One of the most frequently discussed details in the Rider-Waite-Smith Devil card is the chains.
The naked man and woman stand chained to the black pedestal beneath the Devil, but a closer look reveals something peculiar. Their hands are completely free, and the chains around their necks are so loose that either figure could simply lift the loop over his or her head and walk away.
That gives us one of the standard interpretations of The Devil: we are often imprisoned by things that we can walk away from if we choose to do it.
It’s a powerful interpretation, and one I’ve discussed before. (See my previous post The Devil Card and Freedom.) But it raises another question that may take us deeper into the card.
What if the people don’t know that they can take the chains off?
Why Don’t They Take Off the Chains?
When we look at the picture, knowing that the chains are loose, their behavior seems completely puzzling.
Why don’t they simply leave?
One answer might be that they just don’t want to. They might actually be enjoying whatever’s keeping them in chains. Maybe they like getting drunk. Maybe they’re having a really hot secret affair with their next door neighbor and it feels mighty fine. Maybe they like being an addict.
But when we look carefully at the card, it doesn’t look like they’re making any kind of conscious decision at all.
Look at them.
They aren’t struggling against their chains.
They aren’t examining them.
They aren’t looking toward one another for help.
Most strikingly, neither of them is looking at the Devil.
There is an enormous, gigantic, scary, horny creature looming immediately behind them, and they seem almost completely unaware of his presence.
The man is even more remarkable. The Devil holds a flaming torch downward toward him, and the man’s tail has caught fire.
He doesn’t seem to notice. Really? Wouldn’t you notice it if your tail caught fire? I know I would.
But maybe we’ve been asking the wrong question.
Instead of asking “Why don’t they choose to remove the chains?” perhaps we should be asking:
“Do they realize they’re wearing chains at all?”
Do they even realize that they’re slaves?
The Devil We Don’t See
This gives us a very different way of understanding the card.
The Devil represents something we haven’t yet seen.
We could make a serious case for the idea that most of us don’t make conscious choices about our lives. Oh, we think we do and we like to brag about how well informed we are, but do we really?
There are, of course, marvelous exceptions but most of us are born in a particular rut and stay in that rut for most of our lives. If we were born into a Christian family, we’ll probably stay Christians. If our parents always voted Republican, we’ll probably vote Republican. If we were born middle class, we’ll probably die middle class.
We can say the same thing about our habitual ways of thinking. If our parents were cynics and viewed the world skeptically, we will, too. If our parents were depressive or angry, we’ll probably be depressed or angry, too. If we were raised in a racist family, we’ll most likely be racist adults.
By the time we reach adolescence, we are thoroughly programmed little robots. We may get a nose ring or a tattoo and call it rebellion, but soon enough we return to the rut we were born in.
And all the while, WE HAVE NO IDEA that we’re not making our own choices. In fact, a part of the programming we receive is that we have freedom of choice when we really don’t.
It might be a belief inherited from our parents. It might be an assumption about money, sexuality, success, relationships, gender, class, religion or respectability. It might be a fear acquired in childhood. It might simply be a habit repeated for so many years that we’ve forgotten there was ever another way of behaving.
We don’t say, “I have chosen this.”
We say, “That’s just the way things are.”
And that may be one of the most powerful chains of all.
Morality Requires Choice
This brings us to perhaps the most provocative aspect of The Devil.
We traditionally associate the Devil with immorality. But what if the deeper problem depicted by the card is not immoral choice at all?
What if it is the absence of conscious choice?
In Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, Sallie Nichols writes:
“Without freedom to choose, there can be no true morality. The fact is that most of us today have more free choice than we realize; but many, still unconsciously imprisoned within cultural mores, refuse to accept the responsibility for moral choice.”
That distinction is crucial.
Morality isn’t simply obedience to a collection of rules. Genuine morality requires the ability to recognize alternatives, understand consequences, and then choose among them.
If I behave in a particular way merely because “that’s what people do,” I haven’t necessarily made a moral decision.
If I follow a religious commandment without ever examining it, I may be obedient—but obedience and morality aren’t the same thing.
If I repeat the prejudices of my culture because I’ve never recognized them as prejudices, I haven’t consciously decided that they are right.
And if I hurt another person while blindly acting out an unconscious fear or compulsion, the consequences remain real even though I may never have consciously intended them.
Consciousness creates the possibility of moral choice.
That’s where The Devil becomes considerably more complicated than a card about temptation or sin.
The people beneath him may not be wicked.
They may simply be asleep.
The First Act of Freedom Is Seeing the Chain
That brings us back to the apparent paradox at the center of the picture.
The couple are free. And they aren’t free.
Objectively, nothing prevents them from lifting those chains from their necks. Subjectively, however, they may have no idea that such a possibility exists.
Freedom therefore requires something before choice. It requires awareness.
We have to see the chain. We have to recognize the Devil standing behind us.
We may even have to notice that our tail is on fire.
Only then can we decide what we’re going to do about it.
Perhaps that is why The Devil occupies such an important place in the Major Arcana. He confronts us not simply with our appetites or our bad behavior, but with the uncomfortable possibility that forces we haven’t recognized may be making some of our choices for us.
The moment we see those forces clearly, something changes. We may still choose to remain exactly where we are. But now it really is a choice.
What The Devil Means in a Reading
When The Devil appears in a reading, then, the question may not simply be “What has you trapped?”
A more useful question might be:
“What are you taking for granted that you have never consciously chosen?”
Look for the invisible assumption behind the situation. A relationship pattern, an inherited belief, a fear, a social expectation, a desire, an old family rule, or simply the conviction that “I don’t have any other choice.”
The card doesn’t necessarily tell you to break the chain.
It asks you first to see it.
Because once the chain becomes visible, you can finally decide whether to keep wearing it.
