Illustrator Boris Artzybasheff packed his artwork with sensuous, beguiling distortions of the human animus. In these galleries you'll glimpse oddities that mirror and mock our whims and desires with an unrelenting accuracy-- perfect for the Devil card!
Though it's another of those that tends to inspire dread during readings, The Devil represents a natural phase of humanity just like all the other cards... so no need to keep crossing yourself. Remember, just as diagnosis is the first step toward recovery from disease, seeing dangerous illusions for what they are is the first step to being able to see past them. When people say "better the devil you know than the devil you don't," this is what they mean.
"What if this life is all there is?" The Devil asks. If there's nothing else to look forward to, suddenly the utmost importance is placed on our time in this world, and we begin bargaining with ourselves (and with each other) to make sure we leave no stone in our fears and desires unturned. Regardless of your views on death or what comes after, you must surely agree that it's probably not that simple-- and yet there are times when we gladly wander into these tempting illusions, even actively weave them into our identity.
Think of carnal and material obsessions as a vast city that most of us visit (for some it's a daily commute!) and some of us even live in. The longer you stay, the more you succumb to its alluring distractions, and the harder it is to remember that there was ever anything else; the city grows and grows around you until it blots out the recollection of any other way of life. By the time it's no fun anymore, we're wandering through the maze like amnesiacs, blaming everyone else for our condition, and too weak to change ourselves back. At that point it seems easier to just wait for some immense catastrophe like an asteroid to smash the city out from under us, rather than just get up and leave. This card gently invites you to evaluate the reality that your current values have built up around you. What happens after that is up to you.
You tell yourself: I'll be gone
To some other land, some other sea,
To a city lovelier than this
Could ever have been or hoped to be--
Where every step now tightens the noose:
A heart in a body buried and out of use:
How long, how long must I be here
Confined among these dreary purlieus
Of the common mind? Wherever now I look
Black ruins of my life rise into view.
So many years have I been here
Spending and squandering, and nothing gained.
There's no new land, my friend, no
New sea; for the city will follow you,
In the same streets you'll wander endlessly,
The same mental suburbs slip from youth to age,
In the same house go white at last--
The city is a cage.
No other places, always this
Your earthly landfall, and no ship exists
To take you from yourself. Ah! don't you see
Just as you've ruined your life in this
One plot of ground, you've ruined its worth
Everywhere now-- over the whole earth?
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