The Devil

Upright

The figures are chained, and the chains are loose. The figures could lift them off over their heads and walk out, and they are not doing it. That's the card. Not evil — attachment. The thing you keep choosing while describing yourself as trapped by it. The job, the person, the substance, the story about yourself you're weirdly loyal to. He has no power that isn't given to him. That's not a comfort, by the way. It's worse.

Reversed

Either seeing the chain clearly for the first time — which is the beginning of the way out — or sinking further in and getting sophisticated about justifying it.

Its correspondence

Capricorn — ambition, structure, the long climb. Which is a very pointed choice, because the Devil is what ambition becomes when it forgets what it was for. The same discipline that builds a life will also keep you chained to one you've outgrown.

How it's usually misread

Not a card about sin, and not about a literal devil. It's a card about appetite and what you've agreed to trade for it.

Knowing the card isn't reading it

Every entry on this site is free, and always will be — meanings are the easy half. The hard half is what a card does in a position, next to another card, for a real question. Learn to Read is the lessons for that, plus a practice partner that critiques your interpretations — $111, once.

Or read this card in your hand: the deck is all 78 drawn the way you see it above.