Running with the Devil

The Cards We Fear Part 2

”I live my life like there’s no tomorrow, and all I’ve got I had to steal. Least I don’t need to beg or borrow, Yes I’m living at a pace that kills.”

Van Halen

One of the tools used in maintaining sobriety or moderation is playing it forward, envisioning what tomorrow will look like if you drink too much or at all. When I think about the Devil I think of living at that crazy pace when I ignored the fact I was killing my damn self, and I knew I had the ability to change but chose not to see it. Or maybe I saw it, but felt unable to control myself. This song reminded me of how the different enneagram types cope with pain and develop unhealthy habits.

Unhealthy Habits and the Enneagram Types

All enneagram types can develop unhealthy habits, though their reasons for choosing to cope in this way are really different.

Type Ones dull the harsh voice of perfectionism with substances.

Twos mask their hurt feelings with it.

Threes are so caught up in how they are viewed by the external world, they need a break from the pressure to be successful.

Fours use substances to dull their inner pain and anguish.

Fives use to stop the constant data analysis going on in their heads.

Sixes use substances to temporarily quash their anxiety.

Sevens use substances to heighten their idea of fun, which often ends unpleasantly.

Eights drink to quell their anger at injustice, or to numb the pain of disloyalty.

Nines are so tired of keeping the peace and not speaking their mind, that they feel they need a drink.

These are just top line thoughts. We can get much deeper into how each type avoids themselves during a tarot reading.

The Devil Card In Tarot

When we look at the Devil we can see the figure of Baphomet, looming over the male and female figures who are chained to the pillar Baphomet perches on. However, the chains are loose and the figures could escape if they chose to. But they don’t

Baphomet was first seen in writings about the Knights Templar as early as 1307, but the symbol became popularized by occultists in the nineteenth century. Eliphas Levi’s Sabbatic Goat was the depiction which Pamela Coleman Smith used when creating this card for the Rider Waite Smith deck.

“The goat…carries the sign of the pentagram on his forehead, with one point at the top, a symbol of light, his two hands forming the sign of occultism, the one pointing up to the white moon…the other pointing down to the black one. This sign expresses the perfect harmony of mercy with justice.”

Eliphas Levi, 1856

As frightening as the image is on this card, it is actually a reminder of our need for equilibrium, for balance in a world which can pull us in different ways, distracting us from what’s truly important in our lives. The Devil card usually indicates that something is seriously out of whack internally. It might be substance abuse but it could also be workaholism, or social media, any of those things we use to numb, to temporarily alter or mask our feelings. I am of the belief that we use these tools as effective strategies to cope with pain, and they work for a while, until they don’t. That is when change happens, if we are one of the lucky ones.

The Cards We Fear Tarot Circle

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