PART ONE: NOT-SO-HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
The Devil is a conceptual chameleon that has evolved alongside us every step of the way, and on which the literature is exhaustive. This article focuses on the ‘classic’ Tarot de Marseille Devil (above), an image which alone contains enough riddles for a whole book; What’s that he standing on? Is that water in the background? Why does he take that pose? What is on his head? Why is he wearing a blue wetsuit? It turns out these are not simple questions to answer and the mystery is sure to remain after this honourable attempt to scratch the surface of his enigma. Tarot de Marseille (TdM) is unique, in that the images are not always what they seem, yet clues are often hiding in plain sight. All is speculative. Resistance is futile. So, ready to dive in?
[Please click on any images to zoom and for more info.]
The last image in the row above is a fragment of the earliest (supposedly) TdM type Tarot we know of, the Cary Sheet, ca 1500s. Although the Cary is thought to be a prototype for the classic format, its Devil does not provide us with one. Rather, this ‘puppy-face’ demon is spearing souls to collect in his basket. Krampus comes to mind, but he wasn’t really incorporated into the christian tradition until much later. He may have older, pagan roots, but his back-pack for souls is based on medieval Devil imagery, not the other way around.
The first, true TdM type Devils we have examples of (Noblet and Dodal, below), are from quite a bit later, so it’s not clear whether they are the actual prototypes. Nevertheless, it’s what we’ve got. One can’t help but notice a resemblance to the Minoan double axe/butterfly goddess, with those wings. Or maybe Psyche, again eluding to ‘soul.’ Perhaps the Cary Devil’s basket was a cocoon for his next incarnation, and that of his larval captives.
In the early Middle Ages, when the Devil we know was just getting his mojo on, he was depicted as a somewhat comical character – lusty, bestial, mischievous – but not yet overtly sinister. Sometimes he’s the butt, getting clobbered by the Virgin Mary. Often he mimics or tempts holy men. Similarly, in TdM he stands in a power pose, lolling, as if mimicking a deity or preacher. A relationship between the TdM Pope (5) and Devil (15) is suggested by the number they share (5), that of the bodily senses.
The image below, though 15th c, is a good example of Devil as a kind of pope’s ‘Fool’. We can still see remnants of Pan, even though he now has acquired demonic characteristics courtesy of various feminine entities; bird talons (harpies, lilitu), belly face (Baubo and/or the ‘belly-speaking’ Pythia of Delphi). Additionally, the number 15 was sacred to Ishtar, and represents the height of Lunar power (‘full’ phase), while 5 belongs to Venus (same planetary goddess).
A closer look at the TdM Devil’s ‘antlers’ shows they do not grow from his own skull, but are stuck through/attached to the red brim, which might be the hide of some animal. Perhaps the skin of his former (Cary) self or yet another accoutrement borrowed from a pagan goddess?
Dante is accredited with ascribing Satan’s ‘bat-like’ wings, emphasizing his dragon lineage. In the Middle Ages, thanks in part to the widespread popularity of Arthurian legends, apocalyptic visions, St. George and alchemical symbolism, dragons + every other kind of monster were at large in the collective imagination. And to the western, christian mind, dragon = Devil. (Hence Dracula, ‘son of Dracul’, the Dragon). Bacchus was often depicted riding one, as a symbol of drunkenness. But ‘dragon’ comes to us from the Greek word ‘drakos’, meaning ‘eye’ or ‘I see’, pertaining to an ever-watchful guardian of some treasure or mystery.
Meanwhile, the importation of demon imagery from the Middle East is also influential, and the christian Devil, as mentioned, adopts various features from them. The TdM Devil’s stance is apparent in the two examples below, especially with Pazuzu. (It’s not known whether Tarot artists ever saw these pieces, though, and for the record, the Burney Relief wasn’t discovered until the 20th century, so that’s off the list).
Witch hunts were what really made the Devil into a force for creating suspicion and fear. As persecutors projected their own darkness and depravity onto their scapegoats, the Devil’s terrible character grew into itself. The ‘Nature’ personification (below, right), created during the time of the 16th century witch trials is clearly based on head witch, Artemis Ephesus and bears a resemblance to our TdM Devil. At opposite ends, the men of science and religion, who would divide the spoils, agreed on one thing; that nature and her beasties didn’t possess anything even close to a human ‘soul’.
And that’s because they were idiots.
END OF PART ONE
PART TWO: LORD OF GHOSTS
So far, we’ve addressed possible, historical influences for the TdM Devil’s look; the pose, mimicry, belly face, bat/moth wings and bird talons as well as his resemblance to pagan deities and Mesopotamian demons. Though not common in TdM, Tarot Devils may also sport serpents from their groin and head, similar to Gorgons or Furies. I include this fave, TdM exception (below, left) holding a delightful bouquet of pit vipers; it’s the thought that counts.
Now, let us venture deeper into the blue…
Ok, I know what some of you are thinking: The Devil is not always BLUE! True, but he is blue enough of the time to warrant an investigation. Barring that colour was on sale, let’s look at some other, plausible reasons.
Giotto’s choice of colour is thought to have been based on the Etruscan ‘blue demons’ such as those in the ‘Tomb of the Blue Demons‘ (discovered in 1985, however) or the Greek Eurynomos:
Eurynomos was a flesh-devouring daimon (spirit) of the underworld who stripped the flesh from the rotting corpses of the dead. He was depicted as a man with black-blue skin seated on a vulture’s skin. Eurynomos was associated with carrion-feeders such as vultures and meat-flies. His name means “Wide-Ruling” from the Greek words eury- and nomos.
So naturally, blue palor is associated with the dead, who have ‘turned blue.’ Giotto’s Satan has simply replaced pagan Hades/Pluto. Platonists (TdM is reputed to have neo-platonic leanings) believed the physical body was as a corpse in which the soul (psyche) was imprisoned. With this philosophy in mind, the blue Devil and his willing, sacrificial victims represent attachment to the corporeal.
Two customers approach a statuary, one wishing to place the sculptor’s work [a statue of young Hermes or a Herm] in the tomb of his son, one proposing to use it for private worship. Deciding to sleep on the matter, the sculptor is visited by Hermes in a dream and is told that he has in his hands the decision to make him either a dead man or a divinity. The 2nd century physician and philosopher, Galen gave the light-hearted fable a more serious turn by applying the story to human potentiality:
“You have a choice between honouring your soul by making it like the gods and treating it contemptuously by making it like the brute beasts.”
In other words, when we only live within the realm of the bodily senses and appetites, the soul ‘dies’. Losing our senses in any of the Devil’s vices – including magic and the occult – might run us adrift and rudderless. The water (another symbol of soul) behind the Devil is still or frozen. His podium also kind of resembles a ship’s capstan, but without the levers in place with which to haul the anchor up (or down).
Another way to turn blue, or even die, is to be in frigid water too long. The TdM Devil is usually only blue from the neck down, excluding arms and head. His cup-like hat and blue ‘antlers’ seem to echo the fishes in the Two of Cups, once bonded in sacred union, now turned away from each other. (In black magic, everything is reversed). The shape of his tripartite, blue body also suggests something fishy or amphibious, like conjoined lamprey (from Latin lampetra, ‘stone licker’) or frog legs/ears. Something is being drawn out of the murky unconscious or indeed from the two, willing minions, heads previously filled with Pope’s pape.
Amphibiously speaking (ribbit ribbit), the toad is a symbol of alchemy par excellence. It is a ‘living crucible.’
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it.
– Shakespeare, ‘As You Like it’
Of course Lucifer also once had a precious, emerald stone in his forehead, aka the philosopher’s stone, aka the Grail. The TdM Devils’ crossed eyes direct us to where a third one should be, but at the same time are disquieting and repel us. Do they, and his grotesque, ever-watchful, nipple eyes serve to distract from what he’s standing on and guardian of? And don’t the minions’ ropes create a perfect crucible shape? A basket’s no good for cooking souls in, this is better.
They have compared the “prima materia” to everything, to male and female, to the hermaphroditic monster, to heaven and earth, to body and spirit, chaos, microcosm, and the confused mass; it contains in itself all colors and potentially all metals; there is nothing more wonderful in the world, for it begets itself, conceives itself, and gives birth to itself.
– Theatrum Chemicum (‘The Chemical Theatre’)
The distillation stage is when all of the impurities are removed, and there is nothing left but the essence. In Chemistry, distillation involves boiling and condensation to separate components and is commonly used in desalination. A liquid is boiled until it evaporates, and as the steam condenses, the essence is liberated from the matter. It marks the point at which our essence becomes spiritualized. In others words, in spiritual alchemy, distillation is a metaphor for the actualization of one’s spirit.
Although TdM is never quite this=that, it’s worth noting distillation is the 6th stage (1+5). It seems Temperance (14) has turned Temptress and now these Dionysians are hitting the hard stuff. Because, in seeking to separate the quintessence (purest and most concentrated form or ‘spirit’ of a substance) from the dross, alchemists also created…gin! The root of ‘alcohol’ (Arabic) is ‘kohl‘, pertaining to powdered antimony, which, in alchemy, symbolizes ‘the wild spirit of man and nature.’ At this delicate stage, there are various ‘pure spirits’ that might be drawn out.
Here we must briefly retrograde back to Dante. His Lucifer was not shackled in flames, but perma-frozen in ice. Dante and Virgil climb up the shaggy legs, ‘until gravity is reversed and they fall through the earth into the southern hemisphere’. The omphalos has become the omicron phallus (omicron being the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet). It’s been pointed out that the Tarot Devil’s genitals are situated at the centre of the image. In keeping with this subject explored by Renaissance artists, if you draw an ‘X’ from corner to corner, the lines cross right at the ‘Centrum Mundi.’
The gravitational reversal described sounds a lot like distillation, and what with Lucifer hermetically sealed and his 3 faces of black, red and white…
Alchemy, like witchcraft, was considered a form of ‘black magic’ and Dante even punishes alchemists – deemed ‘falsifiers’ – with leprosy. Unfortunately, ‘puffers’ (fraudsters who took peoples’ money, promising to turn lead into gold) were lumped in with true, spiritual alchemists and the sullied reputation persists to this day. Perhaps the TdM Devil stands upon the gold as both a temptation and warning to spiritual materialists who’d use Tarot for such nefarious purposes.
END OF PART TWO
PART THREE: MYTHICAL CHAMELEON
Believe it or not, the above, most impressive depiction of Typhon and its resemblance to the TdM Devil is what ‘spawned’ this whole inquiry. In Greek myth, Typhon was the monstrous, serpentine Titan son of Gaia (Earth). When he fought against Zeus (one of many male gods who wrangle with serpent beings) for rule of the cosmos and lost, Zeus threw him down into Tartarus and plugged the hole with a mountain (Mt. Etna), so he couldn’t escape. The similarity to Satan cast down into Hell and shackled in chains or ice is obvious. Volatile Typhon rattling his chains and blowing his top caused earthquakes, volcanos, tornados (typhoons), plagues (typhoid) and other natural disasters:
In size and strength he surpassed all the offspring of Earth. As far as the thighs he was of human shape and of such prodigious bulk that he out-topped all the mountains, and his head often brushed the stars. One of his hands reached out to the west and the other to the east, and from them projected a hundred dragons’ heads. From the thighs downward he had huge coils of vipers, which when drawn out, reached to his very head and emitted a loud hissing. His body was all winged: unkempt hair streamed on the wind from his head and cheeks; and fire flashed from his eyes.
And furthermore…
Typhon was a “poison-spitting viper whose “every hair belched viper-poison.” He “spat out showers of poison from his throat; the mountain torrents were swollen, as the monster showered fountains from the viperish bristles of his high head” and “the water-snakes of the monster’s viperish feet crawl into the caverns underground, spitting poison!”
He also has many other animal heads, including leopards, lions, bulls, boars, bears, cattle, wolves, and dogs, which combine to make ‘the cries of all wild beasts together’ and a “babel of screaming sounds.”
Typhon makes medieval dragons look like newts. Again, it’s interesting to note the parallel between Hades, which later became Hell proper, and the watery abyss. Typhon’s spitting similarity to Satan did not escape medieval christian philosophers, either. They recognized him as one and the same.
[The title phrase, ‘between the Devil and the deep blue sea’ means having to chose the lesser of two evils, the way Odysseus had to chose ‘between Scylla (a man-eating sea siren), and Charybdis (a deadly whirlpool)’, ie, ‘a rock and a hard place’.]
Typhon was conflated with Set, Egyptian god of chaos, storms and all strange and terrifying natural events from eclipses to earthquakes. Like Typhon and the Devil, Set is an elemental beast of many guises, very ancient (pre-dynastic) and attributed with major, occult powers. Sometimes he takes a recognizable form – hippo, pig, fish or crocodile – but mostly he’s the magical and alluring ‘Set animal’, with rectangular ears, downward curved snout and a stiff, straight tail. His face reminds me a bit of a duck-billed dinosaur and one theory is that he was based on an extinct creature, which is why we don’t recognize it.
Typhon was said to have chased the Greek gods into Egypt, where they transformed themselves into animals. Among them, Pan jumped into the Nile, and became the half-goat/half-fish, otherwise known as Capricorn. On one hand, a neat way to explain their conflation, but on the other, it made Typhon the very agent of the gods’ transmutation, including his own. To hermetic thinkers of the 16th century, Typhon-Set seems to have been understood as a kind of extreme Mercurius.
In his ‘Egyptian Zodiac’, Taurean Athanasius Kircher depicts Typhon-Set as the ‘hieroglyphic’ Scorpio, which makes sense, at least intuitively, as it’s the (sometimes serpent) sign of death and regeneration – both Osiris and Dionysus are dismembered by Set and Titans, consecutively, and are reborn with the dedicated magic of goddesses Isis and Athena. Kircher was not an alchemist by any means, but he was a master of syncretization and made an honest attempt to crack Egyptian code, long before the Dendera Zodiac and Rosetta Stone had been discovered.
On another level, ‘true’ alchemist, Michael Maier‘s allegorical Typhon-Set (below), just like the TdM Devil, is an androgyne with enlarged breasts. He/she holds the tools of dismemberment and transformation. Osiris-Dionysus is all cut up and Isis brings a cauldron/crucible and presumably her magic.
Three centuries before Dr. Jung, Maier (1568-1622) told of “chymical secrets behind the myths.” He said, therefore, that they should not be taken as merely historical, but as allegory or hieroglyph, “concealing some deeper meaning, philosophical or moral, which must be withheld from those persons too ignorant or too impious to use it aright” and “the truest interpretation is that it all concerns the Philosophical Medicine.” He called Typhon-Set “the burning spirit” and indeed, “the alchemical vessel itself.” Ta-da!
I did not die, and I was not alive;
think for yourself, if you have any wit,
what I became, deprived of life and death.
– Inferno, 34.25-7
The mosaic below depicts a scene from the Last Judgement, wherein the goats (on Christ’s left) are being separated from the sheep (on his right). The blue angel is believed to be the earliest known depiction of Satan. ~rb
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All blue/bold bits herein are quotations.
Eurynomos quote from Theoi.com
Distillation and Inferno quote from thecollector.com
All other quotes from Wikipedia (some edited for length)
Quotation pages and any other pages of interest are linked within the article. More information on images/sources can be found in their descriptions by clicking on them.
