The Devil Tarot Card Meaning: Upright & Reversed

Keywords, Symbols, Colors, Astrology, Love, Timing & Yes or No

Look at the chains before anything else. Two figures stand beneath a horned creature with heavy iron collars around their necks, and the loops are wide enough to lift straight over their heads.

Most people meet this card already knowing the answer, which is exactly why it’s uncomfortable.

Welcome to the sixteenth entry in my tarot glossary.

The Fool leapt, The Magician built, The High Priestess listened, The Empress grew, The Emperor framed it, The Hierophant taught it, The Lovers chose, The Chariot drove, Strength gentled the lion, The Hermit went quiet, the Wheel turned, Justice weighed it, The Hanged Man waited, Death closed the door, Temperance mixed it, and now the tarot deck shows you what you’ve agreed to.

Below you’ll find the card’s symbols, its color psychology, upright plus reversed meanings with keyword lists, what it means in love or as feelings, how other cards amplify or diminish it, its planet, its zodiac sign, timing, whether it leans yes or no, and my own intuitive read after years of pulling it for clients.

Stay to the end for how to read this card out loud without frightening the person in front of you.

Want to read The Devil without a guidebook open beside you? These online tarot courses teach you how to read tarot cards intuitively, no memorizing required.

Keeping notes as you learn? Join the newsletter for your own free tarot notebook, every good student’s first tool.

Considering a reading instead? Click here to book yours.

What Does The Devil Tarot Card Actually Mean?

The Devil is card fifteen of the Major Arcana, and it has almost nothing to do with evil.

Fifteen follows the careful blending of fourteen. Temperance found the right proportions, and this card is what happens when one ingredient quietly takes over the recipe.

Picture a bargain you made so long ago you stopped calling it one.

The chains were never locked

In the Rider Waite Smith image, a horned figure crouches on a black half-plinth while a naked man and woman stand chained below, both of them sprouting small horns of their own.

Nothing in the picture is holding them there.

Those collars are loose, the plinth is half-height, and the only thing keeping either figure in place is the belief that leaving isn’t available. That belief is the whole card.

The design borrows from the goat-headed Baphomet drawn by Eliphas Levi, an occult figure meant to represent the union of opposites rather than any kind of enemy.

Rachel Pollack’s 78 Degrees of Wisdom reads it as the self in bondage to its own appetites, with the key already in hand and unused.

What Are the Symbols on The Devil Tarot Card?

Pamela Colman Smith built this card as a deliberate inversion of The Lovers.

Same two figures, same angelic authority overhead, every element turned on its head.

• The loose chains: wide enough to slip off, worn by two people who never try. Consent is the uncomfortable centre of this card.
• The half-plinth: a block that only reaches their waists. Whatever has them pinned is smaller than it feels from underneath.
• The inverted pentagram: matter placed above spirit, the right order of things flipped. Appetite running the operation.
• The raised right hand: the same blessing gesture The Hierophant makes, offered here with the palm marked and nothing behind it.
• The downward torch: fire pointed at the ground, held to the man’s tail. Illumination used for burning rather than seeing.
• The man’s tail of fire: desire, the appetite that catches easily and spreads.
• The woman’s tail of grapes: indulgence and pleasure, the sweeter end of the same arrangement.
• The bat wings: flight that only happens in the dark, movement without any real direction.
• The number fifteen: one and five, which reduce to six. The Lovers reversed into something that binds rather than frees.

What Do the Colors on The Devil Tarot Card Mean in Psychology?

Color does quiet work on the mind before a single meaning gets read.

Psychologists have long tied specific hues to specific responses, and this palette puts one small flame against the largest darkness in the deck.

How Do Other Cards Amplify or Diminish The Devil?

No card reads alone. In every spread, the neighbouring cards either tighten The Devil’s hold or loosen it.

This is called adjacency: two or more cards working in unison, building one cohesive story instead of a list of single card definitions.

When two cards disagree, don’t pick a winner. Acknowledging the disagreement is the reading.

Is The Devil a Yes or No Card?

No, though the reason matters more than the answer.

The Devil declines for anything that would deepen a dependency, and it declines most firmly when the wanting feels urgent.

Its no is rarely about the situation. It’s about the grip, and whether you’d still want the thing if you weren’t afraid of being without it.

Reversed, the answer softens considerably, since that’s the position where somebody finally puts the collar down.

In a live reading I steer away from flat yes or no answers anyway, since your free will does the real work and no card gets to choose on your behalf.

This card happens to be the one most interested in whether your will is free at the moment.

What Is The Devil’s Timing in a Tarot Reading?

Timing under The Devil is ongoing rather than scheduled, which is the problem with it.

Saturn moves slowly and charges interest, and this card describes a condition rather than an event.

Expect it to continue exactly as long as nobody names it.

Ongoing, until somebody says it aloud

Capricorn season is the traditional window, roughly late December into January, when the year is at its darkest and most resolutions get made.

Fifteen is the other timing clue, showing up as fifteen days, fifteen weeks, or fifteen months depending on the question.

When I see The Devil for timing, I read it as open-ended and self-renewing.

Nothing about it changes on a date. It changes on a decision.

What Planet and Zodiac Sign Rule The Devil?

The Devil belongs to Capricorn, the sign of the goat, which the horned figure makes fairly obvious.

Saturn rules Capricorn, bringing structure, limits, and consequences that arrive on schedule whether or not anybody prepared for them.

Astrologers tracing the Capricorn current through this card find the same mix of ambition, materialism, and hard-earned discipline.

Earth is the element tying it together, the physical world and everything in it that can be held, wanted, counted, or consumed.

If you carry strong Capricorn placements, or a prominent Saturn, The Devil may feel less like a stranger and more like a mirror.

Executives, collectors, anybody in recovery, people who grew up with scarcity, plus everyone who has stayed somewhere too long for sensible reasons, all live under this light.

There’s a fuller breakdown of The Devil and its link to Capricorn, plus Saturn if you want to go deeper.

What Does The Devil Mean in Love, as Feelings, and as a Person?

The Devil is the most intense love card in the tarot deck, and intensity is not the same as closeness.

Here’s how it tends to read in the questions people ask most.

• In love, if you’re single: strong chemistry with somebody who doesn’t suit you, or a type you keep returning to for reasons worth examining.
• In love, in a relationship: passion running hot, dependency dressed as devotion, or a cycle you both know by heart.
• As feelings: powerful, possessive feelings. Somebody wants you more than they’re comfortable admitting.
• As a person: magnetic, intense, controlling when uncertain, often a Capricorn, usually somebody who reads a room instantly.
• As advice: ask what you’d want if you weren’t afraid of going without it.
• Reversed in love: the pattern breaking, a boundary finally held, or somebody walking out of a room they’d been circling for years.

How Do You Read The Devil Without Scaring Someone?

Here’s the part no keyword list covers, learned from pulling this card for clients rather than from a book.

The reaction arrives before you’ve said a word. Horns, chains, a naked couple, and the person across from you has already decided something terrible is coming.

Your first job is to end that silence fast.

I say what the card isn’t before I say what it is, within about three seconds. Nobody hears a careful interpretation while they’re braced for bad news.

Then point at the picture. The chains are loose, the plinth is waist-high, and the card carries its own reassurance if you let the image do that work instead of your vocabulary.

Resist naming the attachment for them. This is the biggest error I see in newer readers, and it’s the one that costs you the whole session.

You’ll think you know what it is. You might even be right. Saying it out loud turns a conversation into an accusation, and the person spends the rest of the hour defending themselves instead of thinking.

Ask instead. What’s had more say in your week than you’d like? They answer faster than you expect, since the card didn’t arrive to tell them anything new.

Check the neighbouring cards before you settle on a tone. The Devil beside Eight of Swords is a far heavier read than The Devil beside The Star, where somebody is already halfway out the door.

Shame is the one thing to keep out of it entirely. Not for the sake of politeness, for the sake of accuracy: shame is the mechanism holding the collar on, so a reading that delivers any will close the person down and leave you with nothing useful to work with.

One more piece of scope. If what surfaces has real teeth to it, say plainly that a therapist belongs in that conversation, and that your work sits alongside that kind of support rather than in place of it. Knowing where your lane ends is a reading skill too.

Handled this way, The Devil tends to be the card people thank you for.

The Devil Tarot Card: Quick Answers

Is The Devil a bad card?

No, though it’s rarely comfortable. It describes an attachment with more power than it earned, and it always shows the chain unlocked.

Does The Devil mean addiction?

Sometimes, and just as often it means a habit, a person, a job, or a belief. Anything that has stopped feeling optional.

What does The Devil mean in the future position?

A temptation or an attachment ahead, with the outcome resting on whether you name it early.

What number is The Devil in tarot?

Card fifteen of the Major Arcana, right after Temperance and just before The Tower.

Where The Devil Might Be Pointing You Now

If The Devil keeps turning up for you, in a reading, a dream, a tarot deck you shuffle at midnight, it’s worth listening.

This card tends to appear right before people say the thing they’ve been carrying alone.

Yours is probably already on the tip of your tongue.

When you’re ready to look at it with someone who’ll hold the whole picture, your reading is waiting.

Click here to book your reading to find what’s been setting the terms, plus how loose the chain actually is.

Prefer to build the skill yourself? Learn how to read tarot cards online, without memorizing or a guidebook, one card, one connection, one lesson at a time.

Before you go, grab your free tarot notebook when you join the newsletter. Every pull you record becomes easier to look back on, so the patterns you’d otherwise miss start to surface.

Keep Reading

Justice · The Hanged Man · Death · Temperance · Reversed cards · Start reading

About the Author

Private, direct, and conducted entirely online. Chris Bennett is The Tarot Medium, counted among the best tarot readers in the world and one of the most trusted psychic mediums working today. Every reading happens on a screen, which is how his week takes in Waco, Abilene, Beaumont, Tyler, Killeen, Midland, San Angelo, Las Cruces, Pueblo, Grand Junction, Provo, Ogden, St. George, Yuma, Thetford Mines, Bracebridge, Estevan, Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Ararat, Swan Hill, Port Augusta, Tennant Creek, Preston, Blackpool, and Klerksdorp, along with clients right across the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. Evidential mediumship, intuitive tarot, psychic life path readings, plus grief support with real psychological depth behind it make up the practice, with no fear and no theatrics in any of it. Anyone ready to read for themselves can start with his online tarot courses.