catboxer
Xv Le Diable
There usually isn't much disagreement about the meaning of this image, a personification of evil. What I find most interesting about it is the degree to which it expresses the concept of bondage, especially from the time of the Marseilles decks onward. You don't often see this in the early Italian decks, which usually simply show frightening monsters.
The Marseilles depiction is actually more disturbing, with its attendant bound humans (or demons -- we can't tell which). The message seems to be that the sinner is bound and imprisoned by the sin, and that just as virtue is its own reward, evil is its own punishment. The horns on all three figures convey intimations of lust. There's no association of the pentagram with the evil one here. That seems to have come later, with Levi.
There's a lot of lively debate concerning whether the earliest decks made for the Italian nobility even contained a Devil card, since none has been found for the Cary-Yale or the Visconti-Sforza. But for certain, the deck would not be complete without an acknowledgment of evil in or lives and in our hearts, for in psychological terms this is a picture of the shadow we carry around with us. That's why I prefer depictions of the Devil that emphasize his humanness rather than his monstrosity, and the usual Marseilles-style Devil is perfect. He or she might have wings and talons, but this is for the most part an androgynous, mindlessly angry extract of human traits. As disturbing as it is, the card illustrates a major component of all our lives; if we don't deal with it, we're in danger of being overwhelmed by it.
There usually isn't much disagreement about the meaning of this image, a personification of evil. What I find most interesting about it is the degree to which it expresses the concept of bondage, especially from the time of the Marseilles decks onward. You don't often see this in the early Italian decks, which usually simply show frightening monsters.
The Marseilles depiction is actually more disturbing, with its attendant bound humans (or demons -- we can't tell which). The message seems to be that the sinner is bound and imprisoned by the sin, and that just as virtue is its own reward, evil is its own punishment. The horns on all three figures convey intimations of lust. There's no association of the pentagram with the evil one here. That seems to have come later, with Levi.
There's a lot of lively debate concerning whether the earliest decks made for the Italian nobility even contained a Devil card, since none has been found for the Cary-Yale or the Visconti-Sforza. But for certain, the deck would not be complete without an acknowledgment of evil in or lives and in our hearts, for in psychological terms this is a picture of the shadow we carry around with us. That's why I prefer depictions of the Devil that emphasize his humanness rather than his monstrosity, and the usual Marseilles-style Devil is perfect. He or she might have wings and talons, but this is for the most part an androgynous, mindlessly angry extract of human traits. As disturbing as it is, the card illustrates a major component of all our lives; if we don't deal with it, we're in danger of being overwhelmed by it.