Daily Draw - The Devil

Rinse, repeat.

I am not kidding, these are the things I deal with.  Repeating cards, decks that think they know more than me.  And of course, they do.

I'm not done with the Devil yet, so it seems.

It's not wrong to indulge in our baser desires from time to time, on the contrary, balance is what makes us whole individuals.  The Devil, however, does not speak of balance.  The Devil twists the perfect alchemy of Temperance, turning it into something ugly, and what once served is now obsession.

For example, it is not wrong to like your things neat and tidy, but when it is crippling to not have them so, the act of mad scouring is not an act of control, but of being controlled.

Another piece of the Devil is that the worse we feel about ourselves, the more we turn to the behaviors he speaks of, and the worse we feel.  It is a cycle.  Feel like crap, drink a bottle of wine, stuff a box of Twinkies down our gullets, buy fantastically expensive Jimmy Choo shoes we can't really afford.  No one understands me, I am too disgusting for human contact, who cares if I download 100 MB of porn and hole up in a dark room all day?  It's my life.

There is popular belief to call the Devil the Christian Lucifer, Satan, but that is inaccurate.  The Devil of tarot cards is more accurately related to Pan, the merry, randy goat man of Greek myth, or Dionysus, lost in the pleasures of the flesh.  The medieval Christian Church deemed these things unholy, so they came, of course, from "the devil."  It's much easier to blame an outside entity for our addictions, obsessions, and general unhealthy behaviors.  "The devil made me do it."  The devil inside of us is more fearful, and thusly harder to face, than any other.  It would be more palatable to blame a ferocious demon for the nasty things we do, to ourselves and others, than to look deep inside and realize that just as God is in all of us, so the devil can be, too.  And that notion is less appealing.

For the record, it is my belief that Lucifer, the fallen angel, is probably so beautiful it would hurt to look on him, because beauty is enticing.

I have had the Devil appear for people who need to let go and let loose, invite a little more pleasure into their lives, but for me, today, I think it is about unraveling the ties in my life that are no longer healthy.  There are people and things we bind ourselves to, exquisite silver cords stretching between us, ensuring constant link and empathy, but sometimes those cords transform into chains, and it is important to recognize when that has happened, and then be prepared to undo those ties.