The Devil
The Devil is card 15 of the Major Arcana, the card of attachment. Readers traditionally take it as temptation, restriction and the habits or bonds that feel impossible to break but often are not.
- Major Arcana
- Card 15
- Golden Dawn
- Capricorn
- Upright
- attachment, temptation, restriction
- Reversed
- release, breaking free, taking back control
Upright
Chains around two necks make the card look grim, yet readers often point out that the chains are loose. The card is read as attachment: to a habit, a craving, a relationship or material things. Its lesson is that the grip is often more voluntary than it looks.
Reversed
Breaking free is the common reading upside down. Readers see a person noticing what holds them and starting to loosen it: a habit dropped, a pattern named, control taken back. It can also point to a first honest look at an attachment.
In love and at work
Intense attraction goes with this card in love readings, and so do dynamics that feel binding, such as jealousy or dependence. At work, readers see ambition that has become a trap, or a job kept only for what it pays.
In the picture
A horned, bat-winged figure crouches on a dark pedestal, one hand raised and the other holding a lowered torch. A naked man and woman stand chained to the pedestal, each with small horns and a tail. The Golden Dawn gave the card to Capricorn.
In a Caelumia profile
When The Devil comes up upright in a Caelumia reading, it counts toward these themes for that day, alongside the rest of the profile: Emotional depth, Ambition, Spontaneity.
Sources
- A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910). Waite's own guide to the deck he designed with Pamela Colman Smith, with each card's divinatory meanings.
- Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Book T: The Tarot (1890s, published by Israel Regardie in The Golden Dawn (1937 to 1940)). The source of the planetary, zodiac and elemental attributions of the cards.
Updated September 28, 2026.
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