AUTHOR’S NOTE: Recent years have seen a trend in the tarot community to devalue or even neuter the negative implications found in traditionally difficult cards under the premise that “there are no bad cards.” Mary K. Greer once observed in an online conversation that this sanitizing isn’t entirely justified, and I agree.

The Devil is a perfect example. Many modern readers interpret it as offering abundant sensual stimulation at best (for example, an exciting and liberating week-end fling before returning to one’s buttoned-down routine), and at worst as fostering deviously attractive illusions that might degrade into delusions if we don’t look carefully beneath their surface, and the burden is on us to make the distinction when “things aren’t what they seem.”

I understand the Devil as representing a “slippery slope” in three descending phases: 1) the subversive temptation to try something we think we might like; 2) the bewitching seduction that pulls us ever closer into the eye of the whirlpool; and 3) the inevitable addiction that precludes escaping from the downward spiral. Apart from any religious aspersions (I’m about as far away from pious carping as a philosophical thinker can get), the Devil is simply “not a very nice guy.”

Stripping away all such nefarious intentions, Aleister Crowley viewed the message in this card as an intoxicating expression of the “fiery material energy of creation” with no moralizing baggage attached. (He once responded to an accusation of Satanism with “In order to be a Satanist one must first believe in Satan.”) To his credit, Crowley mostly “kept it in his pants” when discussing this card and – beyond a veiled allusion to procreation – didn’t stoop to his usual sexual innuendo.

His more transcendental description may be useful for accomplished metaphysicians who are able to penetrate the Devil’s glamorous (and often deceitful) exterior and extract that raw “creative energy in its most material form,” and for the visual artists and master artisans who know it instinctively, but the average person is more likely to be mislead by the alluring sheen of wickedness (or maybe just the “naughty thrill” and the chance to get away with something) that it displays and never see the “hook buried in the bait.”

I’m ambivalent about the Devil when it appears in a reading because I’m aware of both the heights and depths of its Capricorn correspondence. On one hand, I’m inspired by Crowley’s vision of “the goat leaping with lust upon the summits of the earth,” basking in the zenith of its physical prowess, while on the other I confront the unimaginative drone grubbing in the dirt, driven entirely by material incentives. For many seekers, the energy of the more rarefied symbolism would be much too hot to handle.

Consider the arch-demon in the historical image who wants to keep the imps (us) groveling at his feet and enslaved to their base appetites; that’s as good a definition as any for the unsavory side of this card. The advice would be to remain open to the creative boost the Devil delivers but wary of the centripetal pull of the “vortex.” In more prosaic terms, it would be best to avoid its mesmerizing “come-hither” stare and steer clear of its “too-good-to-be-true” inducement.