The Devil as Feelings: What Someone Really Feels About You

The Devil as Feelings: Quick Answer

When The Devil appears to describe someone's feelings, it indicates intense attraction, bondage, and feelings mixed with fear or forbidden desire. The person feels intensely drawn to you while simultaneously aware that the attraction may not serve their highest good.

• Upright: The person feels powerfully attracted to you in ways that transcend reason and often frighten them. They experience strong physical desire alongside emotional intensity, but this attraction is complicated by awareness that the connection may be unhealthy or limiting. They feel bound to you through intensity that they may simultaneously want to escape. Their feelings include pleasure mixed with anxiety about being in bondage.

• Reversed: The person may be breaking free from unhealthy attraction, recognizing that bondage to you doesn't serve them, or gaining clarity that the feelings were based more on fear and need than on genuine love. They're releasing patterns that have held them. Reversed Devil can indicate awakening from spell or addiction.

The Devil represents the archetype of Forbidden Desire, Bondage, and Shadow Attraction. When this card appears in feelings readings, it shows someone whose emotions are intense and complicated by awareness of their own potential self-sabotage.

Understanding The Devil as Feelings

The Devil holds the number fifteen position in the Major Arcana, representing shadow aspects, bondage created through attachment to material or pleasure, and the acknowledgment of human darkness. Fifteen reduces to six, connecting back to The Lovers but from place of unhealthy rather than authentic connection.

Traditional imagery shows a horned figure with human forms chained before them. Significantly, the chains are loose—they could remove them anytime—suggesting that bondage is often self-imposed, created through attachment to what binds us. The figure often appears seductive and dangerous simultaneously.

When The Devil appears in feelings readings, this symbolism reveals someone whose emotions have both seductive and dangerous qualities, whose attraction creates some form of bondage, whose feelings are aware of being potentially destructive even as they experience the attraction strongly.

The Devil is associated with Capricorn, the sign focused on material manifestation and sometimes becoming so caught in control and material concerns that spiritual truth is forgotten. This person's feelings may prioritize physical attraction and material concerns over authentic spiritual alignment.

The Devil as Feelings in Different Relationship Contexts

Romantic Feelings

When The Devil appears upright regarding romantic feelings, the person feels intensely, almost obsessively attracted to you. This isn't gentle affection but powerful, sometimes overwhelming desire. They feel bound to you through intensity of physical and emotional attraction even while part of them recognizes this bondage.

This person likely experiences conflicting feelings simultaneously—they want you desperately while also fearing what wanting you does to them. They feel trapped in attraction they can't escape even though they sense it may not be healthy. The feelings have addictive quality.

The Devil's romantic feelings often include elements of secrecy, shame, or recognition that others wouldn't approve of the attraction. Perhaps they know you're wrong for them, or the attraction is transgressive in some way, or they recognize unhealthy dynamics. Yet they're drawn anyway.

This person probably struggles with the intensity of their feelings. Part of them wants to break free while part of them is addicted to the intensity itself. They may experience cycles of pulling toward you and trying to pull away, unable to resolve the inner conflict.

When The Devil appears reversed regarding romantic feelings, the person may be breaking free from this intense, bondage-creating attraction. They're recognizing that the feelings were based more on addiction than on love, that the attraction kept them in limiting patterns, or that what they felt was shadow rather than light.

Reversed Devil can indicate someone awakening to the unhealthy nature of the attraction and choosing to release it, even though release may be painful. They're reclaiming agency from bondage.

Platonic Feelings

In friendship contexts, The Devil upright can indicate someone who feels intensely drawn to you in ways they simultaneously recognize as potentially unhealthy—perhaps you bring out their shadow, or they're addicted to the intensity of the friendship, or they feel caught in patterns with you that limit their growth.

This person probably feels conflicted about the friendship—they don't want to let go, but they sense the friendship may be holding them back. The bonds feel strong but potentially limiting.

Reversed in platonic contexts, The Devil might indicate someone breaking free from an unhealthy friendship dynamic, recognizing that they've been held in bondage by attachment to you, or that continuing the friendship would prevent necessary growth.

Professional Feelings

When The Devil appears regarding workplace or professional feelings, the person likely feels intensely drawn to working with you, but with awareness that the professional relationship may have unhealthy dynamics or be preventing them from moving in other directions.

This person may feel addicted to the intensity of working with you, or caught in professional bondage through circumstances you represent. They feel the pull strongly but with some anxiety about the consequences.

Reversed professionally, The Devil might indicate someone breaking free from unhealthy professional patterns, recognizing that a working relationship has held them in bondage, or gaining freedom to pursue other professional directions.

Reading The Devil as Feelings Based on Question Context

For questions about whether someone has romantic interest, The Devil upright suggests yes, with intense, sometimes obsessive feelings. They're powerfully attracted even while part of them recognizes potential problems. Their interest is strong but complicated.

For questions about whether feelings will develop or deepen, The Devil is ambiguous. Feelings may intensify into greater bondage, or the person may break free as they become more aware of the unhealthy nature of the attraction. The outcome depends on whether growth or repetition of patterns occurs.

For questions about whether someone's feelings are serious or casual, The Devil indicates intense, serious feelings—but not healthy ones. This card shows someone whose emotions have addictive quality and destructive potential.

For questions about whether someone is thinking about you, The Devil upright suggests yes, probably obsessively. They think about you frequently, experience cravings for contact with you, struggle with the intensity of their preoccupation. Your presence occupies their mind involuntarily.

When The Devil Appears Reversed in Feelings Readings

The reversed Devil regarding feelings most commonly indicates breaking free from unhealthy attraction or addiction. The person is awakening to the fact that the feelings were based on bondage rather than genuine love, and they're working to release attachment.

Sometimes reversed Devil shows someone who's been under someone's spell finally waking up, recognizing that they've been manipulated or controlled, and reclaiming their agency and autonomy.

Reversed Devil can indicate someone refusing to accept bondage they've previously been caught in, breaking cycles of unhealthy attraction, or choosing freedom over comfortable captivity.

The reversed Devil may indicate someone whose feelings have transformed from obsessive and binding into more healthy and clear. What was shadow is becoming conscious and integrated rather than repressed and controlling.

Sometimes reversed Devil shows someone who's realized that their feelings were based on illusions or projections rather than reality. They're seeing clearly and releasing attachment to fantasies.

In some contexts, reversed Devil indicates someone celebrating liberation from unhealthy patterns, gratefully moving away from feelings that had kept them in bondage.

Factors That Influence The Devil's Feelings Interpretation

The person's self-awareness about shadow aspects significantly affects The Devil's interpretation. For someone conscious of their own darkness and capacity for destructive choices, The Devil indicates honest acknowledgment of complex feelings. For someone in denial, The Devil appears as wake-up call.

Whether the relationship actually is unhealthy or represents growth opportunity affects The Devil's meaning. Sometimes intense feelings that initially seem destructive actually serve important transformation. Sometimes they're genuinely limiting. Context matters enormously.

Surrounding cards provide crucial context for The Devil's feelings. Next to The Lovers, intense attraction meets authentic choice—whether the feelings can mature into genuine love. Next to The Tower, bondage faces disruption. Next to Justice, attachment faces evaluation. Next to Strength, bondage meets possibility of gentle power that frees rather than binds.

Life circumstances and personal growth level affect The Devil interpretation. Someone actively growing spiritually and emotionally may experience Devil feelings as shadow to be integrated. Someone avoiding growth may experience them as trap.

Confronting The Devil's Shadowy Intensity

When The Devil appears upright describing someone's feelings, you're encountering someone intensely attracted to you in ways that frighten or trouble them, whose emotional and physical magnetism toward you is powerful but complicated by awareness of potential bondage. This is someone whose feelings involve shadow—theirs and possibly yours.

The Devil's feelings remind us that not all intense love is healthy, that addiction can masquerade as passion, and that some attractions reveal shadow aspects we must integrate to grow. This person offers you the mirror of their intense attraction, asking you to examine what in them you magnetize and what in you attracts shadow.

However, The Devil's feelings also carry warning. This person may be addicted rather than genuinely loving, may be caught in patterns that serve neither of you, may bring out destructive aspects in you both. The intensity itself is not necessarily blessing.

Pay attention to whether the attraction serves both people's growth or whether it's mutually self-destructive. Healthy intense feelings eventually transform into genuine love or consciously release. Unhealthy intense feelings cycle between addiction and attempted escape without genuine resolution.

If The Devil describes how someone feels about you, consider carefully. Do you want someone intensely attached to you through bondage? Can you help them break free if the feelings are unhealthy? Are you willing to examine shadow aspects you represent to them? Can you maintain healthy boundaries while they process intense attraction?

The Devil teaches that shadow feelings are part of human experience, that intense attraction often reveals what we need to integrate, and that awareness of bondage is the first step toward freedom. When someone experiences Devil-like emotions for you, they're offering you the mirror of their intensity, their shadow, their bondage—and the possibility that through conscious integration rather than denial, both of you could grow. Whether you engage with these gifts responsibly depends on your own awareness, your commitment to growth, and your willingness to help them break free from unhealthy patterns rather than exploit their bondage.

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Related Tarot Cards: The Lovers Tarot Meaning | The Tower Tarot Meaning | Strength Tarot Meaning

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