What does The Devil mean reversed?

The Thoth Tarot is traditionally read without reversed cards: the reader judges from the cards around it whether a card is well or ill dignified. This is its ill-dignified or blocked reading: Bonds that begin to loosen, or dependences that are denied; you need to look squarely at what you fear.

What are the Kabbalah and astrology correspondences of The Devil?

In the Golden Dawn system The Devil corresponds to the Hebrew letter Ayin, path 26 of the Tree of Life between Tiphareth and Hod, the element Earth and Capricorn in astrology.

Thoth Tarot · Major Arcana

The Devil

creative energy · matter · ambition · bondage · desire

A reflective starting point

What is The Devil asking you to look at?

Meaning changes with the position, the surrounding cards and your question. Take what follows as a language, not a verdict.

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Upright

Powerful creative energy and strong ambition: recognise the forces that move you and use them consciously.

At first sight

Material force, ambition, desire, bonds and temptations. It points to situations of dependence, but also to a powerful creative and sexual drive.

Within you

Your relationship with your own instincts and shadows: what you fear or desire until it dominates you, or which, once acknowledged, becomes strength.

On the path

Path 26 from Tiphareth to Hod, the letter Ayin (the eye, 70) and Capricorn, the cardinal earth of Saturn in which Mars is exalted: generative energy in its most earthly expression. The eye that sees the divine even in the lowest and the darkest.

The shadow

Ill-dignified, it signals obsession, dependence, blind materialism, exploitation of yourself or others.

Reversed

In the Thoth tradition a reversed card is read through its dignity with the neighbouring cards; this is its shadow side.

Bonds that begin to loosen, or dependences that are denied; you need to look squarely at what you fear.

In love, work and spirit

Love. Magnetic attraction, intense sexuality; possible dynamics of dependence or power.

Work. Ambition, tenacity, material power; watch out for ethical compromises.

Spirit. Pan as totality: welcoming even the shadow as part of the divine.

Correspondences

Ayin ע · path 26 (Tiphareth – Hod) · Earth · Capricorn

Crowley's note

For Crowley the Devil is Pan the begetter, a Himalayan goat laughing on the summit of the world: creative force without moral judgement, delighting in the harsh and the barren as much as in the fertile.