The Devil Card And The Grotesque (how leaning into both ‘saved’ me)

The devil card is a welcome visitor for any tarot reader, and a symbol of terror for any evangelist. It’s the outward perception of its taboo that keeps it a sacred doorway to the deepest levels of healing. In order to be brave enough to dissect its message, you have to be brave enough to dissect yourself.

Don’t tell the perfectionists about it’s mercy - it may just lead them to liberation.

In my early years, the fear of evil loomed in the corners of my subconscious at every turn. Evil is a loose term here, because obviously for women that could mean a myriad of things - too sexual, too loud, too assertive, not enough softness and submissiveness, too angry, too free, too boisterous, proud - all of the things we are condemned for being. Often we tie our darkness to our level of independence, our purity tied to how much shit we are willing to take. If you so dared to break free from the confines of goodness, you were labeled every name in the book, even by your own peers.

Evil was seen as a living, breathing being, passed down to us through the generations as a symbol of our spiritual combativeness, a relic to represent anyone who dared to be a heretic that challenges the teachings of the church. If you are reading this as someone with any level of dogma trauma, you understand this all too well.

The descent into perfectionism as a way to guarantee ascension into salvation is a bottomless pursuit for anyone carrying around the weight of the purity myth.

I had to be the loyal one, the one that was seen as perfect and good in the eyes of my mother, loving and forgiving to partners who ripped through my self esteem like a cancer, constantly gripping to an external facade of goodness. My people pleasing took over my entire identity, wearing a thinly veiled mask of ‘yes’ in many instances where I wanted to scream the word ‘no’. I carried this weighted cross around as an excuse to stay wrapped in an abusive relationship, hearing the voices of everyone who ever preached the sermon of “keeping yourself faithful and pure” as a woman all through my subconscious mind.

Now, in no way does this mean I was this meek little mouse. In fact, quite the opposite. I was a boiling pot of rage with nowhere to cool off, ready to explode at any turn. Unaware of myself while policing myself constantly. Never free, always hiding in plain sight. Trying to be perfect, for everyone, all while hating myself on a deep level. Convinced - I could not leave what, or who, caused harm, I couldn’t fight against or protest, because I would then need to admit I was damaged, demonic goods. Eventually I did leave, I did wear the monster costume, I allowed my name to be dragged endlessly through the mud, just to find a sliver of freedom outside. Still, I believed I was used up.

I believed this so deeply in my soul that I carried heavy shame around my worth, that is until I read The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti.

I was sitting on a bus from Philadelphia to New York City in my very early twenties, and had just picked the book up from the local bookstore so I would have something to distract me from the noisy bubble of the bus; little did I know I was about to have my entire perception of myself and the world deconstructed. I had lived so confined in my own self hatred for years, begging and pleading for the ones who harmed me the most to take back their words, campaigning for them to see me as good; the ones who called me a slut or a whore simply for not wanting to be in terrible relationships anymore, for dating, for being sexualized early and not being able to hide my feminine aura enough.

As I read the research about the way women have been living under the control of the myth of purity in so many insidious ways since girlhood, how imbedded in our system it was - it was as if for the first time, I was granted permission to grieve.

To grieve all the years I had spent living in the shadow of shame about my worth, about the disgust I internalized that wasn’t meant to be mine. To grieve about the brainwashing.

This was the doorway to freedom. And I was fucking mad.

The Devil || The Major Arcana

Represents themes of addiction, obsession, feeling trapped, and being seduced by material desires or physical pleasures

As I deconstructed my relationship with what it meant to be good and pure, I also faced my wounds around divinity and religion.

Since I was very young, I had a hard time with the rulebooks of the church. I would ask questions that would get me scolded, challenging the subordinate role of women in the structures, and the teachings that felt like violations to the spirits of so many who didn’t fit the accepted construct. I saw corruption and holes in the system from a young age, but always felt the looming disapproval around my natural inclination to question. I was convinced someday I would be found out as the ‘evil’ one, and I had to tread lightly to keep myself from plunging too deep into the ‘darkness.’

I later realized, the darkness was actually not a place of harm, but a place of illumination and healing- it was our taught associations with the word, and religious propaganda that kept us from looking that deeply.

As I worked to divorce from these old ideas about what defined me and my place in the world, I had to lean into the energy of the self advocate, the villain, and a member of the resistance. I researched. I healed. Everything I did from there on out became a symbol of rejecting the external forces that kept me small.

For years I was so good at identifying the external powers that be, and their violence against all of us.

It took a very long time, however, for me to finally see their reflection inside of me.

This is where The Devil card comes in.

Tarot became a way for me to honor my intuition. I was a naturally gifted diviner right from the beginning, connecting my prophetic dreams to the messages I would receive in the cards. I used them as a tool to connect and find refuge from the world. Divination was my saving grace, ironically also another reason I was ‘the bad one.’ I would see myself in so many of the archetypes, and felt fear when some of them would show up in a reading. When I first started pulling The Devil card in readings, my heart would skip a beat, and I would feel the blood rush from my skull. It brought me back to that feeling of something evil, watching, looming, waiting, within.

I had to finally see the parts inside of me that were being called up by that card.

I had to see my own obsessions, my own grip of control, my own belief in the evil around me, that couldn’t POSSIBLY be reflective of what was inside of me. My own avoidance, greed, gluttony. Eventually, I had to admit my own addictions, my own habits, my own dysfunction, my own wounds around codependency.

I had to recognize that evil thing lingering in the corner, was me.

Eventually, I had to see the ways I was also a part of the very system I was so ready to blame.

I started looking at the deepest fears I had, and saw that most of them aligned with this idea of being punished for being ‘bad’ somehow. I went to the root of the religious trauma, the root of my childhood abuse. I worked on facing my shadows, and healing the internalized shame I felt about everything I was, that wasn’t ‘perfect’ or ‘pure.’ I started to loosen my grip on my own spirit, and saw my vices no longer as proof I was weak, but as something being used to soothe my deep rooted trauma and pain - I was able to release myself from substance abuse, addictive consumption, and overworking. I found, that underneath all the expectations there was a full, flawed, WORTHY human being.

And there, I found something previously so inaccessible; humor. I was able to laugh at myself and see where I had been so serious about everything before.

This is the crossroad between the tarot and my artwork. The grotesque, the comically ugly and repulsive parts of our identity we can either pretend aren’t there, or we can celebrate, honor it, play it up-

Like the hairy, big bellied embodiment of the devil card, the uncanny and fantastically absurd archetype of everything we hide inside - Now, out, loud and proud.

I had to let my hair down, allow myself access to what it meant to be fully human, to finally forgive myself for all the years spent pent up in a constructed identity of the good girl, the one who always does, ‘the right thing.’ To finally understand, being a subdued and policed version of myself is not what makes me a good person at all.

Finally, I could see.

When I give myself permission to be fully myself, in the messiness, the absurdity, the wild, I then become a safe and loving place for others to be themselves, too.

In this space, I could see my projections and judgements. I could see the parts of myself I would run away from and pretend weren’t there. I could get honest about my rage and anger, my wit, my cunning ability to see the underbelly of the beast.

When we dissect what we are most afraid of, and pay attention to how it often shows up as characters in parables and fables, we see the mirroring of our internal subconscious worlds playing outward.

Your shadow is not some force you can eradicate from your being. It is the carnal, instinctual essence of you hidden deep within. It is only left up to its own devices when you store it away in a shame shaped box, leaving it to ooze unintentionally into and onto everything you say, see, experience and do. When you live with an unchecked archive of internalized shame, you are unaware how boxed in your existence is. It takes facing it all, and learning how to accept yourself deeper to truly integrate and honor all that you are.

Let The Devil card teach you.

You don’t need another perfectly curated version of yourself to emerge.

You don’t need to be this impossibly prudent, always right, endlessly wise, morally stringent being in order to be a force of good and change.

You are equipped with everything you need if you are willing to have grace and humility. If you are willing to see the messy parts of you with forgiveness and reflection instead of judgment and endless criticism. When you look at the scary parts and get to know them, instead of only seeing their fangs, you will see their wounds. You will see their story. You will see the moments they fell and got back up as a reminder of their resilience and rise, not a cautionary tale of their missteps and failure.

Most of your internalized shame and fear has been passed down to you through generations of suppression. Learning how to examine your beliefs and attune your deepest spaces will be the catalyst to healing and change in the best way possible. In the most human way, possible.

When you look at the devil card, remember, you are looking in the mirror.

What you see will depend on how deeply you’ve allowed yourself to go within.