Sith Tarot: The Devil, card 15

[Empress Palpatine]

Alena has kindly taken the trouble of transferring cards 1-14 and the intro to this new board. Many thanks. Some may have seen this card (card 15) on the old board, but unfortunately, it was lost. I will retype it from my longhand scrawl, so it should be pretty close to what I had before.

The 15th card in the Major Arcana is the most notorious and raises the most eyebrows in any reading. This card is "The Devil" and depicts a classic devil figure with horns and goat hoofs, even batwings on some images. He stands on a square pedestal to which two humans, a man and woman, are chained by the neck.

The classic Devil gets his looks from the Greek God Pan. Pan lived in the wild, outside with the critters because he was shunned by polite society. He was the god of wild nature, sexuality, and the fertility of nature. The other gods thought he was too distasteful and crude.

Everybody knows the Devil of the Bible. The way you likely heard it in Sunday school was this: A perfect God made a perfect world and a perfect heaven. A particular high angel named Lucifer decided to have it his own way and declare supremacy above God. God threw him out of heaven along with one third of the angels that had sided with him. He became the Devil, and the others with him became his host of demons. Adam and Eve were created sinless, but this Devil tricked them into eating the forbidden fruit, which caused their banishment from paradise.

But there is another version of this story, with a very different twist. Some Gnostics believed that the world (material plane) was made by a group of smaller gods rather than God. They were called "Archons," a group of selfish beast gods. They wanted a bunch of ignorant humans, biological droids. One of these Archons was the Devil, and he had his own idea. He told Adam and Eve to eat the fruit. He wanted them to know more. Now they could see the previously unseen Archons, and they hated them. The Archons retaliated by cursing the humans and the earth. (The source of this strange story is THE SECRETS OF THE TAROT by Barbara G. Walker, p. 113). (Also note: This story is very similar to an original Star Trek episode:The Return of the Archons).

Barbara Walker also points out how it compares to a similar Babylonian tale where power-greedy gods made humans to be their slaves, with no hope of enlightemment. Through the compassion of the Divine Mother, a savior is sent.

The Gnostics believed the conventional church had it all wrong. It was a case of mistaken identity. They were actually worshipping the wrong God (who was really the bad guy usurping the real God's throne).

The Gnostics' ideas got lost and forgotten. The conventional church prevailed historically. God was perfect and pure....

[Empress Palpatine]

...but here is the hitch: Isaiah 45:6,7:

"That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other, the One forming the light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these." (Yeah, go look it up. It is really in there!)

Barbara Walker says, "Whether the Devil was believed helpful to humans or not, to Christian theologians he was absolutely necessary. Christianity's basic dualism demanded a principle of evil to oppose the principle of good. Despite Isaiah's allegedly authoritative word, the church dared not make God responsible for evil. Even with the Devil to shoulder the blame, there arose a nasty paradox, not resolved to this day: if God wants evil to exist, he can't be good. If he doesn't want evil to exist but can't prevent it, he can't be God." (P. 114)

Christendom has been forever plagued by these contradictions. The ancient mystery schools and the religions of the far east have dealt better with the contradictions. To them, the Devil is a legitimate force in the universe. He is supposed to be there. He is part of the matrix. In the old sacred mysteries, there was a point where the initiate was to meet the Devil up close and personal. The Devil is just the modern name for the old gods of the underworld.

There are new religions that are revivals of old religions that restore the Devil back to his legitimate spot in the pantheon.

The Star Wars story also does this by saying that the Force has two sides, a Light Side and a Dark Side. The Dark Side plays the role of "Devil" in the Star Wars stories, except that they do not give it an image. The Force is understood to be formless, an energy which pemeates everywhere. The "pantheon," so to speak, are the characters that use the Force: the Jedi and the Sith.

To a Force-follower, this would be the number one Dark Side card representing all the attributes of the Dark Side, in particular, the Dark Side as expressed in the material plane.

The square platform that the Devil is standing on in most decks is symbolic of the material plane. The two people chained to it symbolize how we are all held captive by the material plane, which the Devil controls (the "god of this world"). The Devil has to be reckoned with because it is his world. He is in charge of all fleshly matters: such as the Darwinian Law of Survival of the Fittest and the Law of Neccessity. He controls fortune and riches (hence, the "deals with the Devil" in may stories). Some believe that he is the one who gives visions of the future on earth, a trait Emperor Palpatine was known for. Long life was associated with the Devil (like the snake who renews himself evertime he sheds his skin). In Star Wars, this trait of granting extended life was a speciality of the Sith (Darth Plagueis). The Devil is traditionally associated with lust (sexual desire). Star Wars maintains this association when it portrays the Jedi as celibate and Anakin somehow being "bad" for taking a wife.

[Empress Palpatine]

So what if you get this card in a reading?

First, take a deep breath! You are not going to hell. The Tarot Devil is just a symbol. It may be saying to look at your own Dark Side, the side that you may not admit you have. Perhaps some impulse in your unconscious is screaming at you, some lust, some desire, some fear or anger, some greed. It could be your animalistic lust for life, a desire to cut loose and party, get drunk or stoned. Go for the gusto. Perhaps it is time to be irreverant, to be the Devil's advocate, and have unconventional ideas. Turn the stuffy social order upside down.

It could mean the domination of matter over spirit. The circumstances of life are in the way. In most stories about the Sith, the Sith-to-be was under very oppressive circumstances, thereby making it impossible to achieve any sort of spiritual progress, even if that person was a Force-sensitive. Bad circumstances was enough to make Jedi not want such a person. They selected young children, untainted by sorrow or neccessity, as pure unblemished lambs to be trained in the ways of the Light Side. Anakin was nearly rejected because he was not an unspotted lamb suitable for their training.

The Sith, however, can take a Force-sensitive from any negative circumstance. Sith weild the Dark Side and have the power to maneuver the material plane with all its negativity more effectively.

This card could also refer to that forward thrusting destructive power weilded by Dark masters. It could be telling you that you need to tap into this power to survive or thrive as Darth Bane learned to do in the book DARTH BANE PATH OF DESTRUCTION by Drew Karpyshyn.

Whether this card refers to a lighter meaning like be irreverant, exuberant, spontaneous, or the life of the party or whether it means to tap into a deep dark power to annihilate an enemy or problem depends on the context of the reading.

Of course, it could also be telling you that you have gotten too drunk, stoned, crazy, or violent, etc. Again, this depends on the context of the reading.