“In the Devil’s pack, the cards of malediction and death lie next to the cards of success. It is only the cards of love which are missing– Does He himself understand that this is the reason why he decides the fate of so many? For one, he is a God-surrogate. For another, a tyrant that must be fought.” — Dag Hammarskjold, “Markings”; 1951, p. 77

When I first read this diary entry from Dag, I knew he was talking about a tarot deck and his reflections on the cards that were drawn for him. I have been reading the cards and studying the symbols for nearly 20 years, it was a nice surprise to see Dag had written about his experience! Dag was a Leo, represented by “Strength” and “The World” in the card spread I imagined for him. The Tarot is a mirror, it showed Dag how he felt about himself, how he felt others saw him, and of course what he was searching for most was love and he felt the absence in the cards – aren’t we all searching for love and understanding?

“The Devil” is a Major Arcana card – or “Trump”, one of 78 cards, it can symbolize abuse of power, jealousy, control, addiction, violence and anger, but the devil is whatever or whoever comes to your mind when you see it, interpretations are personal and meant to help you solve a problem through intuition. Sometimes the Devil is just a Golden Retriever, and Death is only a vacuum!

“For it is the rite, the ritual and its imagery, that counts in religion, and where that is missing the words are mere carriers of concepts that may or may not make contemporary sense. A ritual is an organization of mythological symbols; and by participating in the drama of the rite one is brought directly in touch with these, not as verbal reports of historic events, either past, present, or to be, but as revelations, here and now, of what is always and forever. Where the synagogues and churches go wrong is by telling what their symbols “mean”. The value of an effective rite is that it leaves everyone to his own thoughts, which dogma and definitions only confuse. Dogma and definitions rationally insisted upon are inevitably hindrances, not aids, to religious meditation, since no one’s sense of the presence of God can be anything more than a function of his own spiritual capacity. Having your image of God–the most intimate, hidden mystery of your life–defined for you in terms contrived by some council of bishops back, say, in the fifth century or so: what good is that?” — Joseph Campbell, “Myths To Live By”; “The Confrontation of East and West in Religion”; 1970, chap. 5

The Devil is a positive card when you recognize that you have the power to change what you don’t like in your world, you have free will to change negative beliefs about yourself and others that are harmful and not helpful. When I was a child, I believed the Devil was real, an outside force that made people do bad things, and I was only “saved by grace” – which is the most harmful thing to teach children! How many humans are walking around today not taking any personal responsibility for their actions because they are “saved by grace” or some other religious exemption/justification? How many churches are willing to sweep sex abuse and corruption under the carpet because they never learned the meaning of the word integrity? This needs to change, Jesus is flipping tables over here because you are okay with pedophiles, and war criminals, and billionaires stealing healthcare from the most vulnerable, and poor immigrants being kidnapped to torture camps and prisons in other countries they weren’t even born in! Wake up churches and repent for your moral cowardice, you are your brother’s keeper, Jesus weeps!

“I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished. It is difficult to determine whether these questions are more of a personal or more of a general (collective) nature. It seems to me that the latter is the case. A collective problem, if not recognized as such, always appears as a personal problem, and in individual cases may give the impression that something is out of order in the realm of the personal psyche. The personal sphere is indeed disturbed, but such disturbances need not be primary; they may well be secondary, the consequence of an unsupportable change in the social atmosphere. The cause of disturbance is, therefore, not to be sought in the personal surroundings, but rather in the collective situation.” — Carl G. Jung, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”; chapter 8, “The Tower”