The Devil goes by many names and serves as a root archetype across several belief systems. One of these names is Satan, a character who emerged on the religious scene around 550 BCE. The induction of Satan into the creation myths of Judean, Christian, and Islamic thinking peoples marked a shift away from the view that God controlled everything, including both suffering and prosperity. The Devil, in the form of Satan, presented believers with a force of wickedness that must be actively and diligently fought and guarded against. The struggle within man, as within God, had become externalized.
In the Book of Job, Satan works for God as a trickster whose mission is to travel among men, placing obstacles in their lives that force a choice between good and evil. At some point though, Satan presents, what has to be, the most passive-aggressive provocation in all of celestial history by telling God that Job is certainly faithful, certainly prosperous, and certainly a model for others but only because he has been showered with favor from God. Satan effectively conveys: stop favoring Job and he will doubt you.
God goes for the bait and makes the choice to take everything from Job, including the lives of his children. Job, it seems on the surface anyway, remains loyal to God thus allowing God to win his bet with The Devil.
Satan did to God what God asked Satan to do to Man.
But that wasn’t the end of it, Satan would continue his power struggle with God. Satan successfully manipulated God into destroying Job, one of God’s favorite and most loyal humans, by simply suggesting God should, in fact, doubt himself. Satan was, after all, a professional trained to design and implement obstacles. Satan did to God what God asked Satan to do to Man.
The secret to any game The Devil plays is this: it’s an illusion.
What if God had shrugged and said, “Meh, maybe I do favor Job, so what? I like the guy. I’m God, isn’t that what everybody wants when they pray to me? My favor? Isn’t that what this whole thing is about?” If God had blown off Satan’s assertion rather than turning it into something God needed to prove with ruthlessness against someone he loved, what would have happened?
The Devil, as a trickster willing to play high-stakes games, will trip us up by creating doubt over that for which there is no doubt. God had zero reasons to doubt Job, yet Satan’s suggestion triggered an unknown fear so overpowering that God murdered children to dispel himself of it.
The Devil creates binds and obsessions from our own doubts and fears. If we are already operating from these, The Devil will play us like his infamous fiddle. If our doubts and fears are currently lying dormant, The Devil will inflate them. In any case, only our own hubris and/or sense of lacking is what will react. If the self is known and the wisdom that one can not eradicate the nature of being human is centered, these inevitable reactions can be managed. We learn this wisdom from The Magician and The Hierophant and The Hermit. If the self is known as is, not as desired, The Devil’s tricks will be met with resistance rather than doubt.
May we welcome broken illusions for the infinitely creative voids they open.
Author of Daydream Tarot: A Basic Guide for Visionaries
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