How about a martini, lovely lady? Can I get you a cannoli? You deserve a treat.
The Devil offers you his hand with a promise of delicious release.
Had a tough day? Reward yourself for getting through it. Bored? Something sweet will add a dash of excitement. Happy? Did you accomplish something? Celebrate!
Or maybe it’s the other way around. Does the Devil beckon you by telling you how good you’d look if you were slimmer? Offering clever ways for you to lose weight?
I led a memorial service on Wednesday. The man who died was seventy-one. Sad, yes.
Also senseless. He didn’t want to take insulin for his diabetes because he thought it made him fat.
Would you rather be thin and die young? Or on the heavy and healthy side?
There was a time in my life when I thought I had found the perfect solution to the struggle with my weight. I stopped eating. I was 5’7” and weighed barely 120 pounds.
The Devil is gorgeous and seductive. He whispers pretty lies. “Don’t listen to them. You don’t look like a skeleton. And you’ll be stunning at 115 pounds.”
He shows up after the Death card in the tarot deck, with Temperance, the card of balance, in between. But in our lives, he often shows up before death as dangerous addictions like alcohol, drugs, work, sex, even co-dependent relationships or relying on how others make us feel.
Death is a cycle of transformation. For a caterpillar to become a butterfly, every caterpillar part has to die. We have to let go of the past to allow for the energy of new awareness, new beliefs, and new beginnings.
But we’re not caterpillars. We don’t have internal clocks telling us it’s time to spin a chrysalis.
The Death card asks us to purge ourselves of anything unhealthy or not beneficial to our souls. It invites us to allow and embrace a fresh way of thinking.
It doesn’t have to be extreme. Small changes can effect profound shifts.
Maybe I’ll try something like putting on a pair of fancy undies to remind me of where I want to be. Because it’s hard for me to feel sexy while I’m overeating.