The Devil

Arcana

Major Arcana — one of the twenty-two

Number

XV — card 15 of the sequence

Place in the sequence

sixteenth of twenty-two

Reduces to

The Lovers (VI) — because 1 + 5 = 6

Upright

Bondage, attachment, habit, the shadow side

Reversed

Breaking free, reclaiming power, naming the hold

Listing position

card 16 of 78 as the deck is written out

Nothing on this page is calculated from your birth details or your name — the readings below are the traditional attributions for The Devil, written plainly. The one part of it that is arithmetic, and exact, is how often a card of this kind actually turns up; that has its own section further down.

What The Devil means

A bondage — often self-created. Name the habit, substance or dynamic holding you. The chain is looser than you think.

The Devil is numbered XV, card 15 of the twenty-two, and Major Arcana cards are read as the large theme of a stretch of life rather than as the day-to-day events the four suits describe. A Minor card puts one subject — the work, the feeling, the argument, the money — at a particular stage; The Devil names the chapter all of that is happening inside.

Its keyword line — bondage, attachment, habit, the shadow side — is the short form for a grid, not a second meaning. When The Devil lands beside two Minor cards, the usual reading is that it outranks them: they describe the events, The Devil describes what the events are for.

The Devil reversed

Breaking free, reclaiming power, naming the hold

Reversed, The Devil does not become its opposite. XV is the same chapter either way; the reversal turns it inward, or slows it, or points at the version of bondage that has gone wrong. On a chapter as large as XV that is a real difference in tone rather than a different card, which is why The Devil reversed is written here as breaking free, reclaiming power, naming the hold and not as the opposite of bondage.

Plenty of readers do not use reversals. Do that and The Devil keeps one meaning, and the cards around it decide whether the chapter it names is arriving well or badly.

Where The Devil sits in the sequence

The Devil stands at XV, between Temperance (XIV) and The Tower (XVI). Read as a sequence — and most readers do read it as one — the twenty-two run from a first step to a completion, so The Devil arrives after balance, moderation, patience, purpose and hands over to sudden change, upheaval, chaos, revelation.

The number XV

The Devil is numbered 15, and readers who reduce the Majors add the digits — 1 + 5 — which lands on The Lovers (VI). In that scheme The Devil is the worldly, complicated form of The Lovers: the same number underneath, with more life on top of it.

The Devil reaches the Minor Arcana only through its reduction: 15 reduces to 6, and 6 is the four Sixes. That is a longer chain than a single-digit Major has, and worth reading as one rather than as a direct correspondence.

Reading The Devil in a spread

A Major in a three-card spread usually reframes the other two rather than sitting level with them. The Devil in each position:

• First — the setting. The Devil as the theme already in place behind the question: bondage, attachment, habit, the shadow side.
• Second — the situation. XV as what the matter is actually about now, which generally outranks whatever the Minor cards beside it are describing.
• Third — the direction. The Devil as a chapter opening rather than an event: the position where a Major reads least like a prediction and most like a description of where things are heading.

In a love reading

The Devil describes the theme a relationship is inside rather than an event inside it — bondage, attachment, habit, the shadow side applied to two people. That is a broader claim than any Cups card makes, and a vaguer one, which is why XV usually wants the cards either side of it before it says anything useful.

In a career reading

On a work question The Devil answers about the direction rather than the task: not whether the report gets filed but whether the chapter you are filing it in is the one you meant to be in.XV on its own will not tell you what to do on Monday; read it with a Pentacles or Wands card beside it and that card supplies the practical half The Devil leaves out.

How often The Devil actually comes up

This is the part of a card page that can be checked, so it is worth stating exactly. Three cards drawn from seventy-eight means any named card — The Devil included — appears in one three-card spread in 26, or 3.8% of the time. No card in the deck is rarer than another, and any page telling you its own card is unusual to draw is wrong about arithmetic rather than about tarot.

• At least one of the twenty-two Major Arcana appears in 63.6% of three-card spreads. A "big card" showing up is the ordinary case, not a sign.

Reversals do not change any of that. Whether The Devil lands upright or reversed is a separate coin from whether it lands at all, which is worth remembering when a reversed card feels like it was aimed at you.

The full set of these figures, including what the most-feared cards actually add up to, is on the tarot page.

The Devil — common questions