15 - The Devil Tarot Card

The Devil is tarot card number 15, although it is the 16^th card of the Major Arcana because the 1^st of the 22 Major Arcana cards is number 0 (The Fool).

In common with some other cards of the major arcana of the tarot, such as Death, The Devil, and The Tower, The Devil tarot card is sometimes perceived in negative terms. This is not surprising because the word 'devil' does have negative connotations for many people. However, this tarot card carries a valuable specific message for the sitter.

The Devil tarot card represents the ways in which we sometimes imprison ourselves (or 'chain' ourselves) by or own attitudes and desires. This card is therefore concerned with ourselves versus the 'shadow' side of ourselves, and our concious or unconcious self-delusions and self-entrapments. Perhaps because this card is concerned with opposites within ourselves, it often depicts a male and female couple (as, for example, in the Rider Waite and Robin Wood tarot decks).

In some decks The Devil tarot card, that is card number 15 of the major arcana, is known as 'Chains' rather than 'The Devil'. See for example this card in the creative Celtic Dragons deck.

Some words and phrases associated with The Devil tarot card include:

Imprisonment
Self-delusion
Hidden facets (of one's own personality)
Bondage
Darkness
Chaos

Note: The image of this tarot card shown on the right (above-right) is from an early French tarot deck that has been made available for general use via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. This shows a distinctly different style of illustration from that of modern tarot decks but is of historical and artistic interest.

The Gilded Tarot (Book and Tarot Deck Set)

More about the Major Arcana

The cards of the Major Arcana are widely considered to be the most powerful cards in the Tarot Deck. The 22 cards of the Major Arcana tell a complete story when arranged in upright and numerical order (beginning with 0 - The Fool then progressing through the sequence of Major Arcana cards until 21 - The World).
This is a story of personal development and enlightenment that is sometimes referred to as "The Fool's Journey".

Some texts also include meanings for "reversed cards". These are for the situation in which the cards are shuffled in both order and orientation. The theoretical advantage to this is that it effectively doubles the number of possible "cards" in the deck from 78 to 156. However, in terms of the calculation of obtaining results according to chance alone, it is not a simple mathematical doubling because once a card has been drawn it cannot be drawn again in the opposite orientation in the same reading.

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