Birth Card Notes:
Devil / Lovers


Devil / Lovers

DevilLovers


Imagery — Things to Look at and Contemplate:

    Card Structure —identical. Each is a 3-figure tableau consisting of two naked human figures, one male and one female, standing below a raised central archangel.

    Angelic Gestures — Uriel's sleight of hand / Raphael's gesture of blessing

    Human Figures — partially demonic / fully human; chained / free-standing; separated / connected; fire & fruit

    Background — transparent / solid; torch-lit / sunlit; double-cube altar / mountain; fire & fruit)



Astrology:

    Capricorn (Devil) — sophisticated, ambitious and relentless; driven to possess and achieve; always competitive, every gain matched by an equal loss; practical and self-sufficient, happiness is in accomplishment

    Gemini (Lovers) — young, fresh and curious; charmed by life and its possibilities; always connected to a living partner or a vibrant abstraction; all joy is in the sharing



Predilection:

    Self-determined vs. Relationship-oriented

    Self-expressive vs. Cooperative creative effort

    Self-important vs. What's best for one's partner

    Some things are better than others vs. It's all good


The Lovers and The Devil are two images that alternate in a mirror, and each has two faces. Look once, and you may like what you see; look again and you may be dismayed. Whichever image looks back at you, it takes both faces to make you whole. One image seeks the bliss of coming together, while the other enjoys the pleasures of solitary achievement. One enjoys what it has, while the other knows what it wants.

The Devil gives each member of every pair its freedom, but links each to the other by need and desire. Pairs are separated and each half is given its own separate and competing value. Each individual stands alone against the world, a separate interest, with all the power and possibilities of uniqueness. Life and death, good and evil, pleasure and pain, health and illness, fight pitched battles in which no victory is possible. Each individual feels incomplete, aware of having some things but not others, of liking some things but not others, of knowing some things but not others.

The job of The Devil is to separate and individualize, giving to each the glory and the vulnerability of being one by itself, incomplete but capable of fulfillment.

The Lovers see themselves in everything. They are always aware of the twoness of things. They delight in the alternation of day and night with their paired deities of sun and moon. The ways of the birds and the bees enchant them. And they acknowledge the solemn necessity of death following life.

Their job is to witness and accept all the marriages of opposites that make the universe what it is, and with every marriage, to release the orgasmic joy of making two into the original one.

Unintegrated and imperfectly realized, The Devil can be at once beautiful, brilliant and seductive, and cruel, destructive and terrifying. He has what everyone needs and desires but sells at a punishing price. His motto is "I'll give you three wishes," and he laughs uproariously at his own joke.

The Lovers can be naive and irresponsible, shallow and inconsequential, vain and deceitful. They may join in impermanent liaisons and enjoy or suffer as these liaisons come and go. Their energy can be a storm in a teacup in which they are forever in danger of drowning.

Together, The Lovers and The Devil know all the secrets of the visible universe, and can give the gift of harmonious power.



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Devil / Lovers

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More Birth Card Notes:

Wheel of Fortune / Magician Justice / High Priestess Hanged Man / Empress Death / Emperor Temperance / Hierophant Tower / Chariot Star / Strength Moon / Hermit Sun / Wheel / Magician Judgement / High Priestess World / Empress


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Written material by Wald and Ruth Ann Amberstone, Copyright The Tarot School.
Birth Card icon by Robert M. Place, Copyright The Tarot School.
Card images are from the Universal Waite Tarot Deck, Copyright US Games Inc.