September 2024: Tarot Cards for Writing Inspiration

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Deck: The Golden Tarot by Kat Black

Here in the Northern hemisphere, I’m still waiting for autumn to arrive, but we still have blazing hot summer temperatures, sadly. Perhaps I was channeling my yearnings for cool dark evenings into this reading (If I did believe in a hell, I would imagine it as a frostbitten, icy place rather than a fiery inferno.) Has autumn began its seasonal change where you are? Either way, I hope you find this reading inspirational for your own writerly “walks on the dark (cool) side”!

Character: XV The Devil. Can a philosophical thought be a main character? I have long been fascinated by the devil as such a concept and, in addition, often think about the devil as an entity with more than one dimension (i.e. pure “evil”). What if there was more to the story than the typical one-note perception? How would you reimagine the devil as a plot construct or as a main character, especially when set alongside a more fallible human race? Here, the devil might be having a crisis of conscience, or, perhaps, with a dash of comic relief, could be going through a mid-life crisis.

 

Setting: XIII Death. The devil might have had a brush with death…or life/mortality…and is forced to take stock of their life path. Have they lost sight of their mission among the divine immortals, and are they still true to themselves and their belief system? The devil might be looking for something more, or a greater purpose. Perhaps they’re even just bored of meting out justice for peoples’ sins, and want to begin a career transition, but don’t know where to start. They may have to undergo a period of transformative “death” which can be the stuff of nightmares for an immortal being.

 

Theme/Development: Two of Swords and Seven of Swords. Although the devil is immortal, they may feel very vulnerable and exposed as they navigate this confusing and unsettling time in their personal development. For example, what about all the demons and other minions they have kept gainfully employed throughout the history of the immortal world? The devil may have to look around for a successor, and the outcome of thousands of unsupervised, out-of-work hellish staff may be weighing heavily on them. Would the devil have to negotiate, as part of their termination contract, suitable employment for those that were formerly under their command? Heavy stuff, indeed, especially as the devil takes a hard look at the state of the world and wondered if their efforts towards retribution and punishment have been enough to curtail human sin. The chaos that would ensue from all the demons of hell unleashed on the world at large might be fun to watch for a few centuries, but what then? What about all the other creatures that don’t carry any “original sin” (a concept which has long been under campfire debate among angels and demons alike as to even being an actual thing).

 

Conflict/Climax: Eight of Wands. Maybe the devil decides it’s all much too complicated for an immortal that is used to things being much more clear-cut, with the only taxing decisions they’ve had to make is what sort of punishment to deal out. They may decide to quietly go AWOL and set out to explore dimensions across time and space until they find their new place in the universe. Maybe they’ll even wave their magic wand and create an interdimensional ark for all the nonhuman life forms on planet Earth. Because the devil is quite fond of fuzzy little kittens, don’t you know? (But who isn’t, right?)

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