The Devil as advice

Part I of a series on the symbolism of the Tarot

Quod est superius est sicut quod inferius, et quod inferius est sicut quod est superius.

As above, so below; and as above, as below.

– The Emerald Tablet, Hermes Trismegistus.

‘As above, so below’ is a now ubiquitous phrase in spiritual circles. It was first written in the foundational text of alchemy, The Emerald Tablet of the Thrice-Great Hermes, between 200 and 800 AD. The verse posits that the microcosm resembles the macrocosm; that “as in heaven, so on earth” as Blavatsky, the founder of theosophy, summarised. What we see and experience in this plane of existence reveals some of the truth of the divine.

The phrase has come to be associated with manifestation. Manifestation practice takes its premise that the First Principle, the All, Source or GOD creates the universe mentally in a similar way that we create mental images. If all is mind, mind mastery can help us create our reality.

As above

The Magician tarot card is closely associated with this axiom. He wears the white of the acolyte (a novice assistant to a priest) and a red robe representing skill and mastery, like the Hierophant (a card that’s also known as the Pope). Signifying both innocence and experience, he represents the beginning of a journey and its culmination. The Magician is a one-man stand-in for the Red King and the White Queen, who are the masculine sun and the feminine moon. Around his waist is an ouroboros, representing the unity of all things within infinity, as time endlessly reoccurs. The Magician’s clothing indicates that he is a fused union of opposites and so is likened to an androgyne. Androgyny was perceived by the medieval Alchemist as the ideal divine state, only achieved at the culmination of the magnus opus, the Alchemist’s great work.

On the table in front of the Magician are the four suits of the Minor Arcana: a cup, symbolising water; a sword, symbolising air; a pentacle, symbolising earth; and a wand, symbolising fire. This selection of objects suggests that he has mastery over the archetypal elements.

As the first card in the deck, the Magician further symbolises infinite potential. From Pythagoras onwards, numerologists have interpreted the number one as representing unity and the origin of all, as all numbers can be generated from one by adding one to it, again and again, and again. Above the Magician’s head is a hovering infinity symbol, representing the infinite capacities of the mind and ergo the individual.

The Magician’s arms gesture toward heaven and earth, demonstrating that as it is above, so it is below. His wand pointing toward the heavens indicates that this is the origin of his power.

The Magician is an Alchemist. He performs rites and actions that aim to purify, mature and perfect to liberate the spirit which is concealed or imprisoned within matter. Alchemists undergo psychological and spiritual transformations which transmute the lead of an insensible human life into the gold of an awakened divine being. Through engagement with reality through prayer, theurgy, and magic, the Magician’s inner world is reconstituted closer to Godliness.

To draw the Magician in a Tarot read is to become aware of our own infinite potential and capacity for transformation. The Magician advises the querent that they can reconstitute their reality according to their will, but to do so requires a conscious process of mastery over their internal world. The Magician is an overwhelmingly positive card that indicates that the querent has the capacity to fulfil their spiritual potential.

So below

If the Magician represents the conscious mind’s ability to positively reconstitute our reality from the inside out, the Devil indicates the opposite. The Devil’s arms are held in a diagonal like the Magician, but while the Magician’s wand raised to the heavens indicates his power comes from above, the Devil’s lit torch points downwards. The inversion implicates a corruption of the principle of “as above, so below”. Here, what’s below can impact what’s above. The Devil suggests that the lesser can influence the greater.

In Christian cosmology, the devils and demons of Hell are the lowest-ranked of all beings in the universal hierarchy. Devils cannot receive God’s grace because lack the capacity to repent, whereas humans can sin, repent and be forgiven, again and again.

Despite their status as the lowest of the low, devils have had a profound impact on this reality. It was the Devil disguised as a serpent who enticed Eve in her state of innocence toward sin by suggesting that eating from the Tree of Knowledge would make her and Adam “as Gods”. We can understand this to mean Godlike in a Luciferian or Faustian sense: to imitate Him by desiring to make ourselves equal to Him contra to the Will, rather than referring to theosis in the Christian or Platonic sense as divinisation through love of our original image and Creator.

Before original sin, Adam and Eve in their state of innocence were “Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall” (Book III, 96–99, Paradise Lost). Most Christian denominations accept that humans retain the capacity to ascend or descend through free will, and the principle is fundamental to Western esotericism.

Sufficient to stand

In Pico della Mirandola’s 1486 work Oration on the Dignity of Man, a curriculum which delineates how the human soul can achieve mystical union with God, God describes human nature to Adam. In awarding human’s free will, Mirandola’s God (the God of the mystic) has distinguished the human soul from those of his other creations:

The nature of all other beings is limited and constrained within the bounds of laws prescribed by Us. Thou, constrained by no limits, in accordance with thine own free will, in whose hand We have placed thee, shalt ordain for thyself the limits of thy nature… We have made thee neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with freedom of choice and with honour, as though the maker and moulder of thyself, thou mayest fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt prefer. Thou shalt have the power to degenerate into the lower forms of life, which are brutish. Thou shalt have the power, out of thy soul's judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms, which are divine.

Mirandola goes on to say that humans may be reborn as angels on a higher plane through ascent. Ascent requires purification of the irrational soul (through moderation of emotions and appetites), contemplation of the divinity of all beings, and practices of piety and prayer. This will lead to henôsis; unity with God.

Mystical union with God is a process of conjoining with an indivisible unity to become inseparable from Him. The classical conception of henôsis is analogous to Jung’s process of individuation, whereby one draws toward contact with the principle of psychic unity, “the God image within”, through confronting the unconscious.

Late Platonist philosopher Porphyry wrote in his letter to his wife Marcella that to ascend to the mystical union, one must first ascend “into oneself… You should collect and combine into one the thoughts implanted within you, endeavouring to isolate those that are confused, and to drag to light those that are enveloped in darkness.” Porphryr’s advice is Jungian in that he is advocating expanding conscious awareness to incorporate the shadows of the unconscious.

Integrating unconscious content into consciousness is one step on the ladder of self-mastery, which may culminate with the human soul’s perfection and union with the divine. That union is God’s goal for humanity, according to Christianity, and is the reason for the world’s creation in Egyptian solar religions, as this world is a theurgic theatre for the divine Eye to observe human ascent.

Free to fall

If we conceive of God as the highest conceivable Good, the Devil is the antagonist of God’s plan for humanity’s universal salvation. The Devil is the evil one, who transpires to tempt humans toward sin as he himself cannot incarnate in this temporal realm, nor can receive grace. Instead, The Devil tempts from the shadows.

But his evil is lodged inside human nature itself and has been since humanity’s fall from grace. Today, we call our most harmful injuries, compulsions, and obsessions our ‘demons’. These devils lie in our unconscious, and while concealed from conscious awareness, they impact our behaviour, generating compulsions and passions which go against our highest good, fuelling drives toward aggression, trauma repetition and danger that strain our relationships and jeopardise our ability to function.

Regardless of anyone’s personal investment in the myths and symbols of Western religion, the Devil’s role in Christian theology as the hidden tempter speaks of our relation to our own psychology. The Devil is a disavowed antagonist, who, while unable to be embodied, still exerts a powerful influence on the trajectory of our lives by enticing us toward the moral corruption of sin. When the Devil card appears as advice, we can take this card to represent that something hidden from us is working against our highest good.

The likelihood is that this Devil is a personal demon, dwelling in the shadow of the unconscious. Like any shadow of the unconscious, our reluctance to accept this demon means that it is often projected onto others. Our avoidance becomes theirs; our fear of our own vulnerability becomes revulsion at another’s. However, the card suggests that the querent can free themselves from the Devil’s clutches by recognising his influence. The querent is like the Adam and Eve figures on the card: sufficient to stand and free to fall. The chains around their necks are loose and can simply be slipped off; the couple can exercise their free will to free themselves from the Devil’s clutches. However, they currently lack the will to do so.

Adam and Eve stand apart from each other on this card, as they do in The Lovers. The division of the masculine and feminine can implicate a divided, insensible psychology, just as the divine androgyny of the Magician indicates spiritual maturity. Here, the Devil is positioned between the two figures, indicating that this demon is furthering division and stopping the querent from achieving psychic unity. The figures of Adam and Eve in the Lovers card suggest a choice must be made which will have long-lasting ramifications. Their presence on the Devil card likely implicates the same but indicates that one choice will lead to our betterment and the other to our degradation.

The Devil’s chains are the bonds of the querent’s worse impulses, which could be those of addiction, obsession, and dependence. If the Devil appears in the advice position, it is better interpreted as a warning: be aware of the threat that the lesser poses to the greater, the lower to the higher, and the irrational to the rational.

As the Devil was instrumental in separating humans from their union with God in innocence, our demons can further divide us from our God-self, which is the seat of the divine within. The Magician’s symbolic opposition to the Devil indicates that it is his energy which can loosen the Devil’s snare. He symbolises the transformative potential of human will when it’s directed toward the highest good.

As the Alchemist transforms lead into gold, a Magician among us can become conscious of unconscious content and achieve psychic integration, hence locating the God-image within. This could be the beginning of self-mastery or henôsis. The process necessitates escaping the shackles of any personal Demons and acknowledging their influence. The Devil as advice is a prompt for the querent to recognise and overcome the worst of their unconscious impulses before the querent is entirely at their devil’s mercy.