What it means
A horned figure sits on a dark pedestal. A naked man and woman stand chained to it, but the chains around their necks hang loose enough to slip off. That detail is the whole card. As a birth card the Devil describes a life that drags temptation, attachment and power struggles into the open so they can be worked through. Devil people are often ambitious, earthy and funny, and very good at reading hidden motives. The Golden Dawn links the card with Capricorn. The lesson is liberation from the inside: seeing the chain and choosing to take it off.
Strengths
Honesty about desire, ambition, humour, sharp insight into motives and a powerful drive.
Challenges
Compulsions, a need for control, cynicism, and staying in situations long after they stopped being good.
With its partner cards
The Devil always comes with the Lovers as its Soul card. Readers see it as choice examined under pressure. The Devil shows where you are bound, and the Lovers asks what you would choose if nothing held you. Relationships often become the place where this pair does its work.
When it is your birth card
Greer's method adds the month, day and full year, then adds the digits until the total is 22 or less. In her terms the higher card of a pair is the Personality card and the lower one the Soul card. Between 1900 and 2030, the Devil is a birth card for 3.6 percent of birthdays. It always comes as the Personality card over the Lovers, 15 and 6. How often it turns up depends heavily on birth year, since the year makes up almost all of the total: 6.1 percent of birthdays from 1900 to 1959, no birthdays from 1960 to 1999 and 3.3 percent of birthdays from 2000 to 2030. For example, someone born on December 31, 2006 adds 12 + 31 + 2006 = 2049, then 2 + 0 + 4 + 9 = 15, then 1 + 5 = 6. That gives the Devil and the Lovers (15 and 6).
How Cosmic Array reads it
Cosmic Array works out your birth cards from your date of birth alone with Greer's method, so no birth time is needed. The Architect blueprint lists them by name in the same panel as your Life Path, and the two always line up. A set with the Devil always ends in the Lovers, which goes with a Life Path of 6 or 33, because both reduce the same birthday digits.