAHAAHHAAAA!" like The Joker from Batman. It's a good comparison actually, because the devil is, if you will, rather ridiculous, at least in the popular conception. It is hard to imagine anyone worshiping a Satan that silly.

If we look at Christian tradition, on the other hand, the devil is Lucifer, Son of the Morning, God's brightest Angel, the "fallen" angel. No longer content to sit at God's right hand, Lucifer wanted to actually be God, and he was banished from the sight of God because of it. But I think that Lucifer wasn't banished, he just left of his own free will, because God's great gift to us is free will.

So if we think about the Devil in these terms, it makes more sense. The Devil is not something ludicrous and ugly, but rather something beautiful, and magnetic, that operates completely hidden from the light of God.

I think every woman believes that her ex is the Antichrist, and with good reason. Usually we have someone in our past who was completely self-absorbed, whom our friends begged us to dump, i.e. the guys I blogged about in October. And it seems like the more selfish and horrid they are, the more we love them. Guys do the same thing, always falling hard for the ho with the silicone tits who takes all their money to run off with a guy named Cooter she met at a strip club (a real story someone was just telling me).

And what is it about these people that is so attractive? Oftentimes, these people are physically attractive, although not more than nice people. Sometimes they look like complete pigs. It is the attraction of the Void, the irresistible pull of the Black Hole.

So what I'm getting at, in my incredibly verbose way, is the idea of the Devil as Lucifer, whose name means "light". The Irish tell of faery lights leading travelers astray into shadowy realms whence they return after many years and travails, or never.

When that card comes up, we should look, not for an overtly mean and bad person, but for something whose light is leading us astray, possibly blinding us, possibly intriguing us, and by astray I mean, further from ourselves.


When we love, grow, create, we are doing our bit.

When love turns to fear, creation is supplanted by consumption, and we cling to the Known Evil (in the form of a person, an idea, a way of life, or whatever) like limpets, rather than opening our arms to change, then what we get is spiritual stagnation.

Of course, stagnation does not stop life, it just breeds life forms that we don't necessarily want. The fish die and we get a pond full of algae, mold spores, and worms. Of course, we can say, "It's all good," like they do in Oakland, and we can feel very virtuous, but there is nothing virtuous about being out of control in our own lives. There is nothing wrong with wanting fish in your pond.

And this is where I disagree with my spiritualist friends of last week, who say, Just lie down, and wait for the good life to come. There is no guarantee that I can see that physical death will let us off the hook in any way. So all this lying around is not virtuous, it's just a waste of time.

Of course, there are times when you can't do anything, your hands are tied, and that's the Hanged Man energy, which we'll cover next time. But most of the time, there is something we can do. Most of the time, we do have some control, which is not a bad thing, even though I spent most of my 41 years thinking it was. Since my mom is a control freak, I decided I wouldn't be that person, so I ended up being the Anticontrol freak, which is just as controlling, actually, in a way.

Control is one of those very tricky things, like salt. Too much, and you ruin the dish; too little, and you ruin the dish. Like salt, control gets a very bad rap nowadays. But the truth is, salt is essential to life. The sea, whence we all came, is saline. Too much control will smother any life, love, or relationship; too little will let the good things in life float off like helium balloons.

And that's what happens with our thoughts, and our feelings, when we have the Devil energy in our lives, and we find the Devil card in a spread. It is a light that is actually darkness, a love that is really fear, a dissipation masquerading as creation.

In very concrete terms, and now I'm going to sound like Dear Abby, the Devil is, a lot of times, a person. It is the illusion of love. It is illusions about love. And we chase these faery lights to disaster. But people do this with jobs, with places, with families too. Each of us has an Achilles' Heel, a thing we're insecure about, and that's where the Devil energy takes root.

So when we get the Devil card, that's where we should look. What are my weaknesses, and who or what is playing on those weaknesses?