Upright
A bind you are partly choosing. The chains in the image are loose — the card describes dependency that could be walked away from and is not.
Major arcana 15 · Earth
The Devil
Reversed
Recognising the trap and beginning to leave it. Or the opposite: sinking further while insisting you are fine.
ArcanaMajor
Number15
ElementEarth
PlanetSaturn
Yes or noNo
Keywordsattachment, compulsion, materialism
Where it sits in the sequence
The major arcana run 0 to 21 as a progression — the Fool's journey from unguarded beginning to completed cycle. Card 15 falls in the final stretch, which deals with forces larger than the individual.
The image
What is on the card
A horned figure sits above a naked man and woman held by loose chains around their necks. The chains could be lifted off.
Every detail in the Waite-Smith deck was placed deliberately by Pamela Colman Smith in 1909, and reading the picture usually gets you further than reading a keyword list. Notice what the figure is doing, where they are looking, and what is behind them.
The Devil in love, work and health
In love
Attachment that has become dependency. Passion mixed with something less healthy.
In career and money
A job you stay in for the money, or ambition that has started running you.
In health
Addiction, compulsion and habits that have stopped being choices.
Reading it in a spread
A card means different things by position. In a past-present-future layout, The Devil in the past describes something already worked through; in the future it describes a direction rather than a fixed outcome.
Read it against its neighbours rather than alone. Two cards from the same suit intensify each other; a major arcana beside a minor tells you the situation is larger than the everyday.