The Devil was seated among us, completing the circle in a cozy home in Diamond Heights. He was the guest of honor, but he couldn’t talk, as he was stamped on a poster and glued to a cardboard. Neither could I. This was my first Tarot experience. We eyed each other with mutual recognition as we listened to who the Devil was and who he might be. Each part of his anatomy was analyzed–his bat wings, goat horns, scaly claws, etc. and the male and female figures that represent the mortals. As the conversation evolved the Devil changed from an abhorrer to Pan, god of the wild, and Bacchus, the party god of wine. He was relentlessly deconstructed and reconstructed until we were quite tired of him, and turned our attention to a fabulous feast provided by our host.
I looked at the Devil one more time before he was put back into a big plastic case. I decided he was neither good nor bad. A shadow, maybe, of what we fear in ourselves. It turned out he had been whispering to me all evening, telling me to stay quiet because I didn’t know anything about the Tarot, telling me to keep my questions to myself. But then, he was also telling me to keep my mind open, to listen like a baby, to absorb new materials without questioning.
Tanya Joyce, our facilitator, offered to drive me home. I helped her place the plastic case with the Devil inside the car trunk. As she drove the fog was thick and wet and we made a wrong turn following the wrong bus. The devil inside told us to forget the bus and go our own way. He was right.
“A word that exists joyfully through creation, that alleviates every pain and sorrow, that absolves all guilt and humanity…”