Since we do not have the image of the devil (term derived from Greek Diabolos=slanderer, equivalent to the Hebrew Satan=the opposing) in the illuminated tarot cards of XV Century, we only know of it from the popular card packs of the following centuries, potentially made using the xylographical technique. Its iconographic versions, derived from the Etruscan God of Hell Charun, reflecting the trend of the time, which represented it has a monster, with hooked nose, teeth-shaped tusks, pointy ears, bat wings, falcon or goat legs, with horns and, on different occasions, also with a face on its abdomen, meaning, beyond a crescendo of bestiality, the moving of the intellectual centre, set at the service of the lowest appetites.
This version was represented by Giovanni of Modena (figure 1) in the fresco of Hell in the Bolognini Chapel (1410), the same fresco which contains the figure of the Hanged Man, God's traitor (read the essay regarding this Triumph).
In the cards this version is found in the Parisian Tarot by anonymous of the beginning of the XVII century (figure 2), in the Rothschild ones (figure 3), in an Italian sheet of tarots of the XVI century where it is also provided with wings (figure 4) and in the tarot by M. Agnolo Ebreo of the XVI century represented with two abducted little boys that it holds under its arms (figure 5).
In the Rosenwald Tarots (figure 6) the Devil with falcon legs, horns and with a pitchfork in its hand, appears adorned as “wild men” that frequently appear in the figurative tradition of the XV and XVI centuries (figure 7 - Sguincio Di Scanno, Wild man, 1509. Cathedral Saint-Tugdual, Tréguier).
In the Leber Tarots, belonging to a XVI century Italian manufacture (Rouen, Town Library) the card Perditorum Raptor, that is the kidnapper of the lost souls, shows Pluto, the god of the Netherworld who has a monstrous face, on his wagon after having abducted a young girl who appears completely naked. Flames are painted under the wagon, hauled by two frisky horses (figure 8).
The nudity of the two characters has a precise comparison in Ripa with reference to the image of Pluto: “Huomo ignudo, spaventoso in vista…Si dipinge nudo, per dimostrare, che l’anime de’ morti, che vanno nel Regno di Plutone, cioè nell’Inferno, sono prive di ogni bene, & di ogni commodo, onde il Petrarca in una sua canzone, così dice à questo proposito: Che l’alma ignuda, e sola / Convien che arrivi a quel dubbioso calle. Spaventoso si dipinge; percioche così conviene essere à quelli, che hanno da castigare li scelerati secondo, che meritano gl’errori commessi”. (Naked man, dreadful to see…It is to be painted naked, to show, that the dead souls, that go in the Kingdom of Pluto, that is to hell, are deprived of every good, & of every convenience, so that Petrarca says in one of his songs: “The naked soul, and alone / It is better that it reaches that dubious street”. It is painted in a dreadful aspect; because so it is worthwhile to be for those, who have to punish the hellhounds, according to the errors they have done) (“Chariot of Pluto”, Iconology, 1663, page 79).
The figure of the Devil will be transformed by the Seven-eight hundred occultists, in relation to its doctrinal values. Court de Gébelin will represent it with masculine and female characters at the same time, and also bestial, and with two small demons of opposite sex tied up to its pedestal, to represent the lasciviousness that make men slaves of the demon.
Defined by deeper values from an esoteric point of view, is the image of the "Bouc de Sabbat" (figure 9) that it is found in the opening of the second volume of the work by Eliphas Levi Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1856): it represents the emblem of the dissolution (dissolve) and of the condensation (coagulate) of the energies that the Magician can pick up and direct, according to a complex system of correspondences among the various astral plans. The hands turned up and down express the witticism that regulates this action “quod superior, sicut inferior”.