Keywords*: Ego-bondage, attachment, identification with matter, greed and possessiveness, envy, fear, inflexibility on many levels
Inner message*: If you use your energy mainly to fulfill the endless variety of your ego’s desires, you tie yourself to an internal whipping post. Look at how you bind yourself – and to what. What notions enslave you? What opinions have you taken on as your own without questioning? Remember how much is simply self-created and re-created by endlessly repeating restrictive thoughts. Example: the thought of not being good enough or not getting enough creates fear. You identify with this bundle of fear, and from now on it colors all your experiences. If you recognize this mental loop, you can break out of it. But not with force, only with more awareness. You stop re-creating the loop by withdrawing you attention and thus the life force it needs to repeat itself. We all keep the restless phantoms of our ego desires alive for so long only because we continuously feed them with fresh energy. Here is your change to recognize this bondage and awaken from a nightmare.
Outward message*: The outer world faithfully reflects what has a hold on us. Everything you cling to, sticks to you! Possessiveness is just a form of “being possessed”. You have latched onto something. Energy stagnates. It’s flow has been blocked. This is what binds you to the whipping post of egotism. The ego always demands more of “only the good stuff”, and still it will never be satisfied. However you try, it will NEVER be enough! So jump, in consciousness, from “possessing” to “making use of”. Then your material concerns will feel a lot less burdensome. The more you have, the more you have to lose. Fear grows in direct proportion to our accumulations. If you remember that we’re all guests on this earth – and that, too, for only a very short time – the absurdity of “having to have” is recognized. Allow an inner turn-around of 180 degrees to loosen the ties that bind you to the torture rack. Trust that the power of your inner being will bring you what you really need in life.
Thoughts/Points to Ponder: What has made him to become a victim of his own ego-bondage?
My Interpretation: I know this card best as Chains (from Celtic Dragon), which will always tell me more than “Devil”. Devil is attached to chains. In most cases, it is our inner devil that has led us to this place. We are tormented by feeding to our fears, feeding ourselves to stress, feeding to anxities. Inner balance and seeking from within is what we need at this point to understand why we are here and what has led us to this place. The answer is often more simple than we thought. In the image of Celtic Dragon, the chain that the Devil holds is broken but the couple doesn’t see it, they could easily get out of that dark dungeon but they’re too blind to see it. We can get out, we can un-tie the knot to be set free. We just need to see it.
*From the LWB
