The Devil: Conditioning, Tarot Readings and Nature

Above: The Devil from Tarot of the Cat People by Karen Kuykendall

When I was a younger Tarot reader, I believed that every card had set meanings. ‘The Star means inspiration’ or ‘Ace of Cups is a new love interest’, that sort of thing. I still think that those cards can indicate those things, but I now acknowledge that they can mean a thousand other things, too, depending upon the very unique conditions of the moment when the reading takes place.

Honestly, I was stuck with what to do with The Devil for this blog. It is the last Major Arcana card that I am writing about (although I am yet to post several other Major Arcana cards at this stage). Despite thinking about The Devil in relation to Nature again and again … blank.

What does The Devil have to teach us about Nature? All kinds of things come to mind, true … climate change, greed, fear of certain animals … but, I don’t know, everything that came just felt forced and inauthentic. These themes are important, and I write about them in other posts, but they seemed a bit too predictable and uninspiring for this card. I felt as if someone else was telling me to write about those themes, that they weren’t coming from my own experience. ‘Devil is bad, so what is bad in Nature’? Everything is wrong with that way of thinking. The Devil is a teacher, not a force of evil.

I realised at that point that I was allowing myself to be conditioned by typical Tarot discourses, where every card has apparently ‘set meanings’, my mind going to all those typical places where the Devil supposedly leads … addictions, bad habits, self-sabotage, etc, and that really isn’t how I read Tarot. I read with whatever arises in the moment, in response to what the images inspire there and then.

And so, after pulling the Osho Zen alternative to The Devil card for a client yesterday – ‘Conditioning’ – all of a sudden I am inspired. Not least because it speaks to how my conditioning about ‘how to read Tarot’ has been such a block with this card, but also because this unique re-imagining of the traditional Major Arcana card instantly has so much more to say to me about our relationship with Nature than the traditional Devil of the Tarot.

Above: Conditioning (equivalent card to The Devil) from the Osho Zen Tarot.

Here, we see a lion who thinks that he is a sheep. The crowd is of sheep, and the lion does not recognise his true nature. He has always felt this way (according to the old Zen story that the card is based upon): always thought that he was one of them, taking on their ways despite being so different. The face of the lion is sad, heavy. A sheep is even tied to his back, weighing him down, but he doesn’t seem to notice that the sheep is there.

Every time that we seek to connect with Nature, we carry our own misconceptions and conditioning about life. We rarely see anything as it actually is. There is cultural conditioning, family conditioning, conditioning based on past experience, and more. We notice the same sorts of things when we engage with Nature, and we emotionally respond in predictable ways when we encounter it, too.

…….

Two lovers go for a walk along a city beach. As they begin, the sound of the waves triggers chit chat about a wildlife documentary they had watched together the previous week. They both comment on how much they love dolphins, despite never seeing dolphins here in their home country.

They fall into a comfortable silence as they walk. One partner fixates her eyes on the shoreline, tuning into the sound of the water. She occasionally thinks back to happy ‘staycation’ holidays as a child. Mental images of a bucket and spade briefly pop into her mind, but she is barely conscious of this. She feels dreamy and content.

Her male partner is looking out towards the city, in the other direction. He tunes into the nearby sound of arcade machines and the sweet smell of candy floss coming from a small food van. The sea itself holds vague memories of a day in his childhood when his parents refused to take him to the beach. He is unaware of the memory; his mind is a party of endless thoughts and images. He simply looks towards the city without question, but he feels relaxed enough and is enjoying the walk.

Whilst he watches the city views, and his partner watches puppies running in and out of the waves, they both miss the sight of two dolphins dancing in and out of the water. It’s such a rare occurrence here that it makes the local newspaper the next day.

They both go home having had a fairly pleasant experience, following their usual patterns of attention.

…….

Ecotherapy asks us to look not only outside of ourselves but also at our reactions to Nature, to recognise that we are Nature. It’s easy to search unawares for things in Nature that we find pleasant. It only takes one vaguely positive experience (for example, glimpsing a cute robin on a local walk) for us to forever look in that direction when we revisit the same place. What are we missing when we do this?

When you’re looking at the same kind of tree each time you’re on your walks, or listening out for the same old familiar sounds, what other things are you depriving yourself from experiencing? Perhaps you’re avoiding certain places without even knowing why. The reasons are sometimes complete nonsense; subconscious memories from seemingly insignificant past events. But it is always here. And it isn’t just about what we notice. What do we feel, in response to certain things? And how does this limit our experience? Can we work with those feelings to challenge them, to change them even, when they are limiting and negative?

Of course, we are all conditioned, and we always will be. Tarot keywords are always with me when I read the cards, and like conditioning in general, they are often, actually, quite helpful. Keywords offer something to fall back on when I struggle to connect with the image. But they are not the whole picture, and to do a Tarot session justice, I need to be prepared to step away from those well-trodden and familiar approaches to reading the cards and be prepared to look at them – every time – as if I have never seen the cards before. What happens then? And what happens if we can take this approach when connecting with Nature – acknowledging our conditioning, stepping beyond it as much as we can? What happens if we start visiting different sorts of places or question why we react so negatively to the rain? We recognise our stories, our experiences, our conditioning, and push ourselves to try harder. In my experience, it can be revolutionary for the mind.

That’s all for now, friends. Thank you for being here – and please check out my Therapeutic Tarot Sessions and my courses embracing Tarot and Nature if you’d like us to work together. You can also sign up for the Tarot Blog newsletter (different to my main newsletter) below to receive occasional email updates (roughly monthly) with the latest posts.

Smiles from Scotland,

Stephen