What does The Devil mean in love?

Obsession, codependency, intense physical attraction without much else underneath. Also, and this gets lost, straightforward desire, which the card covers and does not condemn.

The distinction the tradition draws is not between wholesome and unwholesome attraction. It is about whether the two of you could leave. A relationship with heat in it is not this card; a relationship neither person can imagine ending, for reasons neither can name, is.

So the question to put to it is plain: what is holding the two of you together, and would you choose it again today? The card is asking rather than answering, and it is notably unsuspicious about the answer being fine.

As somebody's feelings, it reads as intense, physical and possessive. That is real feeling and it is not the same as care, and this position is where the two are most often confused.

Attachment, compulsion, dependency. A pattern with a real payoff that is costing more than it pays.

The payoff is the part most readings skip and the part that matters. Nothing is maintained for years without giving something back, and a pattern is only understandable once you can say what it is for. The card asks that question rather than demanding the behaviour stop.

It also covers raw materialism and appetite, which it does not moralise about so much as ask you to look at squarely. Wanting things is not the subject. Not being able to look at what you want is.

Breaking the hold. Recognising the chain, reclaiming power, walking out. This is one of the few reversals in the deck that is straightforwardly better news than the upright.

The recognition is the mechanism. The chains are loose in the picture whichever way up the card sits; what changes reversed is that somebody has noticed. The tradition treats seeing clearly as the substantial part of the work rather than the preliminary to it.

Occasionally the opposite: a deepening attachment, or the beginning of one you are not yet calling a problem. The surrounding cards settle which, and the second reading is worth taking seriously when the rest of the spread is uneasy.

Upright: attachment, compulsion, shadow, materialism, dependency, temptation

Reversed: breaking free, awareness, reclaiming power, detachment, deeper entanglement

• What is this pattern actually giving me? Be honest.
• What would I have to feel if I stopped?
• Where have I decided I have no choice when I do?