The Tarot Arcanum of the Devil: Baphomet, the Illusion of Matter, and the Bondage of the Soul
The Threshold of the Shadow: The Fifteenth Arcanum Among the twenty-two keys of the Tarot's Major Arcana, none evokes the same immediate reaction of fear, misunderstanding, and fascination as the fifteenth card: The Devil . In the traditional iconography of the Tarot of Marseilles and the later Rider-Waite-Smith deck, this card presents the seeker with a monstrous, winged figure, standing upon an altar to which two smaller, human-beast figures are chained. It is an image of captivity, temptation, and spiritual darkness, situated exactly between the card of Temperance (the alchemy of the soul) and the Tower (the lightning-strike of liberation). To the uninitiated, the Devil card represents the personification of evil, the temptation of sin, and the dark forces that seek to destroy the soul. But to the Hermetic philosopher and the student of the mysteries, the card represents a far deeper, cosmological and psychological reality. The Devil is the personification of the material vei...