The Devil: two chains before the altar

The picture: a figure on an altar, two chains before it

Waite first says what kind of design this is: an accommodation, a mean or harmony, between several motives mentioned in his first part. Then the picture: the Horned Goat of Mendes, with wings like those of a bat, stands on an altar. At the pit of the stomach is the sign of Mercury. The right hand is upraised and extended, the reverse of the benediction given by the Hierophant in the fifth card; in the left is a great flaming torch, inverted towards the earth; a reversed pentagram is on the forehead.

In front of the altar there is a ring, and from it two chains are carried to the necks of two figures, male and female. These are analogous with those of the fifth card, he says, "as if Adam and Eve after the Fall", and then writes a line: here is the chain and fatality of the material life.

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BaZiFlow's original Devil with three ways to read it

The opening figure is a BaZiFlow redrawing, not a copy of the RWS card: a horned black silhouette, a dark altar below it, and two hooded figures whose chains run to a ring on the altar.

On the RWS card itself: a horned, bat-winged figure crouches on a black square altar with a reversed pentagram on the forehead, its right hand raised and its left holding a torch pointed down; a ring stands before the altar; a woman and a man stand bare at the sides, chain loops at their necks hanging down to the ring, the man's tail ending in flame and the woman's tail with a cluster of grapes.

Read it from the top down: the figure, the ring, the people.

What Waite lists: ravage, violence, vehemence, force, fatality, and "not for this reason evil"

Waite's divinatory meaning is:

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

The first six words all speak of onset and strength: ravage, violence, vehemence, then extraordinary efforts, force, and finally fatality. "Temptation" is not in the list, and neither is "dependence". The last clause is a limit: what is predestined is not for that reason evil.

Chain, ring and tail: what he wrote, what he answered, what he concluded

Waite's description of the symbols is concrete, and he gives a meaning for only a few. Three are worth reading apart: the reversed pentagram and the raised hand, the ring with its two chains, the tails and the faces.

He is not persuaded by two other accounts. Of Éliphas Lévi, he says that with more than his usual derision for the arts which he pretended to respect, he affirms that the Baphometic figure is occult science and magic. Of another commentator, who says that in the Divine world it signifies predestination, Waite says there is no correspondence in that world with the things which below are of the brute.

His own conclusion is that 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.

How to read it: count the chains, find the ring, sort what is set from what was added

The clearest line in the picture runs from the ring before the altar, out along each chain to a neck. Follow that line and interview prep has three steps. The line comes from the picture, the list is ours, and the original has no such use.

1. 1

   Count the chains: one "must" per chain

   Write down every "must" in your head before the interview: must memorize the whole question bank, must not feel nervous at all. One line, one chain, with no verdict yet.

2. 2

   Find the ring: where does each chain run?

   Ask what each "must" is attached to: a specific requirement in the job description, or only a fear of being outdone. A chain that reaches the job description has found its ring.

3. 3

   Sort: what is set, what was put on

   Borrow the list's clause "predestined but not for this reason evil" as a sorting rule: the interview time and the job's requirements are set, and neither good nor bad. A "must" that reaches no ring was put on, and you can ask: if I loosened it one notch, what would happen?

Say an interview is next Wednesday and the job description lists three abilities. Put your "musts" down and look for each ring:

Reversed and neighboring cards: evil fatality, weakness, blindness, and three cards on chains and collapse

Waite's reversed list has four words:

Evil fatality, weakness, pettiness, blindness.

In the upright list the clause "predestined but not for this reason evil" turns, in the reversed one, into plainly "evil fatality"; the other three words, weakness, pettiness, blindness, speak of lacking strength or lacking sight. "Blindness" can be set beside Part II's "blind to the liberty of service", and that pairing is the reader's, not something the text draws.