SCHOLAR ISLAND
SATAN
"The root meaning of the Hebrew original is approximately "obstacle" or "adversary." But in some instances the superhuman adversary is regarded as actively on the side of the Lord-an agent in his employ . For an example of this point of view, see the story of Balaam, especially as in Num. 22:22
Though Satan plays various roles in the Old Testament, nowhere in it does he appear as the personification of evil. Linguistic evidence supports the view that for the patriarchs and their descendants, Satan was a title rather than a personal name. Any angel who happened to be cast in the role of "the adversary" was, for the moment at least, Satan.
In the New Testament, the whole tone changes. Here he is a distinctive personality, regardless of whether he is serving as "the tempter" (Matt.4:3), "the prince of the power of the air" (Eph. 2:2) or simply "the enemy" (Luke 10:19)
Webb Garrison
Strange Facts About the Bible
"As an appellation of a particular angel, a legal prosecutor in God's celestial court, Satan first appears around 520 B.C.E. in the Book of Zechariah;
The Lord rebukes thee, O Satan; even the Lord that has chosen Jerusalem rebukes thee. (Zech. 3:2)
God and the angel Satan are deep in disagreement, but are not yet arch-adversaries.
Next, Satan as a particular angel appears in the Book of Job (1,2), but here he is merely a divine troublemaker who questions Job's integrity and suggests God torturously test the prophet. Nonetheless, Satan is clearly subordinate to God, unable to act without God's permission, and a member-in-good-standing in the celestial court: bene ha-elohim, "one of God's own."
In 1 Chronicles 21:1, Satan appears as a proper name. Satan is said to incite King David to take a census of Israel, which results in the death of seventy thousand Israelites. Hebrew scholars say that the term "Satan" was a later substitution for the phrase "the Lord," who played a part in the massacre. In other words, to theologically clean up the wrathful God's image Satan was made to take the rap."
-Charles Panati
Sacred Origins Of Profound Things
The anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go number Israel. (2 Sam. 24:1)
And Satan rose up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel. (1 Chron. 21:1)
The Hebrew conception of Satan it is thought, arose in the post-exilic period, and exhibits traces of Babylonian or Assyrian influence. It is not likely that before the captivity any specific doctrine respecting evil spirits was held by the Hebrews. Writing on this subject, Mr. F. T. Hall in his book The Pedigree of The Devil says:- "The term 'Satan' and 'Satins'' which occur in the Old Testament, are certainly not applicable to the modern conception of Satan as a spirit of evil: although it is not difficult to detect in the Old Hebrew mind a fruitful soil, in which the idea, afterwards evolved, would readily take root. The original idea of a 'Satan' is that of an 'adversary,.' or agent of 'opposition.' The angel which is said to have withstood Balaam is in the same breath spoken of as 'The angel of the Lord,' and a 'Satan.' When the Philistines under Achish their king were about to commence hostilities against the Israelites under Saul and David and his men were about to march with the Philistines; the latter objected, lest, in the day of battle, David should become a 'Satan' to them, by deserting to the enemy. When David, in later life, was returning to Jerusalem after Absalom's rebellion and death; and his lately disaffected subjects were, in turn, making their submission; among them came the truculent Shimei: Abishai, David's nephew, one of the fierce sons of Zeruiah, advised that Shimei should be put to death: this grated upon David's feelings, at a time when he was filled with exuberant joy at his own restoration; and he rebuked Abishai as a 'Satan,' Again Satan is said to have provoked David to number Israel, and at the same time, that 'the Lord moved David to number Israel,' a course strenuously opposed by Joab, another of the sons of Zeruiah. Solomon in his message to Hiram, king of Tyre, congratulated himself on having no 'Satins'' and that this peaceful immunity from discord enabled him to build the Temple, which had been forbidden to his warlike father, David. This immunity was not, however lasting: for Hadad, the Edomits, and Regon, of Zobah, became 'Satins'' to Solomon, after his profuse luxury had opened the way for corruption and disaffection. In all these cases, the idea is simply identical with the plain meaning of the word: a Satan is an opponent, an adversary. In the elaborate curse embodied, in the 109th Psalm, the writer speaks of his enemies as his 'Satan's' and prays that the object of his anathema may have 'Satan' standing at his right hand. The Psalmist himself, in the sequel, fairly assumes the office of his enemy's 'Satan' by enumerating his crimes and failings, and exposing them in their worst light. In the 71st Psalm, enemies are identified with 'Satan's' or adversaries. "The only other places in the Old Testament where the word occurs, are in the Book of Job, and the prophecy of Zechariah. In the Book of Job, Satan appears with a distinct personality, and is associated with the sons of God, and in attendance with them before the throne of Jehovah. He is the cynical critic of Job's actions, and in that character he accuses him of insincerity and instability; and receives permission from Jehovah to the the justice of this accusation, by afflicting Job in everything he holds dear. We have here the spy, the informer, the public prosecutor, the executioner; all embodied in Satan, the adversary: these attributes are not amiable ones, but the writer does not suggest the absolute antagonism between Jehovah and Satan, which is a fundamental dogma of modern Christianity. "
-Lewis Spence
An Encyclopedia Of Occultism
"Whichever version of his origin one chooses, and there are many, all depict Satan as an intimate enemy....Those who asked, 'How could God's own angel become his enemy?" were thus asking, in effect, 'How could one of us become one of them.?"
-Elaine Pagels
Origins of Satan
"Satan, being thus confined to a vagabond, wandering, unsettled condition, is without any certain abode; for though he has, in consequence of his angelic nature, a kind of empire in the liquid waste or air, yet this is certainly part of his punishment, that he is….without any fixed place, or space, allowed him to rest the sole of his foot upon."
Daniel Defoe
The History of the Devil
*a rambler
"Agree on one thing: that this greatest and most dangerous enemy did not originate....as an outsider, an alien, or a stranger. Satan is not the distant enemy but the intimate enemy-one's trusted colleague, close associate, brother."
-Elaine Pagels
"When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies."
-Jesus, (speaking of the Satan)
"Only with Christ did a devil enter the world as the real counterpart of God, and in early Jewish-Christian circles Satan, as already mentioned, was regarded as Christ's elder brother."
-C.G. Jung
"We know from his (Milton's ) prose works that he believed everything detestable to be, in the long run, also ridiculous; and mere Christianity commits every Christian to believing that "the Devil is (in the long run) an ass."
C.S. Lewis
(Commenting on Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost:)
"What we see in Satan is the horrible co-existence of a subtle and incessant intellectual activity with an incapacity to understand anything. This doom he has brought upon himself; in order to avoid seeing one thing he has, almost voluntarily, incapacitated himself from seeing at all. And thus, throughout the poem, all his torments come, in a sense, at his own bidding, and the Divine judgment might have been expressed in the words "thy will be done." He says "Evil be thou my good" (which includes "Nonsense be thou my sense:) and his prayer is granted."
C.S. Lewis
A Preface to "Paradise Lost"
"That there is a Devil is a thing doubted by none but such as are under the influence of the Devil. For any to deny the being of a Devil must be from ignorance or performances worse than diabolical."
-Cotton Mather The Wonders of the Invisible World"
"And when I beheld my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: it was the spirit of Gravity-through him all things are ruined. One does not kill by anger but by laughter. Come, let us kill the Spirit of Gravity."*
Nietzsche
Thus Spake Zarathustra
*hippies agree
"I call'd the devil, and he came. And with wonder his form did I closely scan. he is not ugly, and is not lame. but really a handsome and charming man. a man in the prime of life is the devil. Obliging, a man of the world, and civil, a diplomatist too, well skill'd in debate, politics, yea, the devil I call'd and he came to devour my soul, and the whole of humanity."
-Heinrich Heine
"The Devil is a gentleman," said Shelley, which is interesting as a comment on gentlemen but no less interesting about the Devil, because he often has the most civil manners and comes with impeccable letters of introduction. He was himself, after all, rather well-born, and, like the younger son of a good family who has fallen on bad times, he is very adept at insinuating himself into the best of company. His usual accent in literature, as in The Screwtape Letters, is one of exceptional civility: Screwtape in fact writes very much like a don at Magdalen."
-Henry Fairlie
The Seven Deadly Sins
"Satanism is a real thing. What do I mean by this? Carl Jung spoke of this in his book Aeon. In it he hypothesized that the unacknowledged metaphysical dualism of Christianity, stemming from the notion of God's absolute goodness, dialectically implies the rise of Antichrist, and a Satanic finale to the Christian era. What we now observe is the apparent verification of Jung's surmise; especially in the ascendency of Thanatos-as the will to universal destructionism, hate-mongering, and suicide; utterly the opposite of Christ's creative, loving, forgiving, and regenerating spirit. We see that Thanatos , at the close of the second millennium, seizes the world by the throat. The rebellion against God, reality, law, order, and life now declares itself victorious. All values are smashed. Now comes the enshrining of anti-values. Now comes the hour of total destruction. This modernity's Satanism. This is the story of Antichrist. His appearance on earth has already occurred. The demonic energy of political fanaticism is his energy. The destruction of whole peoples, nations, and races is his destructionism."
"And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels..."
_J.R. Nyquist
Origins of the Fourth World War
"How did you come to fall from heaven, bright son of the morning, now thrown to the earth, you who enslaved the nations?
Isaiah 14;12
"A belief in the Devil and his faithful has caused more agony, terror and evil in the world than even any true Satanism."
Lynn Picknett
The Secret History of Lucifer
"Long live Lucifer-but to Hell with Satan!"
Lynn Picknett
"I think if the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness."
-Fyodor Dostoevsky
"The devil under form of Baboon is our grandfather."
-Charles Darwin
"Darwin+Murphy= Reality
"Author of evil, unknown till thy revolt....
How hast thou disturbed
Heaven's blessed peace, and unto Nature brought
Misery, uncreated till the crime
Of thy rebellion. How hast thou instilled
Thy malice into thousands, once upright
And faithful, now proved false...
Heaven casts thee out.
John Milton
Paradise Lost
"Those who see you stare at you (Satan), they ponder your fate:
'Is this the man who shook the earth
and made kingdoms tremble,
the man who made the world a desert,
who overthrew its cities and would not let his captives go home?"
Isaiah 14:16
Some of the monks who had been at Chalcedon returned to Palestine and Egypt determined to stir up trouble. Juvenal might have made his peace with the regime, but when he traveled to Constantinople, opponents staged a coup in his Jerusalem diocese, appointing one Theodosius as rival bishop. Hard-line anti-Chalcedonians like Peter the Iberian served other Palestinian sees. Alarmed at the emerging schism, Marcian urgently sent Juvenal back to restore order. Or as Peter's biographer interpreted matters, the problem could be traced back to Satan, "that prince of renegades and arch-counselor of apostates," who could not bear to see the church making such progress.
Accordingly he entered into the monarch who now held the
reins of government, the Emperor Marcian, who readily listened
to the devil's commands, and he incited him to issue a decree
deposing the righteous bishops who had been ap-
pointed throughout the towns of Palestine by the apostolic
patriarch Theodosius. In case of resistance, they were to be forcibly expelled from their sees and
killed, while the patriarch
Theodosus was condemned to death.
Marcian-or Satan, as we choose to read it-succeeded in keeping control, but at a huge cost to public order."
Phillip Jenkins
Jesus Wars
"Controversy about the orthodox religion of Christians has been put away.....Let profane wrangling cease!
-Emperor Marcian
"If any one of them says that the council of Chalcedon is true, let him go; but drown in the sea those that say it is erroneous and false."
-Emperor Heraclius c.635
"A person (Satan) who has during all times maintained the imposing position of spiritual head of four-fifths of the human race, and political head of the whole of it, must be granted the possession of executive abilities of the loftiest order. In his large presence the other popes and politicians' shrink to midges for the microscope. I would like to see him. I would rather see him and shake him by the tail than any other member of the European Concert"
Mark Twain
"A man untrue to himself becomes a two-legged lie, and such beasts are Shaitan’s best work."
Salman Rushdie
"Is it possible that the human heart can find peace and pleasure only in returning evil for evil?"
"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."
Joseph Conrad
"What, you might ask, is the point of it all?
Seduction, corruption, ruination-
all this hard labour I put in,
Day after night, after day.."
D.J. Enright "Lucifer Broods"
"You were the model of perfection,
full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden,
the garden of God;
every precious stone adorned you:
ruby, topaz, and emerald,
chrysolite, onyx and jasper,
sapphire, turquoise and beryl.
Your settings and mountings were made of gold;
on the day you were created they were prepared.
You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
you walked among the fiery stones.
You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created
till wickedness was found in you.
Through your widespread trade
you were filled with violence,
and you sinned.
So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God,
and I expelled you, O guardian cherub,
from among the fiery stones.
Your heart became proud
on account of your beauty,
and you corrupted your wisdom
because of your splendor.
So I threw you to the earth;
I made a spectacle of you before kings."
Ezek. 28:12-17
"And thus was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down-that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
Rev 12-7-9
Portrait of Satan.-Angels do not have childhoods and Satan is no exception. He first appeared at the creation jealously refusing to show any interest in God's new toy, Man. At one time Satan was thought to be God's favorite. he was the second being of creation and the highest angel that stands before God's throne. In the Rabbinic scripture his name is Sammael in the Qur'an it is Iblis, and elsewhere in apocalyptic texts, he is Sataniel.
Whatever his name, it was always his idea to send the serpent to Eve in the Garden of Eden. He found Eve curiously attractive and after the Fall, it is written that he had intercourse with her (Bereshit, Mishnah 42) and that Cain was the product of this union. During his squabble with God he had the idea of building himself a throne higher than the clouds above the earth, so that he might be equal with God. God claimed to have thrown him out of heaven: 'Then I hurled him out from the height,' he said, 'together with his angels. And he was flying around in the air ceaselessly, above the Abyss'(2 En. 29:6).
Why then was Satan on such good terms with God in the book of Job? Here, as in the story of Balaam (Num. 22-24), he is not God's adversary but a useful messenger whose task it is to test obstruct and accuse mankind on God's behalf. There is no question of Satan being punished for the harm that comes to Job, far from it. He is described in the book of Job as one of the 'sons of God' and they talk together like close friends:
Where have you been? God asked him at a council meeting.
'Oh just roaming about on earth, here and there.' came the relaxed reply (Job 1:7)
-Alexander Waugh
GOD
"Iago is sustained and determined by the cosmic power of Envy, wherever he appears, he creates doubt and despair as his harvest. Iago is at work everywhere at all times."
-Casrl J. burkhardt
Iago is at work everywhere at all times."
-Kerenyi
"The last century has been particularly brutal for the Yezidis. The sect lost thousands of their brothers and sisters during Turko-Armenian War, and although they managed to remain "under the radar" for awhile, when the dictator Saddam Hussein took control of their country; he quickly implemented a nationwide crusade to exterminate the Yezidi "Devil Worshippers." Hussein stole much of the Yezidis' ancestral land and forced many of them to flee in the Sinjar Mountains to avoid torture and persecution. Those who remained behind had their wells poisoned as Hussein made one last dramatic push for a complete genocide of the Yezidis. When Hussein was subsequently defeated by the U.S. armed forces the Yezidis celebrated, but their joy was short-lived and their persecution soon resumed. During the general elections of Iraq in 2005 , they were told that they would have to be represented by the Kurds in the Iraqi congress and many of their villages were not even given ballots. While the Kurds are historically related to the Yezidis, most of them are now practicing Moslems are therefore faced with an entirely different set of needs and issues.
THE MOSLEM'S "SATAN"
Since asked by the Yezidis to assist them and their relatives back in Iraq during their current crisis., I have continued to wonder why the Moslems persist in characterizing Tawsi Melek (The Peacock Angel) as Satan. I have discovered that the followers of Islam have decreed along the way that any deity that pronounces itself as the Creator, or as a "second" Creator, is the "Evil One." There can be only one creator, and that is Allah. Secondly, the Moslems currently maintain that a name for the Peacock Angel in the Yezidi scripture known as Mishafa Re? "The Black Book", is Azazel, an epithet of Satan. And finally, according to all Moslems, if Tawsi Melek is the first and greatest of the angels sent to the Garden of Eden, then he must be Satan, the famous angel which the Moslem texts indicate" fell" in Paradise when he refused to bow down to Adam, a lowly entity made of the Clay of the Earth.
The Yezidis have an answer for each of these allegations against Tawsi Melek. They state that Tawsi Melek was an angel created and instructed by God to assist Him in creating the universe. The Peacock Angel did not proceed on his own volition. And anyway, doesn't the Koran speak of angels who assist Allah? Secondly, the name of the Peacock Angel in the Black Book is Aziz, not Azazel. And finally, God advised Tasi Melek and all the archangels to bow down to Him only, and that any other worship would be considered idol worship. Thus, if any transgression was made it from those angels who did bow down to Adam, not the one that did not.
In order to further clarify to their Islamic neighbors who Tawsi Melek is, the Yezidis will happily reveal that in Moslem tradition he is not Satan but Al-Khadr, an enlightened figure portrayed in the Koran as a teacher of Moses. The name Al-Khadr translates as "Green Man," which was the role assumed by Tawsi Melek when he merged with earth by spreading his mostly green peacock colors throughout our planet. In Kataragama, Sri Lanka, Al-Khadr is currently worshipped as the Moslem form of the Hindu Murugan who as stated is the Tamil counterpart of Tawsi Melek. Thus, Tawsi Melek, Al-Khadr and Muragan are all synonymous.
Unfortunately I have seen that it does not matter what evidence the Yezidis submit in defense of their Peacock Angel. Their Moslem persecutors will not be dissuaded from their continued campaign of genocide. Perhaps the time has come for the international community of scholars and religious leaders to step in and help negotiate a treaty between the Moslems and Yezidis by helping convince the cadre of Moslem extremists that Tawsi Melek is not their Satan. Otherwise, we could soon lose an irreplaceable link to the history of humanity."
-Mark Amaru Pinham North American representative of the Yezidis and Author of "The Truth behind the Christ Myth: The Redemption of the Peacock Angel
(from article in Atlantis Rising: Jan/Feb 2008)
"....But most Western people misunderstood the image of the Great Satan. In Christianity, Satan is a figure of overpowering evil, but in Islam he is a much more manageable figure. The Koran even hints that Satan will be forgiven on the Last Day, such is its confidence in the all-conquering goodness of God. Those Iranians who called America "the Great Satan" were not saying that the United States was diabolically wicked but something more precise. In popular Shiism, the Shaitan, the Tempter, is a rather ludicrous creature, chronically incapable of appreciating the spiritual values of the unseen world. In one story, he is said to have complained to God about the privileges given to humans, but was easily fobbed off with inferior gifts. Instead of prophets, the shaitan was quite happy with fortune-tellers, his mosque was the bazaar, he was more at home in the public baths, and instead of seeking God, his quest was for wine and women. He was, in fact, incurably trivial, trapped forever in the realm of the exterior (zahir) world and unable to see that there was a deeper and more important dimension of existence. For many Iranians, America, the Great Shaitan was "the Great Trivializer." The bars, casinos and secular ethos of West-toxicated North Tehran typified the American ethos, which seemed deliberately to ignore the hidden (batin) realities that alone gave meaning. Furthermore, America, the Shaitan, had tempted the Shaw from the true values of Islam to a life of superficial secularism."
Karen Armstrong
The Battle for God
"It is terribly important to understand that Satan is a spirit. I have said I have met Satan, and this is true. But it is not tangible in the way that matter is tangible. It no more has horns, hooves, and forked tail than God has a long white beard. Even the name, Satan, is just a name we have given to something basically nameless. Like God, Satan can manifest itself in and through material beings, but it itself is not material.....In one case described it manifested itself through the patient's writhing serpentine body, biting teeth, scratching nails, and hooded reptilian eyes. But there were no fangs, no scales. It was, through the use of the patient's body, extraordinarily and dramatically and even supernaturally snakelike. But it is not itself a snake. It is spirit.....Satan has no power except in a human body....Satan's threats are always empty. They are all lies. In fact, the only power that Satan has is through human belief in its lies."
M.Scott Peck
People of the Lie
"In C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, the senior devil instructs his apprentice to direct his victim's decent instincts towards mankind as a whole, and his selfishness, vanity and cruelty towards those around him. In that way, the decency will be largely theoretical and the viciousness only too real."
John O' Sullivan, ed of U.S. Policy Review, Daily Telegraph, 20.9.82
"Although Satan does his part, God still retains supreme authority."
-John Calvin
"It is so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the devil when he is the only explanation of it."
-Ronald Knox
Shorthand Transcript of a Metaphysical Press Conference Given by the Demon in Warsaw, on 20th December 1963
"Of course, I know that you have ceased to believe in me. I know it, although it's of no importance to me. Whether you believe in me or not is not my affair, it is your business and yours alone. Do you understand, gentlemen? It is utterly unimportant to me, or rather, even if I occasionally wonder about it, I do it only as would a scientist whose mind sometimes roams around some strange phenomena of nature. "Mind," I say, because everything I do, everything I experience remains exactly the same as it has always been. My vanity is not affected by the fact that you deny my existence, for I have no vanity. I don't aspire to appear to you better than I am, or even as I am, because I want to be what I am and nothing else,. Your disbelief does not affect any of my desires, because all my desires have been fulfilled. It does not matter to me that my existence should be acknowledge, what matters is that the job of destruction should continue. The belief or disbelief in my existence does not affect the scope of my serious work.
Sometimes I wonder about the reasons for your disbelief. Well, the thing quite simply sometimes catches my eye, so I look at your miserable skepticism just as one looks at a spider walking up the wall. i wonder at the ease with which you have discarded your faith; I wonder, too, that with the progress of disbelief I seem to be the first to fall victim to it. "Fall victim" is just a manner of speaking, of expressing something glibly; in reality I am no victim, and, of course, I don't fall ever. Yet the disbelief seems to begin with me. It seems to be easier to discard the devil, after which it's the turn of the angel, then the Trinity, and, finally, God. it is as if the devil dwelt in the most sensitive part of your imagination, in its freshest and least consolidated stratum, the most recent tissue of your faith, perhaps even under its most shameful layer, unpleasant, difficult to recall, reluctantly mentioned. Yet I observe that those who believe do so ardently, with enthusiasm, sometimes with fury, but even the exclude the devil from their beliefs; they have stopped talking about him, they avert their gaze uncertainly when asked about him and are not sure themselves whether they have forsaken him completely or whether there is a single cell in their soul where his presence is still felt, for that cell seems slowly to shrink and die away and the devil falls into oblivion. Let it remain so.
I occasionally visit churches and listen to sermons, calmly, attentively, without a smile. It is only on rare occasions-increasingly rare-that a preacher, even a poor country parson, remembers to mention me from the pulpit, in the confessional, or anywhere else. And why? you may ask. Because he is ashamed! he simply is ashamed. For it might be said that he is an ignoramus, a simpleton, who believes in fairy tales and does not follow the spirit of the times which the Church must take into account. Must it? Yes, the theologians say so; the Church follows the spirit of the times and often precedes it, she strides boldly forward, not afraid of any new ideas-with the proviso, they add, that the new should affect only the form, only the language and the external trappings, and not the mystical core or the faith in the worship of God. But why should it be so, master theologians? And what about me, if I may stake my claim, although I am completely indifferent to the thing itself. Where is there a place for the fallen angel? Am I only a part of the language, a fairly unimportant decoration which can be changed from day to day like a tie? Is Satan only a rhetorical figure, loquendi modus, une facon de parler? Is he a means of stirring up the dull imagination of the faithful, to be replaced at will by something else? Or else, gentlemen, is he a reality, undeniable, recognized by tradition, revealed in the Scripture, commented upon by the Church for two millennia, tangible and acute? Why do you avoid me, gentlemen? Are you afraid that the skeptics will mock you, that you will be laughed at in satirical late night reviews? Since when is the faith affected by the jeers of heathen and heretics? What road are you taking? If you forsake the foundations of the faith for fear of mockery, where will you end? If the devil falls victim to your fear today, God's turn must inevitably come tomorrow. Gentlemen, you have been ensnared by the idol of modernity which fears ultimate matters and hides from you their importance. I don't mention it for my own benefit-it's nothing to me-I am talking about and you and for you, forgetting for a moment my own vocation, and even my duty to propagate error. I am not the only one to say this. Here and there a monk or chaplain can be heard who loudly and in despair reminds people of the devil's rights, prods the faithful, pronounces the downfall of the Church, preaches the upholding of the holy traditions. But who listens to them? And how many of these voices calling in the wilderness are there? The Church turns a deaf ear, running a race against her time; she wants to be modern, progressive, hygiene, functional, efficient, well trained, swinging, motorized, scientific, clean energetic. Were I really interested in your fortunes, gentlemen, oh, how glad I would be to show up all your misery, your pitiful struggles to keep up with the times, which always runs a thousand miles ahead of you anyway! Sports, television, the cinema, banks, the press, elections, town-planning, industry: Do you really want to rule such a world? What I am saying is, rule it! Do you want to please it? Do you want to be modern in that kind of world, to break with "fables," to march at the head of mankind inhaling atomic dust into lungs already charred by cigarettes and gasoline fumes? What must you give up to gain recognition in that kind of world? The devil? Simply the devil And does it seem to you that the concession will end there? Gentlemen! You have ceased to fear the lack of faith, you have ceased to fear heresy, you don't fear the devil, therefore you can't fear God; you fear only one thing-to be called backward, to be slandered by being called Medieval, to be contemptuously branded as un-modern, to be shown up as unhygienic, unsportsmanlike, unscientific, nonrich, not industrialized. This the one and only thing you fear, and feverishly you condition your printing presses, your banks, your political parties, your Le Corbusier chapels, your abstract stained-glass windows to refute this accusation. Of course, it's not I who lose by your downfall. Fall down, ,gentlemen, I am not involved, it's you who fall. In the vain hope that with flattery and officiousness you will catch up to the skeptics, you are ready to accept their lack of faith, to deny everything you had lived by until now and are stupid enough to think that you have preserved a faith unaltered in its content and given it only a modern "form." And the devils is the first to fall on the altar, always the first......"
-Leszek Kolakowski
The Key to Heaven and Conversations with the Devil
"It is all a dream-a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought-a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"
(Satan speaks in Mark Twains unfinished novel The Mysterious Stranger)
"Few if any of us can now aspire to wrestle with the Devil himself. He is richer than the hundred poorest 'developing countries' put together and lives on an island patrolled by many security guards, controlling his universal empire with the aid of astute computers. A present-day Christian would have to be a brilliant computer hack armed with a really ingenious anti-Devil virus. However, the Devil's subordinates move quite casually amongst us. I will introduce them so that you will recognize them and be on your guard to thwart them as best you can.
Clootie, or 'Cloots', Burns's acquaintance, drinks in our locals, offers useful tips on the horses, points out the likely lasses, and mingles with our football crowds jovially inciting them to devilment. Watch out for him at weekend demonstrations and big international conferences about world trade, developing countries and ecological problems. He mixes with peaceful protesters and suggests acts of provocation which will be used to justify heavy intimidating violence by Leviathan's hired thugs-police, whatever. Then he slips outside the cordon to join his sniveling little sidekick, Toerag, in some safely distant cafe.
-Angus Calder
Gods, Mongrels and Demons
"Hell is Empty, And all the Devils Are Here."
-Shakespeare, The Tempest
"Hell must be Empty....all the Devils are Here."
( a priest on the event of the Hutu/Tutsi War)
"Lexicographer John Ayto reveals that the word "pagan" originally meant "something stuck in the ground, a landmark" and later came to mean "country dweller"' it has certainly no links to Satan or the Devil.
Authors of A History of Pagan Europe Prudence Jones and Nigel Pennick point out that "the idea of a Devil, a subverter of the One Truth, is not found in Paganism."
The Encyclopedia Britannica further backs up this view with the following explanation: "Modern witchcraft and neopaganism are not to be confused with Satanism....These groups worship not Satan, but pre-Christian gods."
In her 1994 book Celebrate the Earth, "high Priestess of witchcraft" Laurie Cabot states emphatically that "there is no Devil or Satan in our religion."
Satan is a Judeo-Christian and Islamic concept with no connection to older pagan practices."
Andrea Barham
The Pedant's Revolt
"There are sacraments of evil as well as good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight. It is possible that man may sometimes return on the track of evolution, and it is my belief that an awful lore is not yet dead."
-Arthur Machen
(Darwin+Murphy=Reality
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Book: "The Prince of Darkness" by Jeffrey Burton Russell
Book: "The Devil" by Jeffrey Burton Russell
Book: "A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials" by Frances Hill
Book: "People of the Lie" by M .Scott Peck
Book: "The Origin of Satan" by Elaine Pagels
Book: "The Affair Of The Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louix XIV" by Anne Somerset
Book: "The Secret History of Lucifer" by Lynn Picknett
Book: "Evil A Primer: A History of A Bad Idea From Beelzebub To Bin Laden" by William Hart