ARCANUM XV "The devil"

The devil.

A horned demon with bat wings seems to warn everyone. At his feet there are two chained demonic figures.

It represents degeneration and ruin. Diabolical temptation.

Magnetism, unbridled passion. But it is also the card of the "genius" who can afford everything and for whom there is neither good nor evil.

The Bullicame Science, poetry and legend all illustrate this unique vulcano. According to historians, in 1320 this vulcano gave birth to those demons which, in the form of bodies and strange animals, intended to submerge Viterbo and which, after being expelled by the intercession of the Madonna Liberatrice, were seen throwing themselves with horrifying screams into the Bullicame. Dante, perhaps during his stay in Rome during the jubilee of the 1300s, had visited this location. He wanted to remember it in the 12th canto of his Inferno, where he alludes to a famous event in the history of Viterbo: the murder of Henry of Cornwall. “... il Centauro s’affisse - Sopra una gente che ’nfino alla gola - Parea che di quel Bulicame uscisse - Mostrocci un’ombra dall’un canto sola...” ("A little farther on the Centaur stopped Above a folk, who far down as the throat ... Seemed from that boiling stream to issue forth. A shade he showed us on one side alone”) and that scornful and solitary shadow was Guido di Monteforte, who had murdered the Prince of England in the Church of St. Silvestro in Viterbo.