Excerpt from Dark Days Tarot Guidebook by Emily Mundy:
XV. The Devil
You wear a mask you’ve made yourself. The Devil (an inner force inside us all) masterfully deceives you. He easily drowns you in the deep, grim swamp of your fears and addictions. He says, “You are bound to impulse. You have no control.” But you do have control—the Devil is you, all along. Bondage to any form of reality occurs when we don’t refine our use of personality to serve our higher nature. Energy follows thought; it expands through power and love, not in the shaming of the self nor in the rejection of your own true nature. You, then, are the master of The Devil deep inside; you can remove the mask you’ve made at any time.
Suggested prompts:
upright: bondage; self-defeat in self-deception
right: the struggle between limitation and freedom
left: the right use of will
reversed: breaking free; power reclaimed