The Devil as the Fallen Star

In my Tetragrammaton piece on the Devil, I briefly described the Pentagram atop the Devil’s head as a Falling Star. This image had struck me greatly a few months ago, as I was reviewing and revising my Symbol : cards, in which the card Pentagram’s poem is a joke “the Other Head”, as it is the dominance of the lower sexual drives over the Star’s head held high.

The Pentagram depicts more than a headless phallic man, of course.

According to Eliphas Levi, it depicts the Goat head of Satan directly. He viewed the inversion of the Star as the classic trick of the black magician, to upend something good and make it evil. We can see this very clearly with the Nazi’s use of the Swastika and the Runes.

But the image that struck me is that of Satan Falling.

The Pentagram can be read like a Chinese ideogram, in which something is happening, there is active motion indicated. It is a human figure turned upside down. It is a direct depiction of the Fall of Satan.

This will feature in my revision of Symbol :, alongside a few other significant alterations, and, I am proud to say, a Joker or two, which every 52 card deck *needs*. In the most recent (secret) MIA podcast I described the secret suits and numbers of this deck, I invite you to give a try to discerning them!

PS

All this talk of upended human figures has reminded me of one of my favorite Egyptian hieroglyphs, A29

𓀡

I think of this every time I listen to the Tears for Fears song Head Over Heels!

Something happens
And I'm 𓀡
I never find out
'Til I'm 𓀡
Something happens
And I'm 𓀡
Ah, don't take my 𓄣, don't break my 𓄣
Don't—, don't—, don't throw it away