The Devil and The Star

Bondage and release, and the tradition puts real distance between them. The Devil is the arrangement you are inside; The Star is open sky and water with nothing between you and it. Read in that order the pair is one of the deck's clearest recovery statements, and the distance is the point.

Leaving something that had a hold, and the period afterwards. Associated with the flatness that follows release rather than with relief.

Getting out of work or an arrangement that was consuming you. The pair does not promise the next thing is better, only that it is not this.

The chains in The Devil are loose enough to lift off, which is the card's whole argument. Beside The Star it becomes a question rather than a condition.