15-The Devil – Upright Rider Waite Deck

Your Chosen Card – The Devil Upright Rider Waite Deck

When upright, the Devil suggests that you have an opportunity to pursue activities that provide intense pleasure and satisfaction. This card often appears when we are contemplating a project requiring an almost obsessional devotion to achieve a material ambition. The Devil cautions us to maintain balance in our lives as we eagerly pursue this goal and not to allow excessive attachment to material temptations to lead us astray.

Unfortunately, the Devil card has become linked to views of dour theologians who believe that bodily pleasure is sinful in the eyes of the deity who ironically created the human body with all its capacity for enjoyment. The Devil card teaches us that seeking pleasure in life is perfectly acceptable, so long as it is done with moderation (which is why Temperance, card XIV, precedes card XV, the Devil). When this card appears in a reading, it’s time to lighten up and delight in activities that you may have avoided because of a rigid sense of obligation or morality. The Devil whispers in your ear: ‘If it feels good, do it.’ Thus, if there is a cherished worldly ambition you have held back from pursing, now is the time to go for it. The Devil simply cautions you to maintain a spiritual perspective so that you can avoid becoming ensnared by your material ambitions and adopt a twisted view of the world. Along these lines, a recent survey of a thousand parents in the UK found that despite the popular notion that money, professional success, and material possessions are essential for a happy life, 95 percent of them stated that the key to happiness lies in ‘spending quality family time together.’ 39

Keywords Upright: Loosening the ties that bind, breaking free of rigid morality, enjoyable material attachments, making healthy choices, having fun, enjoying sex, confronting temptation, delighting in what gives you pleasure, adopting a spiritual perspective, confronting one’s inner demons, casting off the chains of religious dogmatism, leading the life that you desire, intense devotion to a worldly ambition.

Key XV: The Devil (the god Pan)
Myths/Archetypes: Pan, the sex-crazed goat-legged god of the shepherds. Bacchanalia. Adam and Eve. Baphomet. Cernunnos. Lucifer. Faust. King Midas. Alexander the Great. Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies. The religiously obsessed suicide bomber.
Dates of Capricorn: 21 December–19 January (tropical); 14 January–12 February (sidereal)
Astrology: Capricorn, the Mountain or Sea Goat (an Earth sign ruled by Saturn)
Numerology: 6 (Lovers) = 1 + 5 (Devil)

Rider Waite: Ravage, violence, vehemence, extraordinary efforts, force, fatality; that which is predestined but is not for this reason evil; (R) evil fatality, weakness, pettiness, blindness.

When The Devil is upright you can pretty much take it that life is going well but that’s when life takes us by surprise.  If The Devil is unclear it may help to choose a card from the Major Arcana to provide more insight into what it is The Devil is trying to tell you.  If you had a particular issue in  mind, or want to seek clarification on something else, you can also choose again to get more guidance.

This chosen card is part of your upright card reading for The Devil using cards from the Rider Waite Tarot Deck. You will find many more tarot pages that will be of great help if you need tarot card meanings. Use the search at the bottom of the page. We have some amazing tarot books for you to browse. Please see below.


Here are some snippets from a few of my favorite books

Complete Book of Tarot
Book Details
Complete Book of Tarot: Tarot expert Paul Huson wrote a book called The Devil’s Picture book, so named because during unenlightened times the divinatory power of the cards was attributed to Satan. The Devil card sometimes frightens readers from a strongly religious upbringing. Most tarot readers view this card as a warning to avoid becoming a slave to materialistic desires, such as the lust for fame, power, sex, pleasure, wealth, or self-aggrandizement. On the positive side, this card can represent the determination to accomplish a valued goal in the material world. With the Devil card, the tarot is suggesting that it can help us to explore our most primitive desires and confront the shadow side of our personalities. Carl Jung would be very pleased with this advice.

Tarot Books

Creative Tarot: But by staking out their radical position, they nurtured their extreme opposite’s position, too. That sense of magic and wonder had answered a call in the human soul, and so it could not be discarded so quickly. New systems of belief, which put the mystery at the very heart of its teachings, began to develop. The cults themselves might have disappeared by now, but much of what they revived interest in, from tarot to astrology to meditation, can be found in contemporary culture with the rise of Wicca and other pagan religions and other systems of (I mean this affectionately) irrational belief.

Complete Book of Tarot: Fact 3: The tarot is simply a tool that can help us to clarify our thinking. It’s up to us whether or not we use the cards. Some people find the tarot helpful, others do not. Occultist Hajo Banzhaf has cautioned that tarot is a good servant but a bad master. We should consult the tarot only if we find it helpful.

  • Do get in touch if you looked for The Devil and we don’t have it listed. We would be more than happy to source the information for you. We hope you visit again for more online tarot information!

Complete Book of Tarot: Fact 3: The tarot is simply a tool that can help us to clarify our thinking. It’s up to us whether or not we use the cards. Some people find the tarot helpful, others do not. Occultist Hajo Banzhaf has cautioned that tarot is a good servant but a bad master. We should consult the tarot only if we find it helpful.