Jumping in here with my IDS study!
Crowley wanted to show evil as good and vice versa, but in reality have good reason to do so! Devil can be a very good card!
This is an ahem very masculine card. Tree, roots, leaping sap, yeah right. The people are waiting to be born/released. As previous posters have pointed out, there’s only one way to release them!
In the Maat deck (I think), the Devil is a woman giving birth to light. Devil is Lord of the Gates of Matter—not good, not bad, just material. He loves all material things, useful or not, beautiful or ugly.
Snuffin? says the critter in the right “globe” is a minotaur, symbolizing the animal part of humanity. Why is he holding the other people down? I did a very moralistic reading with the Devil once. I said the people on the left are lifting each other up, and the ones on the right are fighting to be number 1 by holding the others down. Both activities exist in life. Most times, we can choose which we want to do. Imagine the Devil telling us this!
I appreciate the previous posts about gametes being formed in the testes.
Snuffin and previous posters have mentioned the background is the canals of Mars. I thought they were stylized bat wings to go with the stylized wings of the Swords. Crowley says they are forms of the madness of spring. Anyway, life on Mars makes sense. Mars is exalted in Capricorn, and it of course rules the sex drive (and pretty much ALL drive).
And the “tree” penetrates the rings of Saturn. Saturn rules Capricorn. It is also the planet of Binah, the mother, so very appropriate. Crowley says the Devil can have sex with the sky/mother/Nuith OR the earth mother. It goes both ways!
IAO (a name of God) is 3 masculine cards:
I=ayin=Devil=post-pubescent man/father
A=aleph=Fool=youth
O=yod=Hermit=old man
Snuffin tells us the wand is the wand of the Chief Adept, which is used to invoke the fifth element, spirit. Another phallic symbol with snakes as testes. They wear the 2 crowns of Egypt, symbolizing union. Ok.
The goat is Capricorn leaping on the heights of the earth, in other words, cardinal earth and MC (medium cieli)—the uppermost sign in a chart of the zodiac. He has some serious horns! Spiral for DNA, spiral galaxies, return with progression. (In other words, the sun comes back to the same station each year, but we don’t go back to LAST Christmas!) He has very conspicuous cloven hooves. And that smile! And why not? It makes me thinks of “the smile is on the face of the tiger”! Also he is happy with all. But is it attachment to the impermanent or pleasure without attachment? Crowley says he is “delivered from the lust of result,” so that means action without karma. Good for Mr. Goat!
Ayin calls for the goat’s third eye. It third eye looks like the opening of a penis? (My notes now have a small spot of man-bashing that shall be omitted here with advantage!) Since he is a major card, he is spirit and so deserves his third eye. He knows the effect of matter/becoming/sex on spirit, but is he telling? Or just smiling?
Grapes on his head links him to Pan/Dionysius. Sex creates all=Pan. Are they simply gods of release for uptight Romans, like Victorian prostitutes? Or something more? Did the ancients worship the life force? (And why am I framing everything as a question?)
Worship of Pan is obviously worship of and in nature. Crowley mentions worship in high (and desolate) places.
It’s interesting to think of the Devil as the masculine counterpart to the feminine Lust.
As a card of the day, it definitely showed its negative side. Attachment to result all over the place! Nuff said.
In a reading: Look where pleasure and creativity are in your life. Are you creating what you really want? Is your pleasure true pleasure or “those things that are pleasing you are hurting you somehow.” And of course, look at the role of sexuality in your life—overindulgence? Repression? Loving? Fun?