The Devil

Quick answer

The core meaning of The Devil is The temptations of the material world. Upright, it usually points to Bondage, materialism, desire, addiction. Symbolizes being controlled by material; reversed, it may suggest Breaking free, awakening, releasing dependency, facing the shadow. May indicate .

Card imagery

A massive devil (Baphomet) squats upon a black cube, an inverted pentagram above his head. Below, a man and a woman are loosely chained (chains they could seemingly slip off themselves), having grown horns and tails.

Upright meaning

Bondage, materialism, desire, addiction. Symbolizes being controlled by material cravings or fear, and realizing that such bondage often stems from one's own attachments.

Reversed meaning

Breaking free, awakening, releasing dependency, facing the shadow. May indicate beginning to see the root of the problem and working to escape an unhealthy relationship or habit.

Love, Career, Money and Growth

Love

In love, The Devil points to The temptations of the material world. Read it back against how the relationship actually behaves and what you are both choosing.

Career

In career matters, The Devil points to The temptations of the material world. Start by working out which resources you control and what your next move is.

Money

In money matters, The Devil points to The temptations of the material world. Do not treat a symbolic reading as an investment conclusion — go by facts, budget and your own risk tolerance.

Personal growth

For personal growth, The Devil points to The temptations of the material world. Write down the question it raises, then turn that into an action you can actually check.

Yes or No

Upright

No

Reversed

Yes

This is our own quick read, based on which way the card’s meaning leans. Traditions disagree about individual cards, and an "Undecided" needs to be weighed against the position in the spread and your actual situation rather than taken as a one-word answer.

Waite’s Original Text (1911)

Inner Symbolism (original)

The design is an accommodation, mean or harmony, between several motives mentioned in the first part. The Horned Goat of Mendes, with wings like those of a bat, is standing on an altar. At the pit of the stomach there is the sign of Mercury. The right hand is upraised and extended, being the reverse of that benediction which is given by the Hierophant in the fifth card. In the left hand there is a great flaming torch, inverted towards the earth. A reversed pentagram is on the forehead. There is a ring in front of the altar, from which two chains are carried to the necks of two figures, male and female. These are analogous with those of the fifth card, as if Adam and Eve after the Fall. Hereof is the chain and fatality of the material life.

The figures are tailed, to signify the animal nature, but there is human intelligence in the faces, and he who is exalted above them is not to be their master for ever. Even now, he is also a bondsman, sustained by the evil that is in him and blind to the liberty of service. With more than his usual derision for the arts which he pretended to respect and interpret as a master therein, Eliphas Lévi affirms that the Baphometic figure is occult science and magic. Another commentator says that in the Divine world it signifies predestination, but there is no correspondence in that world with the things which below are of the brute. What it does signify is the Dweller on the Threshold without the Mystical Garden when those are driven forth therefrom who have eaten the forbidden fruit.

Original Upright Meaning

Ravage, violence, vehemence, extraordinary efforts, force, fatality; that which is predestined but is not for this reason evil.

Original Reversed Meaning

Evil fatality, weakness, pettiness, blindness.

Quoted from A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. The text is in the public domain.