The Angel and the Devil

Images from the Giant Rider-Waite Tarot Deck, copyright 1971, U.S. Games Systems, Inc. Used with permission.

I had the pleasure of being a guest teacher at the Jamar Enlightenment Center in Palm Beach Gardens this month. It had been a few years since I taught a tarot class in a shop. I had forgotten how much fun that sort of class can be.

The class I taught was an all-level Major Arcana class, with a focus on the Waite-Smith images. When we got to Major Arcana 15, I talked about the Devil as the necessary gatekeeper on the path to spiritual enlightenment. I talked about the inherent choice offered by the Devil to stay attached or to break free. I also spoke about the Devil’s connection to Major Arcana 6, the Lovers.

One student looked at the Devil and asked a brilliant question. “Who is the third character in the Lovers?”

I was not sure what she meant, so I asked her to clarify.

“In this picture, there are two people and the Devil. Who is with the two people in the Lovers?”

I did not have to look at the card to remember that there is indeed a third character in the Waite-Smith Lovers, and that character visually dominates the image.
“It’s an angel”, I answered her.

This is why I love teaching tarot. Never, in the more than three decades of my study of tarot have I considered this aspect of these two cards. I have thought about their numeric connection, each being a Six. I have thought about the fact that in each image the two people are Adam and Eve. I have thought about ‘choice’ as a dominant theme in both cards. I have thought that each card asks us to contemplate our relationship to something or someone. Never have I thought about how there is an angel in the Lovers and a devil in the Devil.

I do not have a personal connection with either angels or devils. This realization about the Six cards in the Major Arcana made me want to dig a little.

Benebell Wen presented a fascinating presentation on the exorcism of demons for StaarCon 2021. Other than what I gleaned from that I know next to nothing about demonology. The mainline Protestant church of my youth did not acknowledge any sort of Satanic being, so the whole concept of demonic entities has been largely foreign to me.

I do talk a bit about angels in tarot readings because people ask about them. When people speak about angels, they mean varying things. For some, angels are their loved ones in spirit. For some, angels are God’s messengers on earth. For some, angels are the fearsome beasts of the Bible. For others, angels are the specifically named archangels.

The Christian Bible only names three angels, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. Michael and Gabriel are also recognized in Islam and Judaism. The Eastern Orthodox Church recognizes seven archangels. Many scholars point to Iranian Zoroastrianism as the origin of these named archangels.

There are names and classifications for demons in Christianity, Hindu, and occultism.

The book of Abramelin includes named demons.  The Abramelin was translated into English by Macgregor Mathers, one of the founders of the Golden Dawn. Of course, A.E. Waite, designer of the Waite Smith Tarot, was a member of the Golden Dawn.

In 1856, Éliphas Lévi drew the ‘Sabbatic Goat’ image. This image has been associated with Baphomet; a deity allegedly worshipped by the Knights Templar. Waite chose this image to become the Devil on his Major Arcana 15 card. This drawing was originally meant to represent a balance and integration of opposites.

This idea that this Devil image was not intended to be sinister, but rather to depict a balance of, and connection between, light and dark, human and animal, male and female, is an important point to consider. When we think of the Lovers we also think of that same balance and connection.

A.E. Waite did not name the angels in his tarot deck. Yet, many scholars assume the angel in Major Arcana 6, the Lovers, is Raphael, the angel associated with the element of Air.

Waite was clear that the Lovers image was to depict Adam and Eve before the Fall. We might say that the Devil is Adam and Eve after their banishment from Eden.

When we think of the Genesis myth in the context of these two cards, we again might think specifically of choices. In the Lovers, Adam is looking at Eve and Eve is looking at the angel. There is a choice between the physical and the spiritual. Once the choice resulted in banishment, new choices became available. In this new world of pain and toil, how should one live? In our life on earth, we are all yoked to many devils. Which devils do we chose, and how do we manage those realities?

When I think of an angel and a devil together, I have two immediate cultural references in my mind. One is a song by Dory Previn entitled “Angels and Devils the Following Day”. The song begins, “Loved I two men equally well, though they were different as heaven and hell. One was an artist, one drove a truck, one would make love, the other would…”

The song concludes with a preference for the devilish man over the angelic one, because the angelic one could not enjoy pleasure without suffering guilt. “And the one who was gentle hurt me much more than the one who was rough and made love on the floor”.

This very secular song offers me a way of considering the Lovers and the Devil, and their connection to one another. We might assume the Lovers to be desirable and the Devil to be undesirable. The Lovers might indicate a thoughtful choice, while the Devil might indicate an obsession. Yet, either could end up being hurtful, and either might turn out to be worthwhile. As with all of tarot, context is everything.

The other cultural reference is the “shoulder angel” who is always accompanied by a “shoulder devil”. We saw these characters in the cartoons we watched as children. The angel encouraged good decisions, while the devil enticed the character to give in to temptation.

This idea of a good angel and a bad angel is present in non-Biblical Christian writings as early as 150 AD. Perhaps most famous and influential is the play from the late 1500s, The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus.

There are similar paired characters in Islam, and in Japanese Buddhism.

This makes me think of an interesting meditation one could try when stuck in a decision-making process. One could, in meditation, think about the dilemma and consider Major Arcana 6 as the angel on one shoulder, and Major Arcana 15 as the devil on the other shoulder. What advice might each whisper into the ear?

Likewise, one could do a divination by using the Lovers to create one tarot spread position, such as “This is the advice of the Lovers”, and a second position created by the Devil, “This is the advice of the Devil”.

In those cartoons of our childhood, the Devil’s input is always ill-advised. We root for the character to listen to the angel at all costs. In tarot, there seems to be room for either character to offer wisdom, depending on the question and the situation.

It is easy to interpret Major Arcana 6 simply as a love relationship, and Major Arcana 15 simply as a negative attachment. Sometimes these simple card meanings will be appropriate in a reading.

Yet, these two cards offer opportunities for deep contemplation, meditation and magic, especially when we think of them as an angel and devil pair.

Straight-Up Talk About Tarot Reversals

When a tarot card appears upside-down, many readers take the card reversal into account in their interpretations. This is commonly called “reading reversals”. It’s not necessary to read reversals to give a great tarot reading. In fact, some tarot traditions, most notably Crowley-Harris-Thoth, do not honor reversals at all.

Each tarotist, whether novice, or expert, hobbyist or professional, discovers and develops a reading style that works for them. As long as the readings are helpful and reflect truth, there is no one right way to read tarot – the technique is judged entirely by the results.

Likewise, each tarot pro has their own way of formally teaching tarot to their students, and informally teaching about tarot to their clients, and to the public at large.

However, it really gets my garters in a bunch when I hear tarot pros speaking of reversals in terms of positive and negative, or light and dark. This leads to students who tell me “I don’t want to read reversals because I don’t like negativity!”

Today I saw two such posts online – tarot pros who believe that a card reversed is automatically interpreted as “negative”. The suggestion is that a tarot reading without reversals will offer a more uplifting message.  

The idea that limiting the details of a reading reduces negativity seems silly. Likewise, the idea that reversals automatically create negative information or negative energy is laughable.

In general, modern tarot thinking asks us to depart from the fortune-telling days of old when we might see a card as “good” or “bad”. While we would all rather see the Sun than the Tower, most of us realize that, in a particular reading, the Sun, a generally happy card, might indicate something undesirable, while the Tower, a generally unhappy card, might represent a positive change.

I truly believe that the more we readers cling to ideas like positive/negative and good/bad in our understanding of the cards (and in life) the less able we are to use the cards to help bring actual healing opportunities to ourselves and/or our clients. Often, what we fear or resist is the thing we need most, and what we long for doesn’t serve us. When we look at the energies present without judging them as light or dark we are better able to see all the options.

Beyond the philosophical question is the more practical question of how to read reversals. if reversals don’t automatically create a negative interpretation, what do they do, and why are they helpful?

To understand reversals, we must first understand the concept of tarot dignity, or aspect. Even in traditions where reversals are not commonly read, dignity plays an important role in tarot interpretation.

In tarot, the word “dignity” or “aspect” refers to the way context affects interpretation. If a card is well-dignified, it’s strongest and most direct interpretation would be used. If a card is ill-dignified, there may be a resistance, a delay, an avoidance or an opposition.

Dignity can be determined based on the elemental association of the cards in a spread, by the context of the question or the surrounding cards, or even by the way the reader feels about the card in the moment. However, the most common way to determine dignity is to see upright cards as generally well-dignified, and reversed cards as generally ill-dignified.

Many talented readers who don’t read reversals rightly say that their intuition, and the surrounding cards, let them know whether the card should be read directly or with some sense of force or resistance.

I agree that this technique works, but still stand in favor of reversals, for two reasons.

The first is that a reversal can offer a nice visual clue. For instance, if the Waite Three of Swords is reversed, the Swords can easily fall out the heart and offer healing. If the Hanged Man is reversed, he appears to be dancing.

So much of tarot is visual. Reversals literally offer us another perspective on the tarot images.

The second reason I advocate reversals is that reversals present an opportunity for magick. If you receive a card whose energy you don’t welcome, you can reverse it to lessen its effect in your life.

If you receive a card reversed whose energy you would like to welcome, you can turn it right side up as a way of bringing that energy more strongly into your life.

In interpreting reversals, the important thing is to release the idea that reversals are always negative. You can also release the idea that a reversal always creates an opposite of the card’s direct meaning. Sometimes that can be true, but other times not.

The thing to remember is this. A reversal shows an aspect of the energy of the card. When interpreting a reversal, consider first the direct energy of the card. Then, think about the context of the question, the surrounding cards, and how you feel about the card in the moment.

Consider what a more indirect form of the card’s energy might be. A reversal may put the card’s energy in the past, or lessen it, or make it more forceful. And yes, sometimes, it might create an opposite.

There are times when the reversal of a card is less desired than its upright presentation. Yet, that still does not create a sense of negativity, only a question of what to do to welcome that energy more fully.

And, there is the third reason I recommend working with reversals. Each reversal offers us an additional opportunity for contemplation. Is this an energy that is passing out of your life, and are you ready to see it go? Or, is this something coming in that you want to welcome more aggressively?

Reversals let us see nuances, and give us a sense of the passage of time.

Some readers seem to avoid reversals out of fear of confusion. Aren’t 78 cards enough? My answer is that reversals help us understand the full range of each card’s energy. In the end, this can actually make tarot reading less confusing.

Whether or not you want to have reversals in your tarot practice, don’t fall into the trap of thinking reversals create negativity, or give superfluous information. If you hear a tarot teacher suggesting such a thing, it might be time to find a new teacher.