Devil

All those desires, ideas, habits, that have come into your life, that go against the promptings of your deepest nature. All the aspects of life of which you are not master and which can therefore influence you against your will. For instance, you may not be master of anger, emotions, hungers, ambitions, and these may lead you to do things that deep down you do not wish to do. While the results of these tendencies may seem devilish, at the same time they offer the opportunity of wrestling with them and developing strength and awareness. See Secret of Time and Satan.

The angers or urges may even feel to you as if they are strong enough to control you, so you represent them as an external force pushing you to some sort of evil. In each of us there is also the potential for creativity or destruction. This is especially noticeable in connection with our fears, such as fear of illness. Such a fear, if based on imagination rather than a real cause, can still produce illness. In this sense our own mind can turn against us. Your undirected fear may thus be pictured as the devil or an evil entity.

Having watched a person meet the devil in their dream exploration, what they arrived at is very helpful in understanding your dream devil. She saw that her lack of self esteem, her self doubts and depression were like an open door that allowed destructive feelings and fears to enter. These attitudes or feelings may have been inherited from ones recent or ancestral family. Once this is understood it is easy to see other things that leave such a door open are childhood trauma or abuse, and the attitudes and standards we often pick up – rather like infections – from others around us, and cultural attitudes. When this ‘devil’ enters us it can lead to self criticism, negative comparisons, the denial of ones own talents and ‘light’, and in bad cases, crime, murder and the infliction of child abuse and trauma.

Such feelings, and the entrance of foreign and destructive forces, is seen by our unconscious as the devil, demons or even a vampire. They suck away the life force and create tiredness and illness in your body. Recognising them is very important for your health and personal wholeness. This is called a dybbuk in Jewish folklore. Remember that devil is lived spelled backwards, and evil is live backwards. They both suggest the turning of your life force back on itself. See: Demon; Satan; Obsession.

In Western culture there is a long history of struggle with sexuality. Even to dream of sex was considered a sign of the devil’s influence.

This internal struggle with ones own drives is still a large part of life for many of us. The image of the devil represents this struggle, and also a force of negation which pulls us down, away from the possibility of personal happiness and transformation.

The struggle with something that appears exterior can be clearly seen in such dream. The influence of religion in giving ready made symbols to suggest there is an exterior evil that is invisible, but can powerfully influence one, is also clearly shown. And in actually facing the devil in ones dreams it turns out to be ones own emotions and desires that are not allowed or tuned back on themselves – thus devil spelt backwards if lived. It is the unlived or repressed urges that take on the image of a devil.

Jung felt that an urge to evolve or move toward personal growth was inborn in all of us. Certainly it is a potential we all have. In connection with this the devil represents all those forces within and outside of us that war against this power of positive life and change. In Freudian theory each of us meet enormous resistances to meeting the very experiences or insights which would lead to healing. In this sense the devil or Satan embodies all our habits born out of the pains of our childhood and the ignorance of the culture we imbibed. The resistance we feel to change comes about because to change means to move into the unknown, into a sort of ignorance. It also means letting who we are at the moment die. It means acknowledging the impoverished aspects of oneself, and being willing to let go of them.

Grof, in observing the experiences of many people facing the agonies of their birth during therapy – Realms of The Human Unconscious – noticed the imagery that often arose was of being in hell tortured by the devil. When these same patients moved toward pleasure, the images became heavenly or cosmic.

The struggle with and fear of ones own natural drives – the resistances to change and wholeness – the fundamental pain of life in birth – all of these have a place in the archetype of the Devil or Satan. The following example graphically describes some of this.

It seemed I was fighting against the Devil for hours in my sleep last night. I was with a group of people doing this. The only parts I can remember clearly are that we had got hold of the Devil’s sword, put it in a church and locked the door. We had then thrown the key down a well, thus preventing the Devil from getting his main power or weapon. At one point he was forcing a man down the well and under the water to get the key, but he didn’t get it. I think being forced made the operation difficult. In another scene I was in a dormitory with the group of people. The Devil attacked a woman. He was invisible. The woman turned black as he raped her. She didn’t die. At this point I woke and went to the toilet. On returning to bed I continued the dream, particularly wondering what I was in conflict with in the image of the Devil. I found it disturbing and frightening to be confronted by such a powerful opponent. Partly because of the rape, I realised it was my held back sexual needs. I then approached the ‘black’ woman with tenderness and this transformed the Devil into available energy, sexual or emotional. I tried this again and again. Each time it worked, and I could observe the connection between the Devil and how I repress my sexual needs.

The Devil, as in the example, is usually connected with repressed natural drives, particularly sexual (one can express sex physically yet still repress sexual longing and feelings of real connection and tenderness). It is what is unlived in us – ‘devil’ is ‘lived’ spelt backwards. The reason the devil is such a useful symbol of our struggle with our own urges, is that if you have a conflict with an urge such as eating or sex, you can make up your mind to stop, but if you do so it feels as if a force other than your own will pushes you in another direction. This otherness/Life is depicted as the devil.

Any code of conduct, whether accepted from parents or peers, leaves aspects of our total self unlived. The struggle with paternal authority or power within oneself is also often represented as the devil. If we change our code of conduct, we may meet the devil because we release the previously unlived area of self. Of course it only appears in the image of the Devil or Satan if we are frightened of or disgusted by this emerging aspect of ourselves.

As Pan: the same, except that Pan represents losing oneself or abandonment to the natural urges. See: devil.

Useful questions:

What relationship do I have with my own natural urges such as sex or eating?

Have I turned my own urges back on themselves, transforming ‘lived’ into ‘devil’ by a reverse process?

Can I dare to meet this devil and release the repressed energy as living flows of personal life and love?