Passover or the Feast of Freedom is the foundational feast of the Jewish people. In it, we remember God’s loving kindness in saving his people from bondage in Egypt and creating Israel as a nation. All that so that God himself would dwell among His people
And give us His Word in order to bless all nations. But could it be that this feast actually alludes to an even greater salvation yet to come? In the story of the crossing of the Red Sea. Moses encourages his nation to trust God. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.
Then, after God saves them from the Egyptians, it says. When Israel saw the great power which the Lord had used against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and they believed in the Lord and in His servant, Moses. But this would not be the
Last time at which God was gracious towards his people. God spoke to the Prophet Isaiah in Chapter 52 about a totally new exodus. Be cheerful, shout joyfully. Together you ruins of Jerusalem for the Lord has comforted His people. He has redeemed Jerusalem.
The Lord has buried His holy arm in the sight of all nations so that all the ends of the earth may see the salvation of our God. Isaiah prophesied that God would restore the nation of Israel, that He would save them from their enemies, grant them peace and security.
However, this time the salvation will not only include a physical redemption. Rather, it will include a spiritual redemption reaching the whole world. And this is what Isaiah talks about in the next chapter. Chapter 53. All of us, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way.
But the Lord has caused the wrongdoing of us all to fall on Him, just like the Passover lamb. Isaiah prophesied that the servant of the Lord would give his life to save his people. In chapter 53, The Salvation that the servant of the Lord brings to
Israel is not from Egypt or from the plague of the first born. Rather, it is the salvation from our personal sinfulness. The salvation God offers to us is from our guilt. After Isaiah describes the death of the servant, he continues to prophesy that he would prolong his days.
How can it be the only way the servant of the Lord can prolong his days after his death is through His resurrection? No wonder that when we quote these verses to our Jewish brethren, they think we quote from the New Testament. But the Hebrew Bible states clearly
That the Messiah had to suffer and die to redeem his people. But he doesn’t remain in the grave. He rises and grants forgiveness of sins and justifies the sinner by the knowledge of the righteous one. My servant will justify the many. In first Corinthians 15, Paul boldly declares
That if the Messiah has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain. Your faith also is in vain. If the Messiah has not been raised, in other words, since the beginning of the faith in Yeshua, the Messiah, his resurrection stood as the cornerstone, the very foundation
Upon which the truth of Yeshua stands or falls. If you’re sure did not rise up from the dead, then his death is meaningless. We are still in Egypt without a savior. Guilty before God and slaves to sins, bondage. The disciples did not expect the resurrection of Yeshua.
They thought and hoped that he would free Israel from the Egyptians of that time, the Romans. They thought he would strike them and drive them out of the land. They missed part of the message of the prophets. They thought that the idea of a crucified
Messiah is a failing Messiah at best, or worse, a false messiah whom they would need to replace with another Moses who would deliver them from the Romans against all odds. And in contrast to their initial expectations after Yeshua’s death. Something happened. The disciples began to insist that
Yeshua, in fact, rose from the dead and conquered death. They began to proclaim their message in Jerusalem, in the very place where Yeshua was crucified and buried, where everyone could go and check if the tomb was in fact empty. Not only did they proclaim the message boldly,
But they were ready and willing to suffer and even die for it. And most of them did. The significance of the resurrection is that it validates Yeshua’s message. His gospel is true. Yeshua claimed to be God himself, who came to free us from sin, to cleanse us from our guilt and justify us.
The resurrection is the proof that his radical claims about his identity and work were true. Moreover, his resurrection gives us hope and assurance that this life is not all that there is. The death is not the end. On the basis of Yeshua’s resurrection, the New Testament proclaims that anyone
Who puts his faith in him will rise up from the dead to everlasting life. But the fact is, Messiah has been raised from the dead. The first fruit of those who are asleep for since by a man death came, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.
Four as in Adam all die. So also in Messiah, all will be made alive. The gift of salvation is given freely. We receive it through faith, through putting our trust in the Savior of Israel. Yeshua, notice that in the story of the Exodus.
Or more specifically in the crossing of the Red Sea, the nation of Israel did not need to do anything to merit their salvation from the Egyptians. Their own power could not stop the Egyptian army God alone, granting them freedom and salvation. They only needed to step in faith towards the water.
As the author of Hebrews puts it by faith, they pass through the Red Sea as through dry land. All people, Jews and Gentiles, are guilty before God and find themselves separated from Him due to their personal sinfulness. In Hebrew, the word sin comes from the same root
As missing the mark in our inherent sinfulness as humans. We miss God’s mark, but through Yeshua, as death and resurrection, he opened a new way to enter into an eternal relationship with God through faith. Yeshua was delivered over because of our wrongdoings and was raised for our justification.
This relationship cannot be broken since it is established upon the perfect sacrifice of the ultimate Passover lamb. The sacrifice of Yeshua. Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world for by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. So what about you?
Have you put your faith in Yeshua? If not, today is the day of salvation. If you want to receive forgiveness of sins, eternal life and a living relationship with your loving creator, simply talk to your Heavenly Father in your own words. He listens and that is the meaning of prayer. Rejoice with us.
FERGUSON: Well, what a great morning we’ve had already in God’s Word, and a treat and a treasure earlier to listen to Johnny and rather unusual experience for me to be singing alongside R.C. and C.J., who are the only two friends I have in the world, neither of whom actually has a
First name. And I hope as we continue on today, which is an arduous day for us…most of us, unlike those Ephesians who listened to Paul for five hours a day every day of the week apparently, we’re not used to having five hours of Bible exposition, but at the end, I really do trust
That we will all be able to say that it did as much good and God’s Word was at work among us. We’re coming to our next theme in our series at this conference. The title is, “The Substitutionary Atonement of Christ.” And I’m going to ask you to turn back to the passage that
Dr. MacArthur mentioned last evening, the prophecy of Isaiah, or as I shall say for the rest of this address, Isaiah, that’s the same prophet, and I want to ask you to turn to chapter 52 and verse 13
And keep your Bibles open there at this great and most glorious of Old Testament chapters. Isaiah is speaking here as the mouthpiece of God, and clearly, we recognize of whom the prophet speaks. “Behold, My Servant shall act wisely; He shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted. As many
Were astonished at you—His appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and His form beyond that of the children of mankind—so shall He sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths because of Him, for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not
Heard they understand. Who has believed what they heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground;
He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely
He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed. All we
Like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth;
Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation,
Who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of My people? And they made His grave with the wicked and with a rich man in His death, although He had
Done no violence, and there was no deceit in His mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush Him; He has put Him to grief; when His soul makes an offering for sin, He shall see His offspring;
He shall prolong His days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. Out of the anguish of His soul He shall see and be satisfied; by His knowledge shall the righteous one, My Servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore,
I will divide Him a portion with the many, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.”
Our Heavenly Father, You are in Your holy temple and our prayer is that all the earth will be silenced and silent before You. We pray for ourselves that you will unstop our ears, that you will melt our hearts by renewing our minds by Your truth, that as we come to
You like Greeks of old and say, “We would see Jesus.” We pray that through His Word He will manifest Himself to those who love Him and trust Him. And to those who as yet do not know Him,
He will for them make a new appearing and this we pray for His great namesake. Amen. I attended a school where the one obligatory subject was religious education. It was part of the law of the land. The content of that religious education varied. In my case,
It was largely memorization of Scripture, although I was very far from being a Christian little boy. And so, part and parcel of school life for me all through my elementary school and high school days was the public reading of Scripture. I’ve never forgotten the occasion in the role of students who
Were prescribed for the reading of the Scriptures, when one of my closest friends at school who was, I think, trying to be a Christian, but certainly wasn’t yet a Christian, was assigned this passage for reading in our school assembly. And I remember the cringing
Feeling I had sitting in the back of the assembly when my close friend announced that, “The reading this morning is taken from the Gospel according to Isaiah, the Gospel according to Isaiah.” I’d been a Christian believer for a couple of years and two thoughts almost instantaneously
Came into my mind. One was his name was Hugh, I thought, “Oh, Hugh, how could you possibly do this in public!” And the other thought was, “What you have just said is far truer than you ever realized.” Because this is, in a very profound way, the gospel according to Isaiah.
And if you’re particularly familiar with the writings of the Apostle Paul, I think you more and more will have become conscious that this whole section of Isaiah, from Isaiah 40 onwards, made a powerful impression on the whole thinking about the Apostle Paul as to what the gospel is and how
The gospel works and how the gospel is the saving righteousness of God. But, of course, this passage not only makes an impression on the Apostle Paul, this passage, next interestingly to the 110th Psalm, is the most cited passage in the whole of the New Testament Scriptures. And far beyond Psalm
110 is the passage in the Old Testament to which there are more allusions in the New Testament than any other passage. And one cannot read either the Epistles or the Gospels without appreciating here for the apostles having learned at the feet of the Lord Jesus, was the passage to which the
Lord Jesus must’ve turned again and again and again and again. Was He asking the teachers in the Jerusalem temple as a 12-year-old boy, “Who is this of whom the prophet speaks?” So, I take it from His earliest years, the Lord, His Father was impressing upon Him ever more profoundly the
Shape and pattern of the ministry to which He was being called as our Lord and Savior. And so, as He rises from the dead and walks on the Emmaus road, He chastises His dear followers by saying, “Haven’t you understood the Scriptures that have taught us that the Son of Man must suffer many
Things and then enter into His glory?” You will be familiar, I’m sure, with the context of the whole second half of the prophecy of Isaiah from chapter 40 onwards. Isaiah is looking forwards into the future when the people of God will be exiled in Babylon. When the nation, as one commentator says,
Will have been disemboweled and their hopes desecrated, and the awful command of God that if His people returned from serving Him, they would be sent into the far country; the very words that Jesus would later use in the parable of the two sons, is language that’s drawn from God’s
Deuteronomic law, “Disobey Me and you will go into the far country.” And now as Isaiah looks forward in history to their fate and destiny in the far country, he sees that their greatest need is for
God to bring about a new Exodus, a second Exodus. And he sees in a marvelous way in chapter 45, coming over the horizon of history, the great figure of Cyrus, described, pagan though he is, as especially anointed by God to break down the barriers to God’s people returning to the Promised
Land and returning to His promised blessings in Jerusalem. And Isaiah gives to the people this glorious hope of a return from exile in their bondage in Babylon. And yet, simultaneously, Isaiah recognizes that that exile in Babylon is neither the darkest exile, nor is it the deepest
Bondage, and that what God’s people need is not simply a return from Babylon, what God’s people need is salvation from their sin and guilt, from the dominion of darkness and bondage to Satan. And so, even as Cyrus is appearing over the horizon in Isaiah chapter 45, already there has begun in
Chapter 42, to appear over the horizon a shadowy figure described by God as “My Servant.” And in a series of poems or songs, Isaiah is given an enriched revelation into the calling of this Servant, into the preparation of this Servant, into the character of this Servant, until
Eventually in this, the fourth of the Servant Songs, beginning in chapter 52 and going right through chapter 53, he is given this illumination into the suffering of the Servant of God. Often when we read the Scriptures, either a narrative or a Psalm, a poem, unlike some of
The things that we find in our Western literature and in our Western poetry, very often the place to look in the Hebrew Scriptures for the key to the whole is not just that the end, but at the center. And if you’re using almost any modern translation of the Old Testament Scriptures, you’ll notice
That this passage from the end of 52 to the end of 53 is broken up into five stanzas, and it is the third, the central of those stanzas that takes us to the very heart of God’s revelation to Isaiah,
And as a matter of fact, to the very heart of the gospel, and we will get there in a moment. But, first of all, notice the shape of this poem, of this song. Do you notice how it begins in chapter 52 verses 13 to 15? With the exultation of the Servant and then
It ends in chapter 53 in verses 10 through 12 with again the exultation of the Servant. And the shape of this song is what they used to teach us at least in schools and the old mathematics,
The shape of this song is in the shape of a graph, a parabola which begins in exultation and goes down to the depths and then brings us up again to a glorious exultation. If at all you’re familiar with Philippians chapter 2, you’ll realize that this is the same parabolic shape;
He is in the form of God, counting equality with God is not something that he grasps, but He makes Himself of no reputation, and He comes down and down and down and once He is come to the place where He has emptied Himself and become obedient even to the death of the cross,
God highly exalts Him and gives Him the name that is above every name. It’s the very shape of what the Lord Jesus did in the Upper Room in John chapter 13, knowing and He had come from God
And that He was going to God, He laid aside His garments, girded Himself with the servant’s towel, bowed further and washed His disciples’ feet and then He took His place again at the head of the table and asked His disciples if they had any inkling whatsoever as to what it was
He had just done. He could as easily have said to them, “Don’t you yet understand the fourth of the Servant Songs that portrays the suffering and the glory of the Messiah who is to come?” And so, in this marvelous passage, we have a kind of tapestry of the Suffering Servant. Unlike many tapestries
There is side action going on around in order to help us to understand what it is that is really going on in the center, at the very heart of the gospel, the message of the Suffering Servant. So, let’s look together for a few minutes at this marvelous song about the Suffering Servant. Stanza
Number one in chapter 52 verse 13 to verse 15. This is a stanza that explains to us in a very moving way that the Servant’s triumph is wholly unexpected, the Servant’s triumph is wholly unexpected. “Look,” says God, “look at Him, look at my Servant as He acts wisely,
He shall be high and lifted up and exalted.” And yet this wisdom is not the wisdom of this world and this exultation is going to come in the strangest and most unexpected of ways, because, behold! His triumph is unexpected because of the nature of His appearance.
“He is to be,” notice the language, “so marred beyond human semblance.” This is Isaiah’s sense that the One who is to come in order to repair the disfigured image of God is going to become disfigured Himself. As that marvelous commentator,
Old Testament scholar, Alec Motyer says, “What Isaiah encourages us to say is not, is not, the question is this He? but as we gaze upon the Suffering Servant, to ask the question is this human?” This is what we mean when we say that He descended into hell, that He was, as it were,
To repair our humanity in the process of virtually becoming unmanned, deserted by God. And so, it is completely astonishing for Isaiah that this One who is so marred should at the same time have such an extraordinary effect on the nations. Look at what he says, “He will sprinkle many nations.
Kings shall shut their mouths because of him.” The language of “sprinkle” there, incidentally, is the language of the Levitical law code, it’s the language of the sprinkling of the blood of sacrifice that brings cleansing and forgiveness. And here is this picture of the Suffering Servant,
Disfigured beyond all ordinary humanity. And yet the paradox, the as yet unresolved paradox of His ministry is that one day this One will sprinkle not simply the Jews, but will sprinkle the nations. And certainly no one who knew his Bible as well as Isaiah knew his Bible would
Miss the connection between that statement and the great essence of the Abrahamic covenant promise, “In your seed will all the nations of the earth be blessed.” And the promise of the second Psalm, when the Father says to His Son, “Ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance.”
But you see, it’s the tension of the situation, miss the tension of the situation and we probably miss the wonderful grace of God in the gospel. If we don’t feel that there is so much in the
Gospel that ought not to be for sinners, then we scarcely begin to taste the wonder of God’s grace to us in Jesus Christ. Here is One who gains worldwide triumph by being marred beyond human semblance. So, the Servant will triumph, but His triumph will be totally unexpected.
And so, Isaiah now in the next stanza, the next few verses of his poem picks up that notion that the Servant is going to suffer so grievously and he begins to focus attention now, not so much on the way the Servant’s triumph is unexpected, but the way in which the Servant’s humiliation
Is described. A younger generation has taught me the word “prequel.” I think it is a relatively new word, at least in the Oxford English dictionary, maybe also in Webster’s. What is the prequel? Well, we’re used to the sequel. The prequel is something that you’re given afterwards that helps
To explain something that you were given earlier. And that’s what these following verses are, they’re really the prequel to help us understand and tease out, to pull a strand out of this tapestry and see where it gets its connections. And so, he describes the Servant’s humiliation
So beautifully. He describes Him so poignantly; He was growing up before the Lord like a young plant, and then these words, “Like a root out of a dry ground.” It must have meant something very special to Isaiah. Do you remember at the end of his call, this is a Ligonier conference, everyone here
Remembers the end of His call in Isaiah chapter 6, when everything is being demolished under the judgment of God and yet God says that there’ll be a stump that will remain. And then in Isaiah 11,
He looks forward to the One will be anointed with the power of the Holy Spirit, and he says about Him, “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his
Roots that shall bear fruit.” And now the Lord is showing to him that this One who would bring hope, this One who would be full of the Spirit, the man of the Holy Spirit who would exercise justice and
Righteousness, who would be marked by perfect holiness. There was no beauty in Him by nature that we should recognize Him or be drawn to Him. He was the son of David. But look at David’s house, a carpenter and a young maiden and a baby born in a cave, an outhouse in Bethlehem.
This is where the royal line of David has ended. This is dry ground. This baby is a tiny shoot. And you and I would pass His crying as we walked past the cave. We would pass Him by in the street
And think there was nothing unusual, attractive, extraordinary about Him. And then as He grew from those inauspicious origins, He would experience an ongoing rejection. He would be despised. I wonder if you’ve ever been despised. I wonder if you’ve ever had the humiliation of losing
Your reputation unjustly. I remember one occasion coming home to my wife and I said to her about a situation, I said, “You know the only thing I can lose here is my reputation. It’s the only thing
I can lose. So, let’s go forward.” I was a grown man and I had no idea whatsoever how appallingly painful it is to lose your reputation. “And He made Himself of no reputation.” And the disposition of men and women towards Him was “He was despised and rejected by men.” How
Could He be Messiah when He “shared our griefs and was a man of sorrows, and we hid our faces from Him and esteemed Him not?” Isn’t this the reason why our Lord Jesus prays in John 17:24, “Father, these have been with Me and they have seen Me in My humiliation. My deepest longing
For them is that they may see Me in My glory.” He was despised and men esteemed Him not. And, of course, all this is really setting us up. This is the revelation of God that’s coming to Isaiah
To make Him say, “Lord, tell me more. Bring me to the center of the tapestry so that I can begin to work out,” because, Isaiah, you remember how Peter says this about all the prophets, they wrote these things down and then they studied them themselves and they were scratching their heads and saying,
“Who was I speaking about when I said this? What did God mean here?” And so, He comes, you notice in verses 4 through 6, to the Servant’s suffering being explained. The Servant’s exultation is unexpected. The Servant’s humiliation is described. The
Servant’s suffering is explained. And he brings us now to the great paradox, “But surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; and yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.” You see he’s in the position… as Isaiah as he gets this word from God, he’s in
The position, he’s looking forward actually to the confession of believers in the New Testament day, the first Christians looking back on this and saying, “We never puzzled it out. He made it so clear to u,s but we never puzzled it out. We can’t understand how He could be One who would bear our
Griefs and carry our sorrows, who went about doing good, but then was treated as a derelict, was beaten, and chastised and smitten and afflicted.” Well, of course, their eyes were blind until the Lord Jesus opened their eyes just to put things together, that faith should
Have been able to see that what was happening to Him was that He was becoming a curse for us, that the blessing promised to Abraham might flow through His cross and reach the nations. But you notice how Isaiah almost says, “Now come now, camp on this for a little while, steel yourself
To look into the heart of the cross where He was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities and chastised to bring us peace and beaten in order that we might be healed.”
I don’t know if they say it any longer, but they used to say that every kind of wound known to medical science could be found on the body of the dying Lord Jesus Christ. He was wounded, but not only wounded—that was external, really; He was crushed. He was crushed. It’s not quite the
Same language here, but I do still think there’s an echo of what the Lord had promised in Genesis 3:15 here, don’t you? That as the Lord Jesus would crush the head of the serpent, His own heel would
Be crushed and He was being inwardly crushed. And then He’s portrayed as One who is actually suffering for our peace, a chastisement. Now, that’s interesting because basically, basically, chastisement is family language. Punishment is legal language; chastisement is family language.
And yet at the same time, He is One, with His stripes we are healed who is judiciously beaten. Do you notice how perfect this statement is? Because as it speaks about the sufferings of Christ, it moves from the relatively external to the internal. Jesus is wounded, Jesus is crushed,
Jesus is chastised within the context of His family. Jesus is beaten. He is legally punished. And just as there seems to be a kind of increasing intensity in the description of the sufferings of Christ, there is an increasing intensity in the description of why it is that He suffers.
He’s wounded for transgressions, for breaking the law of God. But then what He is bruised for is iniquity. He is inwardly crushed for the inner perversion of my heart. And because of my dis-peace, “There is no peace,” saith my God, “for the wicked.” He undergoes chastisement in
The family to bring me into the family so that as He is beaten with rods in a legal judgment, my whole being, my sickness may be relieved and I may be set free. And in this, Isaiah says, the Lord, Yahweh, Jehovah was present. “We like sheep have gone astray,
Turned everyone to His own way, but the Lord has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.” Let me pause here just to underline a series of things you and I need to grasp that Isaiah is teaching us about the nature of Christ’s atonement. Number one, this atonement involves
The imputation of our sins to the Lord Jesus and the imputation of the Lord Jesus’ righteousness to us. The Lord lays upon the Lord Jesus. He is wounded for our transgressions. He is bruised for
Our iniquities. He takes what is ours and it’s counted to Him. And when He goes to the cross as One who knew no sin, He goes to the cross as One who is there going to be made sin, He is going to
Bear our sins on His own body to the tree as Simon Peter says. And yet, marvelously, when He makes His soul an offering for sin by His knowledge, verse 11, the righteous One, my Servant, will make many, not just to be accounted innocent. You understand there is a difference between the
Gospel and what happens in an ordinary law court, unless that law court happens to be in Scotland where there are three verdicts that can be given, you’re either going to receive a guilty verdict, or a not guilty verdict. Don’t transfer that to the gospel as though that’s all the gospel gives
You. Now, what the gospel gives you is this, that your sins are imputed to the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s wounded for transgressions that are ours and iniquities that are ours and a dis-peace that is
Ours and a sickness that is ours; and it becomes His. And He takes it. He takes all the judgment against my sin, takes all the judgment of His Holy Father against the sin of all of His people. But
When you come to faith in Jesus Christ, you’re not just pronounced “not guilty,” as though to say, “You’re free now, start again, try again.” No, by His righteous knowledge, perhaps by the knowledge of His righteousness, He will account many to be righteous. By His righteousness, His life of
Obedience, His obedience to the death of the cross … It’s so important for us to understand that what Jesus is doing throughout the whole course of His life is obeying His Father in our place. Not just that He may then be qualified to be the perfect sacrifice who’s able to bear the judgment
Of His Father against our sin, but in order that when we come to faith in Jesus Christ, the righteous One, not only do we understand that our sins are been imputed to Him, but we understand
That His perfect righteousness is counted as ours as we trust in Him. I love to say and I love to think and I love to say it again that you and I can stand before the judgment seat of an
Infinitely Holy God as righteous as the Lord Jesus Christ because the only righteousness you have to stand before that throne is His righteousness. Isn’t that glorious? And this is what He is saying. He’s saying, “Look closely to see the glory of this gospel. There is imputation here.”
Second, there is substitution here. “In my place, condemned, He stood. Wounded for my transgressions, bruised from my iniquities. In my place, condemned He stood and sealed my pardon with His blood. Hallelujah! What a Savior!” Yes, now note He is our representative; Jesus is our
Representative. This may not mean much to some of you, but it’s a very important thing to see, He is our representative. He represents us before the Father, but He’s not just a representative. Your representative in Congress, if you are privileged to have taxation and representation,
Which some of us aren’t. I’m not complaining about it, but it’s true. He represents you there. He doesn’t substitute for you. He doesn’t come along when you’re in trouble and take your place. He may serve for you, but he doesn’t stand in your place as a substitute.
And this Suffering Servant stands in our place as a substitute so that a great exchange takes place in order that I might stand where He now stands. He comes and stands where I ought to stand and takes my place. You know it’s just possible that Barabbas, the bandit, that his
First name was Jesus. You know that some of you from the textual traditions of the New Testament, that what the people were being offered was Jesus, the Son of the Father God, or Jesus the son of the
Father, the bandit. My dear friends, Barabbas would never in the rest of his life have said, “You know, but Jesus came and represented me. He would’ve said, “He came and He took my place.” I had, until recently, apart from our joint glorious faith, one thing in common with Joni
Eareckson Tada, and she let me down. She watched the Titanic movie! I’ve never seen the Titanic movie. But I have a friend, a dear friend who was minister of a church in Glasgow called the Harper Memorial Baptist Church, and the reason the church has that name is because the memorial
To John Harper was a memorial to their minister who sailed on the Titanic. Sailed on the Titanic And if I remember rightly, he gave someone who was not a Christian his place on the boat. That’s not merely representation; that’s substitution. That’s why in the
Garden of Gethsemane He agonizes as He does. Thirdly, it’s imputation, it’s substitution. Thirdly, it’s penalty. Notice the language, is this the Jewish people looking back who have come to faith, beginning to understand what Christ has done. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have
Turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” John Brown, the great old Scottish writer thought that the picture here was of the sheep going astray and as
They went astray they were in danger of an awful death at the hands of marauders. And, of course, the shepherd would come and he would put himself before the sheep. The reason you know the shepherd
Is a good shepherd is because he laid down his life for the sheep. And you remember how that seems to be the significance of the fulfillment of the Zechariah prophecy, when the fountain is open for sin and uncleanness, “How will that take place?” Zechariah asks. And the answer the Lord
Gives is, “I will smite the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.” And the Shepherd comes and He dies on the cross, a violent death, a death that is a penalty for sin. Do you know Vernon Higham’s
Great hymn, “Great is the gospel of our glorious God, where mercy met the anger of God’s rod; a penalty was paid and pardon bought, that sinners lost at last might be brought to Him: O let the praises of my heart be Thine, for Christ has died that I may call Him mine,
That I may sing with those who dwell above, proclaiming, Jesus King of love.” But there is a fourth thing here, yes, indeed marvelously through our Lord Jesus Christ there is imputation and substitution and penalty. But there’s something else in this central picture,
In the tapestry, and it’s the hand of deity; it’s the hand of deity. Notice verse 6b, “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” This is the heart of the cross, my friends, that He was there because it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. He has put Him to grief.
You understand that this is why our Lord Jesus wrestled as He did in the garden of Gethsemane, not simply because of the physical suffering, which must’ve been awful for Him to contemplate, but because what He was being called to do, there was not an ounce of His holy humanity could ever
Desire. He was being called so to give Himself to the judgment of God, that He would for the very first time in that thirty-three-year-old humanity, as the God-man cried out, “I am forsaken. Why?” You see, He could never want that; that was really the last temptation of Christ,
Wasn’t it? What devilish fiends appeared in the garden of Gethsemane to taunt Him that this is what His Heavenly Father wanted Him to do. Now, isn’t that divine child abuse? Not when you read the prophecy of Isaiah and see how already in the Suffering Servant songs Jesus was being portrayed
As one who delights to listen to the voice of His Father and who goes willingly to the cross and to the suffering and knows that His Father will sustain Him even when He is unconscious of His Father’s presence. And not when we remember that if David cried over his son,
“O Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom, my son.” But in the very in-being of God there would be a cry that would go out, that would silence all heaven, “O Jesus, My Son, My Son. Jesus, My Son.”
Says Jesus, now hold that thought if you can, if you can bear to hold that thought, hold this Bible truth beside it. Jesus says, “The reason My Father loves Me, is because I lay down my life for the sheep.” Isn’t that something? That His Father’s heart burst with
The awfulness of what His Son was willing to go through; at the same time the heavenly Father, as it were, His heart was bursting with that almost contradictory divine emotion that said, “O My Son, My Son, that you should obey Me like this. It almost undoes Me that You should be so
Obedient to Me.” As we get frail echoes of it when we see our own children doing something marvelous because they love us and our hearts swell with pride. It’s not just heaven’s love and heaven’s justice that meet in the cross; it’s heaven’s pride in the Son. The angels as
It were, peering over the balconies of heaven in amazement at what the Son is doing and casting, as it were, a side glance if they dare to the Father to say what is He going through as He watches His Son so perfectly obedient even to the death of the cross. Don’t you think
The heavenly Father in that occasion was able to sing, My Jesus, I love Thee, if ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now, Thou art mine. Well, verses 7 through 9, the Servant’s triumph is unexpected, the Servant’s humiliation is described, the Servant’s suffering is explained, the Servant’s
Obedience is underlined. You notice that? “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth.” “Don’t say anything,” His Father had said, “take it all.” “And like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth.”
Isn’t it one of the marvelous things that we find, I think particularly in Luke’s Gospel in Luke 23. There are seven occasions in Luke chapter 23 when those individuals most intimately involved in the crucifixion of our dear Lord Jesus, seven times they declare He is absolutely innocent
Of any of these crimes with which He is being charged. And you know what these crimes were; the crime of blasphemy, that He made Himself equal to God, the crime of treason, that He proclaimed Himself to be a king, the very crimes of which you and I are most guilty before the judgment
Seat of God—blasphemy. That we’ve made ourselves in a thousand ways the center of the world, and treason that we have said we will not have You to rule over us. And in silence He takes our place, in obedience He bears our judgment. He became obedient to death, even death on a cross.
I notice you’re very good at this, what’s the next word? “Therefore,” therefore. There has got to be a “therefore,” and that’s in verses 10 through 12, isn’t it? The Servant’s rightful humiliation leads to His glorious exultation. He is rightfully humiliated because He takes
Our place; He is wrongly executed because He is innocent of any of these crimes, and therefore God has highly exalted Him and given them the name is above every name. And we see it all here,
The name above every name. Oh, it was the will of the Lord to crush Him and put Him to grief, but He brings justification. He divides His portion with the many, divides the spoil with the strong,
Because He pours out His soul to death, He bears the sin of many and He makes intercession for the transgressors. It’s this marvelous picture of Jesus being highly exalted, highly exalted, glorious reigning, pouring out His Holy Spirit as He is exalted at the right hand of the Father,
He goes to His Father, He goes to His Father who has said to Him, “My Son, if You’ll do this, then You may ask of Me and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance.” There they are, Chad, France, Lebanon, Thailand, Belize, Ecuador, Bolivia, Sudan, Laos, Honduras,
All the way along the nations for Christ’s inheritance. And He comes in glory and that great angel train us as He is come near to the throne of God and the angels have cried out, “Who is this King of Glory?” And those angels accompanying Him have responded to them,
“It is the Lord, the King of Glory. Open the gates and let Him in.” And as He goes to the throne of His heavenly Father, His Father says, “What is your wish?” And the Son says, “Dear Father, You said, You promised, ‘Ask of Me and You would give Me the nations for My
Inheritance,’ and they need Us to send the Holy Spirit in order to accomplish that. May I now send the Holy Spirit,” and there is Pentecost, and there is the preaching of Peter, and there is the martyrdom of Stephen, there is the conversion of Saul, and eventually there is you. And the
Reason most of us are in this room this morning is because these words have come gloriously true. Two things to say; number one, there was a man from Africa, one day he was traveling home, he was reading, actually reading this very passage, and a Christian found him in the middle
Of the desert. He was reading out loud, it was in antiquity. He was reading this passage out loud and the man who was a Christian said to him, “Do you understand what you’re reading?” And he said, “How can I possibly understand this unless somebody explains it to me?” And you know the
Story, the man was Philip, the man who had Isaiah 53 was a treasurer, a high official from Ethiopia, perhaps the Sudan. And Philip told him the good news about Jesus. And the man came to faith. That’s all this has been this morning. This is the good news about Jesus. Are you
Trusting Him for the forgiveness of your sins, the cleansing of your conscience, bowing before Him to be the Lord of your life? What a great thing it would be if at this conference you did that! I have another question for those of you who are already believers; I can
Put it like this in the words of Hudson Taylor, the founder of the Great China Inland Mission, “If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, is there anything too great for me to do for Him?” Our Heavenly Father, we bow in reverence before our Great Savior and King. Thank you that You’ve
Given us this promise in the gospel that we who have seen Him in His humiliation even in our own day will one day see Him in His exalted glory. And we pray until that day dawns that we may
Trust Him, love Him, and serve Him with all our being. We ask this with the forgiveness of all of our sins and the assurance of our salvation. In His great name, amen.
– Good afternoon, everybody. And welcome to a new episode. In our ongoing series on Global Religious and Secular Dynamics. My name is Jose Casanova. And for the first time I can announce publicly that I am emeritus professor of sociology and theology at Georgetown University as of two days ago, August 25th.
But I continue my affiliation as senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, which sponsors this series. A series, which is also sponsored by Reset DOC. Today we are very fortunate indeed to have as our complaisant, professor Craig Calhoun, who is professor of social science at Arizona State University.
But before that he has been professor in many other universities and has had directing post, directing the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU for many years. Was the president of the Social Science Resource Council for 12 years, then moved to London, to the London School of Economics
Of which he was director and president for several years. Moved to the Berggruen Institute that he directed. And now he’s in Arizona. And throughout his life, So he has been dedicated to research and public knowledge, both as a researcher, but also as a director of many many research and academic institutions.
And obviously he has dedicated his life, his only scholarly life to precisely the study of the topics we are going to touch today. Democracy, nationalism, global, religious and secular dynamics, cosmopolitanism. These will be the topics we will be discussing and we’ll end with some observations on COVID-19 the pandemic, and what it implies
And its effects on all these institutions. So Craig welcome, welcome very much. Thank you, thank you for joining us. Let’s begin with democracy. Democracy or rather democratization, the surging and receding waves. Some years ago, 1997, I believe or 94 I’m not sure, anyhow. You published a book, “Neither Gods nor Emperors”
And “The Students Movement for Democratization in China”. This was based on essays you had published in prominent journals in 1989 in the midst of the Tiananmen Square Movement and its repression. This was a high point of expectations of a third wave of democratization, that had started in Southern Europe,
Portugal, Greece, Spain moved to Latin America, moved to Eastern Europe, moved to East Asia, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and then ended in South Africa. There were expectations that the wave will continue and to China and to much of the Muslim war, this didn’t happen. So let’s discuss about China specifically and what happened,
Why these expectations could not be realized there? And what is happening to democracy in China today? Some comments on this. – Well come to China, thanks Jose, let me probably start by saying. Democracy is always a project, it’s never a settled, finished reality. And so the project of building democracy in China
Has been one up against a variety of challenges contested by other visions of the future. But in some degree that’s true everywhere. The project of democracy in the United States, isn’t something that was finished in 1776 or 1789 or 1792. There are series of movements that expand the electorate most famously
The Abolition Movement that brought the Civil War, but then the Suffrage Movement, that brought women the right to vote and so forth. So democracy has been something that has been building over time. So the first thing I want to say is that everywhere democracy is not just a matter of institutional arrangements.
We have elections, we have free press. It’s a matter of movements of participation, of struggles. So democracy is necessarily a project and we can come back to other examples of this, including the US but now China. There were those for whom democracy remains today, a very important project.
Those who were hopeful of democracy in 1989 and the 1990s, and have lost some of their hope and there’s a longer history of this. So I’ll be really brief, but during the few hundred years of modernity and during the time in which China has entered into a new kind of global relations,
Not understanding itself simply as the middle kingdom and the center. It’s been transformed. For one thing, it’s been transformed by becoming increasingly a nation not the center of the world, but one nation among many with strong Solidarity and in common with other nations,
More and more of a bottom up idea that the people matter, the welfare of the people matters. This wasn’t absent in Imperial history, but it wasn’t as strong, it becomes more strong. Then it gets boost from things like literacy. As the Chinese language literally introduces new characters, simplified characters to ease printing
And printing helps to bring literacy. And so there’s a stronger idea of the people. This gets a manifestation in Nationalist Movements, 1911 famously, it gets a manifestation in communism with a very strong idea of being the People’s Republic of China. And then for some,
The rule by the people and rule for the people necessarily means democracy. And so this was true in 1989, in the struggles I wrote about. There were students and there were others who wanted China to live up to a strong idea of being for the people. And claimed that the communist
Partly as it existed then, was not living up to that, it was corrupt. It was pursuing its own power and not the welfare of the people. And it was failing to make China strong and international. Now we fast forward from 1989 to today, we have a renewal of communist language
And discourse with Xi Jinping. Who indeed is now pursuing a rectification campaign against people he sees as problems, very reminiscent of now, but this is a strong reassertion of an authoritarian center. And for several years, the would be Democrats in China have been losing out. The most visible face of this
Is China’s complete annexation of Hong Kong and destruction of the Hong Kong Democracy Movement. But inside China too, people are afraid to speak up too strongly for democracy. A few still do. And with that, there’s a final problem, of course which is that in 1989,
The US looked like a nice model for China. When people would say, Oh, let’s be a democracy. They could look at Europe, they could look at the US and they could say, being a democracy can be linked to other good benefits, other good values. Unfortunately today,
The US does not look like such a happy model for would be Democrats elsewhere. – Yes, but let’s look at specifically in China, one of the things, the subtitle of your book was, “The Students Struggle for Democracy”. It was a student’s struggle. My own experience in studying Transitions to Democracy
Is that you need transversal coalitions of workers, students, human rights lawyers, maybe national groups, religious groups. And this is what has been always absent in the China context. You may have some artists, you may have some lawyers on their own, but the way in which those different movements, I’ve never seen them coalesce.
And these, I think one of the weakness of civil society, I wouldn’t say that it is a authoritarian state penitentiary society completely, not at all. It’s a lack of autonomy. But then autonomy is very strongly regulated by the state. and knows exactly what are the limits.
And the people sort of in this respect, the 2000 year state that has to a certain extent imposed a model up on society remains very strong, despite what you said about nationalism, I thought about it. But nationalism of course also has its problems because nationalism is basically a nationalism
That makes difficult to deal with debate and seeing as seen in (indistinct) and other non Han groups. So there are difficulties on both grounds. The traditional state and the kind of Chinese nationalism. – I think that’s true, but maybe not as completely or as strongly as you’re stating it.
So first, the 1989 movement was not just students. The subtitle of my book is “Students and the Struggle for Democracy”. And it was students that I was with and talking to and studying. And they were certainly in the forefront, but the people who died at the end of that struggle
On June 4th were not students. They were workers and others who had joined with the students, and the students also received support from civil society actors of an earlier generation. People who had been involved in previous movements in China. One of the stories everywhere, including China
Is that large scale changes take many steps. And so China had had a number of movements and steps. Some of them explicitly democratic, but some of them, for example praising individual autonomy and individual spiritual autonomy, which was potentially important to democracy, but it wasn’t only for the reason of democracy.
So I think China has a relatively weak civil society or relatively weak legal framework and so forth. But I don’t think it’s quite all or nothing. And I think that in the 1980s, really from the late 1970s through to the early years of this millennium, China was building more civil society organizations
And giving more autonomy to them and they were becoming stronger. So there’s been a reversal made part of what has been going on with the current rule by C, has been a repression of many of these institutions and these forms of connection that we’re underwriting democracy,
Which of course he sees as a threat to party rule. – Now, recently you’ve been looking precisely at the crisis of democracy throughout the world. You are now working on a manuscript that will be forthcoming together with Charles Taylor The title I understand is going to be “The Generations of Democracy Degeneration.” So please, can you talk about these degeneration? What is going to be the main points of the book? – This isn’t a sense the other side of the coin from my point that democracy is always a project.
There are not only forward steps in this project. There are also backwards steps. And the idea of degeneration of democracy is that democracy can get in trouble, not only from outside attacks, like anti Democrats, but from internal weaknesses and degeneration. These include things like the erosion of the power of citizens.
Not only their power in a political voice, but their ability to manage their own lives, to get things done. And we’ve seen in the US and in many other countries, this kind of erosion of citizen empowerment. we’ve seen a loss of the inclusive nationalism of the ability of the overall discussion
To encompass and embrace everybody. And so in the US we talk about cultural wars, there’s an anti-immigrant movement. There are various frames for this, but they are all in some degree failures of the inclusive discourse of being American. And then there’s hyper partisanship. So, I think these are all manifestations of degeneration.
You can see a different story in Hungary, where democracy perhaps did not have the same long historical path and equally strong foundations, but where there has also been a degeneration and a backward walk for democracy. And, you can see versions of that in India. The world’s largest democracy,
Which has had forward and backward movements. We’re looking mainly at the rich industrial countries in the world. And the ways democracy has gotten into trouble in some of them not equally everywhere. This others often analyze this and say, oh, it’s populism. We talk about populism, but we say,
Well that’s not exactly an explanation, because populism can go both ways and there are left populism and right populism. There is a strong importance to speaking out to the people, but then there’s use and manipulation of that by demagogic leaders the greatest problem. So that raises as many questions as it answers.
And we don’t think that this kind of so-called populism, whether of Orban or Trump, just comes out of nowhere. And Orban and Trump create the problems. We think it reflects weaknesses in the democratic institutions in the framework. And these, I would argue, reflect underlying social conditions.
In the United States there’s been accelerating inequality. There’s been a disruption of local communities, whether by de-industrialization and plant closures, or by the economic transformations of so-called logistical of commerce that is ordering everything from Amazon, instead of buying it from a shop in your community and so forth.
And these and other changes have undermined some of the conditions for democracy. So that’s what the book is about. – Good, let’s move to a related topic. Nationalism, democracy are intimately connected. You wouldn’t have one without the other probably, but as we know nationalism also doesn’t means necessarily democracy.
And democracy could be a multinational democracy. So let’s look at. You’ve been involved in many of the debates around Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism. Those who were saying, it’s the end of the nation and state now a global cosmopolitanism is the future. You were already a skeptic about these kinds of claims,
And you wrote a very important essay, “The Limits and Necessity of Cosmopolitanism.” We could also say the same thing about nationalism, the limits and necessity of nationalism. So I want you to basically elaborate on precisely how can we not live without nationalism? But how we need to somehow go be a nationalism
To create trans-national structures, that basically are able to address all our global challenges and crisis. So not to put faith on a abstract cosmopolitanism, but how can we get strengthened nationalism and democracy by being able to go beyond it to address the global challenges? – At the heart of these questions
How do you have a good nationalism. A nationalism that you’d like, and that works for people. And that is not just manipulated for international conflict or domestic repression of so-called aliens or deviance or others by the majority. And this is a challenge and it’s a project. What I suggested in that essay,
And a variety of other things in a book I’ve never quite finished on nationalism and cosmopolitanism is that you can’t wish away nationalism. I’m not saying nationalism is inevitable and the world has to always be structured in terms of nation States. But that we live in a world of nation States,
Much of what has made globalization viable, has been international agreements. We create the United Nations, We create the World Trade Organization. We have international agreements for things like standards, so that we have an agreement of what is an ounce. We have an agreement on the width of railroad tracks.
We have failed to have just one agreement on electrical sockets. We have five or six. But there are standards for basic industrial and consumer products. These are the most extreme example of what we’re doing right now. The internet is not just a technology. It is a creature of international agreements,
Legal treaties, that do things like assign addresses and manage the way in which information flows around the internet. So, it’s not so easy to say, Oh, let’s just forget nationalism. Let’s imagine we have only individuals and they are perfect conscious individuals, and they relate to each other in the global cosmopolis.
We have to take nation seriously. then I’d suggest when we take it seriously, it’s not just an enemy. It’s a resource. It’s part of how actually existing cosmopolitanism works, actually existing care for the world. If that’s what cosmopolitanism is about, is accomplished largely by an internal politics,
That tries to get nations to change the way that they relate to the rest of the world, to not only be militaristic. And so I have felt we need both a global consciousness that tries to care for everybody, and a recognition of the importance of the political struggles within nation States,
About how we do that. And then of course, there’s the issue of the political struggles about how we live together inside the country, How the Han majority in China relates to the Uighur or the other minorities in China and so forth. And the same thing in the US.
We have a kind of White Christian Nationalism that is flourishing in a minority, but a powerful and disruptive minority in the United States, that claims to be the true American identity, against various others, that’s very problematic. And what I want to say is the answer to that is not to say,
Oh, we are only individuals with rights. The answer is to say, how else can we structure an inclusive identity? How can we make a better national whole? – I mean, one of the fundamental questions. The structures of solidarity? The strength of nationalism comes precisely from the ability to create this weed.
The sense of not only a cognitive, if we say a reading, emerging community through newspapers, but really an emotional community which obviously has gotten through all kinds of emotional memories etc. There are two problems I see today, one is of course, that in our case of democracy,
One of the fundamental issues is the dramatic polarization, that weakens national solidarity. And this makes even more impossible then to even create the good type of national solidarity, that can go beyond this national solidarity and create the structures which are transnational. Because I think that the issue of
Transnational global society is not only an issue of creating international mechanisms through which the nation States are able to collaborate and work together and all kinds of standards. but also create transnational structures of solidarity. We. – Sure. And so in here is where I want to bring religion in.
The same way that from Benedict under Saloninus, we know very clearly that the nation is a secularized church. There were national churches before there were secular nations in Europe. And to a certain extent religion has played this crucial role of being a source for nationalism. But you have also transnational religious communities
That could play an important role. It’s what I call global denominationalism, but doesn’t have to be only transnational religious communities. It can be transnational secular communities from all kinds of pacifist movements, ecological movements, movement for immigration refugees. So we need to create these structures, not only international agreements, but re-transnational social movements,
Transnational social structures to create precise the institutions that will be necessary to go beyond purely a whole system of nation state. – Well, I agree with you Jose, and the issue is truly changing a world system in the sort of strong sense. That includes a political economy,
A set of social structures and social institutions and culture. So we have an existing world system, a capitalist dominated Western dominated world system. and we would like to see it transformed. I think you and I. I think as I argued in those earlier essays, transforming doesn’t mean wishing away.
It means figuring out a historical process of change by which you can get something better. So you could see, and we have some scary examples in this COVID era of collapse of international order, which could bring chaos. So I think that we have to consider
That getting rid of nation States could produce chaos, or it could be part of a transformation to something better. How do we get that? You rightly point to the role of religion in transnational organizations. So there are a one dimension of this is the denominationalism
As you point to it on a global scale. So we have various versions of Christians and various versions of Buddhists organized on global scale. Another is the disproportionate engagement of religious people, People motivated by religious faith and understandings in secular organizations of certain kinds. So humanitarian action is often organized by secular groups.
So it’s not only church world service or something like that. It’s also secular humanitarian actions, Médecins Sans Frontières that are informed by religious heritage, religious thinking, and that mobilize religious people, including people from different religious backgrounds, Médecins Sans Frontières had sort of Catholic roots kind of odd combination of Catholicism and Maoism.
But it also then mobilizes others, Protestants and Jews and so forth. So, I think we need to be attentive to this. And I would quickly say that what it means is that global solidarity is poorly conceptualized by that image of a world full of independent conscious individuals.
Rather it’s better conceptualized as a patchwork quilt, in which there are many different kinds of connections between different kinds of solidary groups. So we aren’t individuals who are stripped of religions, stripped of communities, stripped of nation, stripped of all of our distinctive characteristics. We remain individuals because of those characteristics
Embedded in various kinds of communities. And that’s the path to a better future global solidarity, not having it be limited to nations, but not necessarily banishing nations either. And building multiple overlapping kinds of connections. One quick thing I want to say about nation of democracy is nation… Well, I’ll make it three steps.
Religion played a big role in the coming of nations, but in certain ways, as you point to Benedict Anderson saying. Nations become secularized of inheritors of religious communities. But not only that, nations become secular structures for relating multiple religious communities to each other. So we see very clearly in the United States,
But in various settings. So that the importance of nation is partly enabling people of different religions to live together in reasonable harmony, not just expressing one religion. And when nation is structured to just express one religion, that’s usually the enemy of democracy. When it is structured in a way that enables people
Of different religions to relate to each other, that’s much more compatible with democracy and with other kinds of differences that coexist in nations, people have no religious faith, but various kinds of views. So I think it’s important that we have a demos, right? Democracy depends on a Demos,
But that’s not dictated by ethno-nationalism. That’s one of the resources out of which demos is built religious identities sometimes one of those resources, but the loyalties that connect us to each other in our countries are more than either of these, and they have to be for it to be democratic.
– Well, this leads us then to the topic of going more in depth into the relation between global religious and secular dynamics. When you served as president of SSRC, you made this issue central to the intellectual project and the research project of the SSRC,
Partly because of the work you have been doing for years with Charles Taylor. You co-edited with Jonathan VanAntwerpen, who was one of the people that worked with you, several very important books, the book on “Varieties of secularism” analyzing child state on a secular age. Then a second book on secularism,
I don’t remember the title, but it came out of the many workshops you organize, I participate in these workshops. I also participated in this book, and then you wrote the third very important collection of essays and covered much in religion, and other major philosopher public intellectual, political figure, political theories,
Who has been in dialogue with you and with Charles Taylor for many years, and who was a very strong representative of secular modernity And then it comes out how to revise his own position and to be more open to the possibility of the role of religion, the public is fear.
So tell me about what has been faced? What was the impulse that led you to really put this at the forefront of the work you were doing in the social science research center that later you continue in the London school of economics. What can we learn from these new understanding of how
Religious and secular dynamics are interconnected, except they are not exclusive of each other, but actually they are intertwined. And where should we put precisely the focus, the things that we still need to understand better or to study today? – Okay, I will say my sources on this,
But institutions of course are not simply run by presidents as though they were Kings. And so there are a number of voices coming together. The SSRC is an organization that always brings people like you and Charles Taylor and others into conversation. And the conversation was intended to address themes
That were too often pushed into the background or obscured by conventional disciplinary academic discussions. And so to get people coming from anthropology and political science and economics and sociology talking to each other, but also talking about questions, like the extent to which our very understanding of knowledge or a very understanding of democracy
Reflected secular assumptions and what secular assumptions. A key importance to the works you were citing is the argument that secularism is not just a disappearance of religion. What Charles Taylor calls a subtraction story, and you indeed had made an important work, an argument about de-privatization renewal of public religion,
And the intensification of religious practices in this modern era when religion is supposedly receding. But I wanted to argue in particular. And I think Charles did that, secularization grows out of religion as much as it is imposed on religion. And that there is inside religion, a set of reasons
For trying to figure out structures to relate to this worldly life in vapor sense. And so, there are old ideas like secular priests versus priests and monasteries and all, but in modern democracies and in modern plural democracies with multiple religions, working out ways to relate to each other
Is something that people did often while being religious and for religious reasons, it wasn’t just because they lost their faith. But then that had an effect, changing the nature of faith in a religious practice and thinking. Universities grow out of some of this history, in fact. And so it’s not a surprise that
Disciplines and knowledge institutions do, but one of the peculiarities of the university is the way it compartmentalize thinking about religion and thinking about secularism as taking it out of most of the social science disciplines, placing it in the humanities, but also often in a religion department or a theology school, not everywhere.
And so not seeing as much as we would have liked the kind of connections of religion and secularism and their histories to all sorts of other things like the university itself, as I mentioned. So this was the importance then again at the LSE is a very secular institutions,
Are proud of its socialist, secular heritage and members of the LSE would tell you, it always was it’s completely secular. And they’re surprised when they find out that the Bishop of London laid the cornerstone at the invitation of Sydney and Beatrice, and socialists. That there was a Christian Socialist Movement
That was part of the shaping as well. That tends to get forgotten in the way in which we narrate the history, and the LSE confronted to make long story short and interesting but very telling. The students were much more religious than the professors. The students who come from all over the world,
The LSE is an amazingly international institution with students from every country. The majority of the students are not British. They come from all over. but the students often have very active religious involvements. And they have a hard time connecting those to their studies in the secular disciplines of the university.
But that also means that the people in those disciplines don’t have a very easy time understanding religion, that in the seeing the importance of religion, why it would matter for diplomacy and so forth. So a project at the LSE, building a faith center was partly to provide space for religious students,
But it was partly to build connections. so that both secular and religious people would be thinking better and acting better in relationship to a world that is neither Holy religious, nor Holy secular – On this topic, as you know, recently, Ronald Englehart published an essay in foreign affairs,
Basically “God is in decline”, whatever was the title, the global decline of the religion. As You know, Englehart and Pippa Norris have been basically putting forward a rather simplistic thesis. That religion is simply a response to existential insecurity, which of course is widespread throughout history in Agrarian societies.
This Agrarian societies move to industrial societies, and then to post industrial societies, existential security diminishes, and therefore religion is going to diminish as well. There’s thesis which of course was comparing much of Western European societies, the America, US was the exception. Then since the nineties, there was a modernization drive
In many non Western societies that was connected with religious revivals. So the thesis was in crisis, but now he has come up with, he says empirical evidence that finally the whole world, there is a clear decline in belief in God. Now it seems to me that the strongest argument
Or empirical evidence come from three countries in the list, which are the United States, Chile and Australia. One could argue for a specific reasons why the norms that people without religion have grown in the US in the last 20, 30 years, but it’s not necessarily as a sign of modernization
Is simply for a very specific historical reason. So I want you to maybe take a look at this thesis. What would you have to say to them? – Okay, really quickly, Englehart’s data and Englehart notes his data over a number of works is cross national survey research.
This is an important source of data. They are masters of this that have done a lot, but it’s a limited source of data asking people. What do you believe? What do you think? Is a limited way to find out what’s going on in various places. And so there’s one set of critiques,
I won’t go into around how to get from individual responses to translated questionnaires, to the kind of arguments that they’re making. And I tend to think that these lose touch with historical and ethnographic and other kinds of understanding. So that’s methodologically. More basically in terms of the theory,
I find it very hard to understand why anyone would think modernization brings existential security. I think that modernization transforms the kinds of insecurities that people feel. So they may feel less afraid of walking in the forest. they may be less vulnerable to disastrous of crops, but there are new insecurities,
We worry about climate change. We worry about the impacts of nuclear power. But look at war, far more people have been killed by war in the modern era than in previous eras. The Englehart essay has an irony of it timing. That it comes in the context of COVID.
And the existential insecurity that people feel because of global plagues and infectious diseases. In many ways the story of modernity, as a story of growing existential security, was a story of some parts of the world. The wealthier countries in the West, over a period of time, ignoring the periodic disasters
Like World War I and World War II and so forth. And suggesting there’s this growth. And it has a basis. It’s not all false, right? Life expectancy grows. More people live to old age. They become professors of emeritus. They don’t die at 40. But the sense of insecurity is a cultural phenomenon,
As well as a material phenomenon. So you can point to life expectancy and say, therefore people ought to feel much more secure. But you have only to look around at the anger and the anxiety of so many people in the United States, and in other countries to realize that
They don’t automatically feel more secure. and they worry about things like, What will my old age be like? If I’m very sick, will I have money? Will I have life? Will I have friends? Will I have care? How will I get care? Will I get care only from people
Who speak a different language and are immigrants? Will that make me feel bad? Right? So there are a lot of ways in which this… Now I think that studying these dynamics of security and insecurity is very important. And we would find that social institutions are basic. That having strong public institutions,
But also strong communities, is very important to having a stronger sense of existential security. But the kind of generalization that Englehart makes there. is just unwarranted about this last point on that. It may be entirely true that there is a decline in people saying, I believe in God.
I don’t have evidence to the contrary. The question is what that means. And the question to me is whether this is simply a decline, a subtraction story in Charles Taylor’s sense. or a transformation story in which people still have some of the kinds of faith and understandings and desires for transcendence
And so forth that have been expressed largely in religious terms. But they’re coming to express them in different ways, and maybe new religions are forming. Maybe religion won’t be quite the right word for the new structures of seeking that emerge. But it’s not clear to me that we do very good job.
By just assuming there’s a fixed category religion, and imagining people falling away from it. Rather than asking what are the transformations within religion and beyond religion. – Good before we move to COVID-19 and its implications. and the lessons of the pandemic, global pandemic and global lessons.
Let me remind everybody that, in about 10, 15 minutes, we’ll end the conversation, and there will be a time for question and answer. 15, 20 minutes at least. And so you are welcome to write your questions. In the question and answer. And I will reserve them to give these questions to Craig.
And Craig will have the chance to respond. So let’s look at COVID-19. One of the things that strike me first, it was really the truly first global pandemic in the way, in which so quickly, became a global both in its effects, how rapidly it spread and its consciousness.
It started very similarly as the SARS epidemic. But the SARS epidemic basically was restricted to East Asia. and some Chinese diaspora communities. So in these we’d say was not a global, Although it started precisely the same way as the SARS epidemic. But second was the extent to which
The response has been a nationalistic in the anarchist nationalism. Individually nationalist response, rather than a communitarian nationalist response. Even the European Union, the first response was to end the sanguine open borders to close and goes back to the basically anarchy European Nation state. And so, on the one hand,
The paradox is precisely the global pandemic. shows the need for a global communitarian response to the pandemic. And yet the immediate response has been. Now, probably things are, there have been some corrections, was a very, very nationalistic one. So I want you to, What are the implications there for democracy, cosmopolitanism?
The things we’ve been discussing. What are the lessons from the pandemic? And specifically, I want you to ask about the effects and lessons for universities. We’ve been talking about universities, research institutions, obviously they are, as we know, under tremendous pressures, uncertainties, how can we proceed campus, colleges, universities? How can education continue?
So especially the issue of education, youth education, not so much the issue of research, not so much the issue of public knowledge that can be distributed. because obviously you can use online distribution. But especially the issue of getting youth together. to the process of transmitting knowledge from generation to generation.
So what are the implications for the university in the future? And anything else you want to talk about. – Okay, well it does open the door to everything. Let me begin really concretely though. The Coronavirus like stars, starts in China, but if it’s prototyped in China, it’s mass produced in the US.
So the big difference in the first instance, is the catastrophic bad US response. The first thing you have to look at in COVID is why did it go awry in the United States? And so Trump made initial responses like restricting travel from China, but then in various ways,
The US response has been incoherence, often anti-scientific and problematic sense. I won’t try to offer a detailed explanation, but you have to see the US as figuring very centrally in this story, the COVID story. In a way, it didn’t figure it in the SARS story. It did somewhat in the AIDS story.
Look at another global pandemic, but the US still has the most cases in the world. This six, seven months into it, eight months, it’s had a high death rate. Now there are other countries with high death rates and high infection rates. You’ve got to look at where Spain, of course,
The United Kingdom has a very high death rate. Brazil has a high infection rate. India now has a growing number, although the rates is still low. and we can look around the world. So it’s not that it’s just the US but the fact that one of the richest countries in the world.
With one of the most highly developed healthcare systems. and high tech healthcare systems, would have such a disaster, is an important clue for what’s going on in the pandemic. And it’s partly that it’s confronting weakened institutions and internal divisions that weaken response in these countries.
So you have a politicized response in the US. Whether do you wear a mask or don’t wear a mask, is a statement of political identity, instead of a public health precaution. Whether if children go back to school or not, is the dictated by the political considerations.
And so forth and so on through a whole lot of responses. And that’s in many ways, true in several other countries. Countries with less political polarization. New Zealand or Germany have done better than countries with more political polarization. and countries that have been very neoliberal
In rolling back, their public institutions have done worse than countries with stronger public institutions. There’s a narrative that China would encourage that says this is a kind of referendum on democracy. China’s successful response shows that authoritarianism works. It’s not so clear, China’s initial problems showed that authoritarianism frightened people
From actually sharing the information about COVID in early days. And that helped to get going. And more over in line with our previous discussion in the US, in the United Kingdom and other countries, COVID confronts a degenerate form of democracy. Democracy has already been undermined. And so there are preexisting social conditions,
Just as there are for individuals pre-existing conditions. Like if you have a lung or heart disease, you have a much riskier time with COVID. For countries, high inequality, political polarization, damaged institutions, all shaped this. A couple of quick more points and I’ll turn to university. In this context, we see among other things,
A separation between the wellbeing of people and the wealth of economies. And so COVID is doing damage medically, but the COVID response is doing huge damage economically. And this is a complicated story. How much of that is necessary? The lock downs are a kind of blunt instrument. People would use testing and tracing
If countries had the capacity to do testing and tracing, but the United States didn’t have that capacity. The United Kingdom didn’t have that capacity more or less screwed up what it tried to use. So the blunt instrument of closure creates economic havoc. Who bears the pain of the economic havoc?
Not people like us who work at home. It’s inconvenient, and we can’t go out to cafes as much, but it’s actually a variety of working people. Who either lose their jobs, or who are forced to work in jobs, where they are exposed to COVID, and often paid very poorly.
Care workers, drivers, delivery workers, and so forth. So the COVID reveals some of the problems of societies in this sense. And I’ll be quick about the university, but ask more, if you want about it. There’s a very large story about how learning is affected. and the relative virtues of
Online versus in person learning. A lot of that has to do with the university as a social experience, not the university as an educational story. And there are losses, but I want to point to a few other factors. A lot of people debate online learning. as though there’s a choice between
Having small seminars at Georgetown, and having mass online classes. Well, most people didn’t get to go to Georgetown in the first place. And so the university system is highly heterogeneous. There’s not just the university. There are various different kinds of universities, scales of university. So what is online good for?
It’s good for access, right? It may or may not be as good for certain kinds of personal conversation and exchange and seminars. But if you didn’t have access to those seminars, you didn’t lose in the online transition. So online can be okay. There’s a whole story about proximity,
But there’s a second story that I think is more basic. It’s not about learning. It’s not about research. It’s about finance and about the upheaval in the economic basis of universities as knowledge institutions. Will they be able to employ the professors they have in the past?
Will they be able to support the libraries? Will they be able to provide the context for knowledge? And if they aren’t right? What kind of transformation will take place? It’s like the story of religion, they won’t just go away. There will be change. But what will that change be?
Will it be for profit providers? Will it be a consolidation which there are smaller number of bigger universities, that are effective in deploying the technology? How will we manage this? But we will not go back to universities as, before. There are too many ways in which the COVID experience
Has exposed patterns of change, including budgetary issues that will tempt administrators to keep going down some other paths. – Well, thank you very much, Craig. Let’s open the session for the question and answer from the audience. I have a list of questions already. Let’s see how many we can get at.
There is first a question Robert Neigh, writes, Steven Pinker says that relative to a number of people, violence and death in war is decreasing. Same with gruesome punishments. What is Dr. Calhoun’s response? Are we overcoming death and violence? – Right, so this is a reference to Steven Pinker’s “Better Angels” book.
I’m not fully persuaded by his empirical arguments. But I won’t take the time to go into details of why. I think there is some truth to it though. Even though I’m not fully persuaded, that is what I referred to by saying we have longer life expectancies. That’s one simple index of a reduction
In age adjusted death rates in reflects to violence. Now in response to this, though, I want to say a couple of things. First trends can be reversed. And even with gruesome punishments, we see Donald Trump bringing back the death penalty in the United States. It’s not necessarily true that there is
A one directional change that can never be reversed, which is more or less what Steven Pinker implies. Second, my main point was not about the physical risk of dying, but about existential insecurity. Englehart’s term, which is a term inevitably for how we feel. Do we feel secure? Let me use a simple example.
You may be healthy, but feel insecure. because you hear so much about the diseases around you, including COVID. So you feel at risk, even though you’re healthy, or you may feel insecure because you don’t have insurance, and you will have to rely on emergency rooms and substandard care and all that.
One of the things we saw in COVID was that, which hospital you went to was a big predictor of whether you lived or died. And the relatively poor areas of New York with publicly funded hospitals had higher death rates. People who could afford privately funded hospitals,
And other areas were more likely to survive. Now that can create a sense of insecurity. Even if on average, more people are surviving because we have hospitals for everybody. The inequality itself contributes to that. And there are other kinds of insecurities and risks. You may feel insecure because you’re not sure
If you can make your mortgage payment. That’s not a question of whether you will die necessarily, but it is a big existential insecurity. And as it happens, suicide rates are rising in the United States. And they’re rising particularly in certain populations. and partly for reasons like economic insecurity. So it’s absolutely true
That many kinds of material improvements in health and living conditions, sanitation, other things have taken place. But the kind of interpretation that has been based on that fact is misleading. – And a related question, which basically only needs a footnote come from Pat, What can human security theory
And the UN human security framework offer as insights for building and stabilizing a democracy? – Okay human security theory is basically the idea that there are a lot of different kinds of security as I was talking about. Not just whether you die in war. So traditional security, hard security,
Was all about war, we have all these other kinds. I think that this is important that human security is a very useful concept. It went out of vogue a bit. It was very popular in the late 20th century. After 2001, there was a return to talking mainly about hard security, terrorism and war,
Rather than broader human security. But I think broader human security is basic. and this is what we should be talking about. And we should connect it to the sustainable development goals. and the whole idea of a sustainable future. What makes for a sustainable future is not just the absence of war or terrorism,
But the presence of a variety of kinds of care for each other. Improved sanitation, improved environmental relations, greener infrastructures instead of resource intensive infrastructures and so forth. So if we extend human security into the environmental area, we’re really talking about something very basic that we can’t afford to leave out of discussions.
And I would link this also to something like the capabilities approach that Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum have pressed. That is the idea that we need to ask, whether people’s capabilities to do the things they want in their lives are being increased, in any path of development.
And I think this is an important question for this whole security and existential risk discussion too. – There is a question from Lasso Ramirez. on basically humanitarianism again, the limits and necessity humanitarianism globally. So the question is, do you think that NGOs run by secular and non-secular groups
Hinder rather than aid local communities as example, the white man’s burden, how this aid affect a country or a community’s economy, autonomy and viability and thinking of Haiti and the flooding of money and resources. – Great question. So there are problems with aid dependency, aid dependency tends to block
Some desirable paths of development inside countries, and tends to be very prone to problematic captures by governments. This doesn’t mean that all forms of aid are bad, but it means that being radically dependent on aid is problematic. I think humanitarianism represents, good values and efforts to have good actions
And it does good things, but it’s also an admission of failure. It is an admission that we haven’t in fact, reduced all the existential risks that Englehart is talking about. And to a certain extent, humanitarian action, reassures people in rich countries that the problems are often in other countries.
So people in Chicago can think the problems are in Haiti. And people in Los Angeles could think the problems are in Venezuela and so forth. So there’s an other arena of the sense of problem. Part of what we’re seeing now in this century since 2001,
Is the problems are in the rich countries too. The humanitarian issues cannot be seen as just third world issues. They are issues at home. And so we have to recognize increasingly what humanitarian discussion represses, which is that the global world system that you were talking about Jose, helps to produce these problems.
That it actively under develops some countries. That it creates problems. So it’s not just solutions. So humanitarianism is efforts by individuals and groups to put band-aids on problems, but it’s not solution to problems. I think the band-aids are good and they’re needed. The most basic moment of humanitarianism is refugees.
And we need a global regime of good treatment for refugees. We need each of our countries to give better treatment to refugees, but that doesn’t mean that we need all the things that call us refugees. It means we have to deal with it better. And the rich countries in the world have failed
The refugee test in recent years. You referred earlier to the nationalism in Europe and response to COVID or countries putting up walls, but already this was going on in response to immigration from 2015 on and from the financial crisis, the discourse in Europe immediately became a national discourse,
German started talking about those Greeks they’re profligate, those Southern Europeans, and it had a religious element. We Protestants saved those Catholics and Orthodox people. They don’t, this kind of thing, didn’t go away during the era of supposed secularization. – A question from Diane, How do you see the relationship
Between neoliberalism and religious ethnic nationalism, especially in the context of the argument that ethnic nationalist movements like Hindu nationalism in India are an expression of popular resentment, against increasing precocity in conditions of neoliberalism. – Okay, let me divide that into two parts. I think in general,
We have seen a huge spread of neoliberal thinking. in the world since the 1970s or so, that on the one hand, it involves stripping away the social support systems for people, the public institutions, undermining local communities making it harder for family members to care for each other.
So neo liberalism tends to privatize risk and throw people back on their own resources. Then people look for some other kinds of solidarity. Something to help them. Can ethnic nationalism appeal to some people as a way of dealing with the undermined support systems. Yes.
Is it necessarily an effective or good way of doing that? No. But we need to see nationalism as impart and attempt to find some sort of solidarity when other kinds of solidaristic institutions are being undermined or destroyed or attacked. I said two parts because the second part,
I have a slightly different view of India and of Modi, because I don’t think that the DJP is primarily a product of precarity among the relatively poor in India, lots of poor people, some of them support the BJP. I think first off, lots of the very Precarious poor
Are barely included in Indian politics. The BJP is big support comes from the middle classes, not from the most precarious and the mobs that are rallying may come from the poor, but it’s not the case that the middle class and the educated have rejected, so-called populism of Modi.
And so I think we have a kind of typical desire to think it is only the poor and uneducated. The same thing in America with Trump. Many people imagined, how could anyone with any education support Donald Trump? And that’s a question I’ve asked myself, because I think Trump is awful,
But I note a lot of his support comes from people with college degrees who live in suburbs. They have various interests, right? They are not just these sort of unwashed the downtrodden. There is a successful mobilization of many people who suffer with precarity, but there’s also a lot of calculation, right?
So evangelical Christians say, we can get some things we want from Donald Trump, in terms of future judges or whatever. And people who are rich say, we can get tax breaks. And Trump has dramatically reduced the taxes on the wealthy of the United States compared to everybody else.
And there are cynical calculations made by people who are not poor and the same, in various ways and in India. Well, I won’t belabor the point, but I think we should be cautious about imagining that the support for populism comes only from the ignorant. (indistinct) support for Modi is not coming
Because he’s in a precarious situation or ignorant. His brother does seem to be in a precarious situation now, but… – The next question comes from Sonya Sikas. and she writes, you mentioned the possibility of new formations, new patterns of seeking that express some of the same needs views, et cetera, as traditional religion,
But might not be described or describe themselves as a religion. I wonder if you could elaborate on where you see signs of such formations and how they deviate from traditional ideas of religion. – Okay, I will try to be really brief about this conscious of time, but I appoint to the rise of
Various kinds of self-help movements and movements in general, where people sort of sacrilege relationships, to Typology Gaia and so forth to certain kinds of other people in communal movements and all this, there are what would have been called seekers of a variety of kinds. And the heterogeneity is almost definitive of this.
People are looking. There are also Cults and people are joining Cults, and that’s not in my view, generally speaking a path forward, but it’s indicative of the number of people who are trying to find something, as a source of belief, but there are also right, let’s take this back to the core theme,
Ethno-nationalists, who are, sacralizing the nation. Who are seeking the kind of transcendence, that might have come from religious involvement in national involvement, right? And that’s also that kind of politicized national realism with a transcendent element, trying to replace religion is significant. – Let me put together three questions which are related,
And give you the chance to elaborate on the interconnections. There is a question coming from (indistinct) from sir Lanka and has to do with the waves of populism, and how many populace movements seem to ride, and the grievances of majority’s. State the cause about the tension between
The democracy being the rule of the majority, but liberal democracy has been there precisely to protect minorities from majority rules. So this is one of the problems. The other problem, the other question about democracy. (indistinct) writes, many great experience of democracy indeed seem to go backward. The examples are US and India.
People who are already skeptic with democracy are more frank now against the whole idea of democracy. How can one reassert the significance and the importance of democracy, is the only way of attaining political freedom and political arrangements. Are there alternatives or potential alternatives to democracy? And finally there is a more pessimistic question
About homo sapiens, the species having hit the limit of rational thinking and living. The rising types of nationalism, tribalism, populism, and religious fanaticism seems to have clearly dominated. This is in spite of profound insight from science, philosophy, et cetera. So you take it in any direction, these three come.
– Okay, I’m gonna go three, one, two. The last point, it seems to me is better stated as. We have tried to imagine human beings and human progress as a matter of rationality. And reason is certainly one of the human faculties we have,
But it was never the case that we were without affect, without emotion that our solidarity with others was only transactional based on reason, or even that knowledge was purely rational. and lacked standpoint and situation and so forth. So I think we are reaching the limits of a conception
Of human beings as defined by reason, and seeing the need to have a broader more complex view of human beings, that will also be one that makes it clearer to us. Why human beings matter in comparison to say artificial intelligence. Why do we care about human beings? Should we care about human beings?
Questions we need to answer. To the first question I can say very quickly, yes. The grievances of majorities are very central to contemporary populace but also to lots of the issues going on in the world. And they are partly grievances against minorities, and they think have unfairly benefited at their expense.
So, in the United States and some other rich countries, the resentment of immigrants is often expressed as they are living on welfare and we are paying taxes. But the resentment is often highest for successful immigrants. They are getting places at Harvard Medical School and I’m not, or my children are not.
And so we see a resentment focused on minorities. Second though, we see a resentment focused on elites. and the resentments of majorities that may scapegoat immigrants or people of color or other minorities are often deeply resentments of the established elites. who have presided over patterns of change that they don’t like, right?
So the people who have lost jobs due to de-industrialization in the context of globalization, are not necessarily politically economists who are analyzing the role of capital and private corporations, but they do notice things like, hey, this went on while Democrats were in office, it went on while Republicans were in office.
The whole elite political class didn’t care about people like us who were losing our jobs. And there’s a lot of truth to that, this one. Finally there is resentment of change itself. There are a lot of people whose resentments, whether they scapegoat minorities or they attack elites or whatever,
Their resentments are of the world changing, of not feeling familiar. And hence you have demands, Americans should speak English. We shouldn’t accept Spanish as a language or whatever. And pure gender is perhaps an important index. And the extent to which people on the populist right, are upset about changing gender roles,
Treating men and women. But we shouldn’t exclude the possibility that the elites, haven’t been very good elites. And that takes me to the second question. One of the things we should be struggling for is having better elites. We tend, we on the left, we who are Democrats.
So we need equality and I’m in favor of equality. But to the extent that we have elites or inequality, we need good elites. And we’ve had some pretty bad elites. And we have actually encouraged people to be bad elites. We’ve had ideologies like meritocracy,
That says you deserve to be part of the elite, because you did really well on your exams. And you went to a famous university. and those other people who aren’t part of the elite are less deserving. And so we’ve had a whole culture of encouraging elites not to be solidaristic towards non-elites.
And we’ve had elites who embraced this and said, well, look, the value of my house is going up. My kids are getting into the really good schools. Does it matter if it’s become more unequal in higher education? So after bad elites now, there is actually a political theory of good elites,
Republicanism, not the Republican party. But if you look at the founding of the United States. and most other democracies in the world. Most of the world’s enduring democracies are not just democracies, they’re republics, they are democratic republics. And what that means is that they embrace popular voice in government,
But they also embrace the rule of law. They also embrace a normative order of good elite leadership. And they embrace the rights of minorities, and including religious minorities. So, I think we need to remember, that democracy is not the only good, right? The rights of minorities, the rule of law are also good.
And part of the democratic project is trying to balance and integrate. The majority call for voice with the frameworks that ensure freedom, and majoritarianism does not ensure freedom. – Well, since we put these three last questions together, there about 10 new questions, which unfortunately will need to be left unanswered.
One of them is does capitalism have an alternative? And I would ask this person to read the book you’ve co-edited with. Immanuel Wallerstein, Michael Mann and Randall Collins, “Does capitalism have a Future?” and many other questions about pragmatic rationality. It’s an alternative to religion and so on.
Craig, thank you, thank you so much. What a wonderful enlightening, interesting conversation. on all kinds of related topics. And thank you for everybody for participating in this series. The next series will be a conversation. Then next episode will be a conversation with (indistinct) on global religious and secular dynamics.
And we’ll go from there. Thank you so much, Craig. Thank you everybody. And we’ll see you next time. – Thank you, Jose. And thanks to everybody.
These educational videos take a lot of time and effort to make, and are offered here for free. One little thing you can do to fully call it even is to just like, subscribe, and comment. That would really help me in terms of the algorithm. So thanks in advance.
We’re continuing from a previous video, “Yarrow Stalk Divination,” in which we walked through a step by step guided divination ritual. The first part of this video is lecture, for a high-level overview of I Ching scholarship and schools of thought on hexagram interpretation. Then we’ll get into
The practicum component to workshop your yarrow stalk reading result. Study of the I Ching has its own name: Yì Xué, meaning I Ching scholarship. And with almost 3,000 years of I Ching scholarship, influenced by contributions from scholars of so many different ethnic, national, and philosophical backgrounds, it’s very diverse in terms of opinions.
I would say the biggest misconception about the I Ching is that there is only one authoritative method to casting and interpreting, and historically, that’s just not true. One way scholars organize different interpretative approaches is the Image and Number Tradition, xiàng shù pài, and the Meaning and Principle Tradition, yì lǐ pài.
The Image and Number Tradition focuses heavily on metaphysical correspondences. Here’s where you integrate numerology, astrology, and also, imagery—the imagery the hexagram itself evokes, as a diagram. The image of the diagram is your foundation for interpreting the meaning. The other side of the coin is its number,
And numbers in general. Mathematics. Calculations. Heavy integration of the Lo Shu magic square. If you have a really specific question, and you want to divine on dates and times, locations, personalities, characters, then you would interpret your reading through an Image and Number lens. Intuitive scrying, channeling,
Vision work is also generally covered under the Image and Number Tradition. Another approach to interpretation is the Meaning and Principle Tradition, which tends to be more philosophy-based, where cultural context matters, or where authoritative scholarship from trusted perspectives will help shape your interpretation. The Meaning and Principle Tradition is like engaging
In the Socratic Method with the Book of Changes. If and when you want to experience knowledge and conversation with higher powers, especially from a Taoist perspective, then you’ll adopt a Meaning and Principle approach. Yili tends to be a rationalist and humanist approach, a philosophical
Interrogation to get at the nature of reality, truths, and ethics. We attribute the Meaning and Principle Tradition to Wang Bi, during the Three Kingdoms era, and which was later inherited by philosophers such as Cheng Yi. In terms of the esoteric or mystery traditions of the Yi,
There are six schools, or Six Temples, six zōng. The divination method is being able to foretell what is to come, whereas the invocation method has more of an operation of prayer and petitioning for answers. Spell-crafting with the I Ching is to take a very proactive role in transmuting qi energy
In the universe. It implies alchemy. The Ancient Ways is, to put it crudely, efforts at reconstructionism. Whereas the Humanist-Rationalist Approach, Ru, is Confucian. This is academic inquiry with the Book of Changes. This is integrating the Socratic Method. And finally, the Historical Method
Is like The Ancient Ways perhaps, but less mystical, more fact-based, research-oriented, archaeological even, and seeks to base its interpretive methods on material evidence. The philosophical and cosmological premise of the I Ching is really important to understand, because it’s what informs how you approach an I Ching reading.
The Book of Changes is premised on the theory that there is an order to the natural chaos of this universe, and it goes round and round in cycles. It’s a series of syllogisms, immutable rules of logical flow, tautologies. If A,
Then absolutely B will follow. If no A, then C, D, or E are the possible outcomes. You then need to input more data to determine whether it’ll be the path of C, D, or E. There’s also this quantum aspect of your situation and personal events
Existing on a multidimensional state, meaning quite simply and intuitively, that something you think is related to, say, love and relationships, is actually related to finances, or something related to career is actually related to geopolitics, and so on. And, also, something happening in your mind, among your thoughts, even though
No action is taken, is influencing events in your orbit that you might not be aware of. Physical actions you’re taking today are paving the consequences for spiritual implications that will come up far, far down the line. Extenuating circumstances happening to you right now might be the butterfly effect,
Where the causal connection is from, who knows, lifetimes ago. So when you approach the Book of Changes for divination, asking to pinpoint a specific location on the space-time continuum, as it were, what you’re actually getting in response from the
Divination process is a circle drawn around that center point you want to know more about. The reading yields a 360-degree view of the situation. The divination ritual itself establishes the given radius of the circle for the Oracle to draw. Once you get that triangulated view of your situation,
The Book doesn’t tell you an answer, it doesn’t tell you what to do. It won’t feel like a direct answer to your specific question, even though it is. You’re getting that triangulated panoramic view, and then you need to take the initiative to decide,
Which pinpoints within this circle the divinatory result has drawn you that you want to focus on. So over the centuries of I Ching practitioners, certain agreed upon principles arise. Like if you really want to pinpoint, then the lines of text associated with your changing lines is a good place to start.
The oracle message or key themes of the hexagrams give you the thesis. And maybe all you really want is the short answer thesis. Maybe you don’t want to read the entire dissertation. With the yarrow stalk divination method, your result is either something like this,
Which you see on screen, with two hexagrams because you got changing lines. Or it’s going to look something like this, a single hexagram, due to no changing lines, which we’ll call a locked hexagram. That’s your triangulated view of your situation.
So that’s the extent of my lecture today, because I do want you to read my book. And now we get into the workshop portion. Go get your I Ching reading result from the yarrow stalk divination you did, per the previous video. But first, a quick relevant review of Taoist cosmology.
The Taiji numinous void gives rise to the binary yin and yang. There are four permutations of this binary yin and yang, which we call, left to right, Elder Yin, Younger Yang, Younger Yin, and Elder Yang. These are the four affinities, the Four Faces of the Tao. They combine in trinities to
Produce Eight Trigrams, the Ba Gua. The four affinities, Four Faces, denote how the primary hexagram of your I Ching reading result changes into the transformed or secondary hexagram you’ll be casting. To demonstrate, I’ll review my own I Ching reading result carried over from the Yarrow
Stalk Divination video. My result yielded only two changing lines, marked by the red Xs on screen at the Line 4 and Line 6 positions. That means the unchanging or immutable lines, Lines 1, 2, 3, and 5, are Elder Yang where you see the yang line, and
Elder Yin where you see the yin line. From the Four Faces, the four affinities of yin and yang. The bottom line of the affinities (the Four Faces) correspond with the yin or yang line cast in the first hexagram. The upper line of the Four Faces will correspond with the yin or yang
Line you cast for the secondary hexagram. And so you essentially carry over or draw the same yin or yang line as the primary. Lines 4 and 6, marked by the Xs, are the changing lines, Younger Yang and Younger Yin respectively. The bottom line of the affinities corresponds with
Your primary hexagram lines to the left. The top line of the affinities, these Mutable, changing faces of yin and yang, correspond with what you’ll cast for your secondary hexagram on the right. The top line of Younger Yang affinity in the Line 4 position is yang, so the line you
Draw for the secondary hexagram is yang. The top line of Younger Yin affinity in the Line 6 position is yin, so the line you draw on the right is yin. Identify the upper trigram result of your primary hexagram. As an example, mine is Wind. I also like
To note the driving force behind the trigram, which for Wind is the changing phase Wood. Do the same for the lower trigram of your primary hexagram result. In my example, the lower trigram remains the same, Thunder, which is driven by the changing phase of Wood, corresponding with Jupiter, the chrysalis stage of alchemy,
And the Language functions of the brain. My upper trigram transforms to Lake, driven by the changing phase Metal. Metal corresponds with the planet Venus, the division and dissolution stage of alchemy, and the Memory function of the brain. Here is where correspondence tables are useful. There are a bunch of
Correspondence tables for you to reference in I Ching, The Oracle, and you’re going to want to brainstorm correspondence notes for your trigrams and changing phase results. Wind over Thunder yields Hexagram 42, Burgeoning for my primary hexagram. Lake over Thunder, where the lower trigram doesn’t change,
Yields Hexagram 17, Inspiring Followers, for my transformed or secondary hexagram. Recall how my Lines 4 and 6 are changing lines. That means when I go to interpret Hexagram 42, I’m going to focus or place more emphasis on the text for Lines 4 and 6.
They forge direct causal links to Lines 4 and 6 of the second hexagram. The divinatory text corresponding with the Lines marked by the Xs on screen are the volatile, changing forces at play. Whereas the unchanging, immutable lines are what cannot be changed.
These are past forces long put into motion that has brought you to where you are now. At this time, pause the video and take a moment to take notes on your own I Ching reading result. Turn to the page entry in the book for your primary hexagram. Read The
Oracle section to help orient you on the key themes of counsel the Oracle is endeavoring to convey to you about your situation. Read the translations of the relevant Ten Wings passages and annotations for this hexagram. The text corresponding with the Fourth Line of my first hexagram is going to give me important
Information I need to change my situation in ways that will be most advantageous for me, in terms of the outcome I’m seeking. The fourth line position itself, in any and every hexagram, has certain correspondences that will also help guide your interpretation of the hexagram text message. Each of the six lines exhibit
Innate qi qualities that then interact with the actual yin or yang line of your hexagram result, so these innate attributes are the lens you filter your reading through. Same goes for the Sixth Line of my primary hexagram. The Oracle is giving
Me important information I need to know so that I can create certain Change that is going to better align me with the outcome that I’m seeking to achieve. The Wu Xing are the five fundamental phases of change, or categories of phase changes.
A more literal direct translation of Wu Xing might be the “Five Movements.” Note the changing phase correspondence for the trigrams in your I Ching reading result. There’s a lot you’ll be able to discern about your situation, really specific details, based on this.
Pause the video here and consult the information on screen to determine the driving movements behind what’s going on in the subject matter you’ve inquired about. We look to the metaphysical correspondences for the underlying phase of change, the underlying movement of qi driving the trigrams.
Pause on any of the slides in this video for a closer look, or you can find these tables in my book, I Ching, The Oracle, Chapter 6. In theory, these correspondences will reveal very precise details in its assessment and predictions of your situation.
Cycle through this correspondence table once more, pausing on each slide and write down everything that makes an impression on you relating to your changing phase attributions. Create a mind map of the dominant changing phases driving the forces of Change for you. Conceptualize each one of these relevant keywords as another symbol,
Or omen, another image to ponder upon. These keywords are signaling a much bigger download, a packet of insights that are coming through by way of the keywords. Pause the video and free-write what’s coming to mind. Let’s return to that theoretical principle of each hexagram line containing innate qi,
An inherent essence or attributes. The odd ordinals, Lines 1, 3, and 5, are innately yang, assertive, light, creative, and express waxing qi, or life force. The even numbers, Lines 2, 4, and 6, are innately yin, recessive, dark, destructive, and express waning qi. You know how you have a certain nature, inherent attributes.
But then depending on the circumstances you’re put in, you might act in accordance with your innate character or you might act against it. Likewise, we say that each of the six line positions possess inherent attributes based on innate qi. But of course, when presented with certain conditions,
It may act in alignment with its inherent attributes or it might have a chemical reaction with the conditions in a way that goes against its inherent attributes. Let’s take a look at my primary hexagram result and compare the yin and yang outcomes with
Their innate qi. Just as a reminder, we’ll note that my Lines 4 and 6 were changing. Note how the lines marked with the blue circle and cross show alignment. My yin and yang outcome in Hexagram 42 align with the innate qi of the hexagram lines. This
Lines signal areas of harmony and balance. Note how Lines 3 and 6, marked with the brown circle and Xs, show that the yin and yang outcome in Hexagram 42 negate or are in opposition with the hexagram line’s innate qi. To use Western occult terminology,
These lines are ill-dignified, whereas the lines marked with the blue cross are dignified. Because Lines 4 and 6 are my changing lines, marked by the red X, those are the ones I want to pay closer attention to.
I see that my Line 4 is dignified, and so this is probably going to be good news. But my Line 6 is ill-dignified, so this is probably going to be a red flag. At the risk of totally confusing you, you really didn’t need to know any of
That. But I wanted to make sure you saw the rationale for where the divinatory text comes from. Reconciling the innate affinity of the hexagram line with its actual yin and yang affinity reveals dignified vs. ill-dignified qi. While I think it’s reductive to say that Confucianism is classist
And all about class rank and hierarchies, it also kind of is about rank and hierarchy, and you’re going to see that, historically, in how we approach I Ching interpretation. Chéng Yí, a 11th century Confucian scholar and philosopher, underscored the importance of understanding Lèi (類), translated as “kind,
Class, genus, category, or order,” which implies the meaning “to know.” Chéng Yí’s philosophy is premised on Taoist cosmology, though he’s considered a Confucian. In Taoist cosmology, there was this unit whole, the Tao, that had to keep subdividing itself and with each subdivision, created different classes, categories, and types of creations.
Likewise, one must divide, subdivide, and categorize to know the holistic meaning and principle at hand. So, to be a good I Ching reader, under the Chéng Yi school of philosophy, you have to divide, subdivide, and deconstruct the whole hexagram into its parts,
And study the parts before you put it back together again to try and understand the whole. And then in this process of subdividing and categorizing, Line 5 is considered the hexagram ruler. Above it, Line 6, is the spiritual influence, what rests in the hands of the gods.
So one approach is read the divinatory message for each line of a single hexagram from your reading result, and filter the line’s text message through its innate subject matter attributes. This is particularly fruitful in the instance of a locked hexagram or when reading the
Divinatory result of a single hexagram. For example, the innate attributes of Line 3, reconciled from various traditions, schools of thought, and authoritative I Ching scholars, will inform how you interpret the prophetic text you see on screen for the Third Line, as it applies to your question presented. The downloadable worksheet that goes along
With this video lecture will help you navigate interpretation of each line of your hexagram. As previously noted, Line 5 is every hexagram’s ruler. If Line 5 is one of your changing lines, this is a big deal. Pay attention. Big shifts happening to the matter at hand, and willpower
And decisions will make all the difference. Listen to the counsel of the ruling line. If your reading resulted in changing lines, then you can choose to read only the changing lines, through the subject matter attributes of those lines. The subject matter attributes of your changing lines denote what key areas to focus on,
And the divinatory message itself reveals who, where, when, why, and/or how. Pause the video here to complete the prompts of your worksheet. The next section will address locked hexagrams only. Recall the four yin and yang affinities, which we call the Four Faces.
A locked hexagram result from the yarrow stalk method means you yielded no changing lines, no Younger Yin or Younger Yang. The lower line of the Four Affinities corresponds with the (quote) primary hexagram (unquote) and the upper line corresponds with the (quote) secondary hexagram (unquote), which is the same as the first, right?
So that’s why you only read the single locked hexagram, and read the line text for each of the six lines of your locked hexagram for more detailed insight into specific sub-topics or sub-plots and themes within your inquiry, bearing in mind that Line 5 is your hexagram ruler,
And is thus tantamount to a changing line in terms of emphasis of importance to you. Now, if your yarrow stalk divination resulted in changing lines, then proceed. In my reading, my transformed hexagram was Hexagram 17. Sui. Inspiring Followers. I’ll start by reading the Oracle section to receive the general divinatory message
Expressed by this hexagram. You’ll do the same. The next step is to focus your attention on the changing lines. The changing lines in your second hexagram connect to the changing lines in your primary hexagram. So remember that these are the points of causal connection.
I’ll then look to the Fourth and Sixth Lines of Hexagram 17, which provide important information I need to know about what actions to take to ensure the success I seek. Likewise, take a look now at the corresponding changing lines from your second hexagram.
Compiling your I Ching reading result in a table will help you stay oriented. In one column, top row, note your primary hexagram, and some general sights about it. In the second column, note your transformed hexagram. Then create a row to compare,
Side by side, each Line of the two hexagrams. In my example, I’ve only got two changing lines, Lines 4 and 6. I also like to note the general indications for those lines. Then populate your table with notes on the corresponding line text. On screen you’re
Only seeing the translations from the Zhouyi, and not the annotations. It may help to look at the annotations, as they’ll explain what otherwise may feel too sparse in the direct translations. If you’re workshopping your I Ching reading result, and I hope you are, then pause the video here to generate your own table.
The primary hexagram of your I Ching reading signifies yang forces, the natural order, that which is supporting and continue to generate the momentum of your current Path. Whereas the secondary or transformed hexagram signifies yin forces, and is the force of ongoing
Change on its path toward its ending. This is how the Path is going to develop and mature. Are you reminded of the He Tu and Lo Shu Book of the River Maps diagrams? The two hexagram results, in essence, mark the beginning and the end,
Forces that supplement and how to defeat, subdue, or more to the point, change. So in my own I Ching reading result, Hexagram 42, my primary, shows what forces and factors are pushing me further along on the Path
While Hexagram 17 is giving me insight into how I can change the course of that Path, how I can cultivate its development and maturation to achieve the end result I seek. You can dive as deep into every nook and cranny of your I Ching reading as you’d like.
Generally, the focus remains on the changing lines of a reading because it’s theoretically “time sensitive” in terms of enacting change to shift the course of the Path and ensure success. Those with a locked hexagram or single hexagram reading, Line 5, the ruling line, is typically considered the key point.
Whereas insights that the other lines yield are just considered “good to know.” But let’s get into the “good to know” parts. Let’s take Line 1 of Hexagram 17 for example. The innate implications of Line 1 of every hexagram, if we’re following Zheng Yi’s school of thought, correspond with the interests of the commoner,
What it is the local barons want, and foundations. In a practical modern-day reading, I’m going to interpret Line 1 as insight for seeking a new direction in life. I’m moving through a lot of historical and academic content really fast,
And just skating across, basically, the table of contents of my I Ching book. So if you want to pause and go down a rabbit hole behind any point I’ve raised here, go check out the 800+ page book. One more example before we move along. Line 3, though it wasn’t a changing line,
You’ll recall was ill-dignified when alchemizing with its innate qi, which should be yang. But in Hexagram 17, Line 3 is yin. So we’re going to read Line 3 to see what’s up with this ill-dignified energy in our lives. Read
The Oracle entry for the Third Line through the filter of Line 3’s general implications. When you come across divinatory lines that reference husbands, wives, sons and daughters, concubines, kings, lords, and ladies, in the 21st century, we interpret them figuratively. They’re symbols of something. So a husband, for instance, might be symbolic of reciprocal
Benefits, a representative of the outer sanctum. Wives, then, are symbolic of the inner sanctum. Sons are symbolic of future potential, but also of one-way dependency. The son is dependent on the parent. Daughters might be symbolic of opportunities, diplomacy, alliances. With your secondary hexagram, the innate attributes and sub-topic or
Thematic correspondences for each line reveals forecasts, projections. These are possibilities, and glimpses into the “what if.” So yes, it’s totally valid to cherry-pick one of these lines, based on the general thematic correspondences of that line, for the Yi’s sound bite on that specific sub-topic.
To recap, your primary hexagram triangulates information and insight related to the Path of Nature. Destiny, you might call it. What is predestined, but really, is just the laws of cause and effect. Your transformed or secondary hexagram triangulates knowledge and calculated information and the myriad methods that
Destiny can be diverted, that Nature can be Nurtured into something else. This is the quantum state, a map of probability distributions for the outcomes of each measurement in the system that is your question presented. Since I’m better known as a tarot reader, a European divination tool,
And many of you watching are probably tarot reader as well, it’s worth the time to talk about how I compare the two, in terms of divination systems. Historically, in so far as we understand the systems today, tarot’s origins are as playing cards, games, that centuries after its popularity was
Repurposed by occultists for divination and to wax poetic on occult philosophy. In contrast, the I Ching was designed, at its inception, as a divination tool, one premised on a whole lot of math…mathematics that seems to add up. The perfection of the system appealed to scholars of many different schools of Eastern philosophy,
Be that Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, which yes, just to get through this surface-level conversation I’m going to call a philosophy, Legalism, and so on. And these scholars wrote tome after tome about how philosophically sound the I Ching is. So it became part of philosophy.
I’m releasing this video in advance of I Ching, The Oracle’s launch date, so I hope that once you do have the book in hand, with my translations and annotations, you’ll revisit the yarrow stalk divination video and this one. Until then, if you’re working through the two video workshops with a different translation,
Share in the comments section which translation you’re using.
Hello everyone, I am Dr Angela Puca and welcome to my Symposium. I’m a PhD and a University Lecturer and this is your online resource for the academic study of Magick, Esotericism, Paganism, Shamanism, Satanism and all things occult. I’m now at the University College, Cork
For the Conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism which we normally abbreviate as ESSWE Conference, that’s how we say it among us academics. I am going to deliver a paper on the Devil and re-interpretations of the Devil and relation with pop culture.
I filmed the video so that you can see it and tell me what you think about it. So now I will leave you to it and please, as always, consider supporting my work with a one-off PayPal donation, by joining Memberships or my Inner Symposium on Patreon,
That is if you want me to keep this project going and the Academic Fun going. I really appreciate any kind of help if you have the means at all, and otherwise liking, commenting, subscribing and sharing the videos with your friends is also a great way to help my project
And allow me to keep doing this academic content on all things esoteric. Now I’m gonna leave you to my paper and I hope you enjoy it and I hope I wasn’t too bad at delivering it, we will see. Future Angela will tell us.
This is past Angela, prior to the paper, by the way, so I’m still nervous as you can tell. Hello everybody. I’m Dr Angela Puca and today I will be talking about the Devil, the impact of pop culture in reshaping the archetypal adversary for contemporary magic Practitioners. So first of all I want to set the tone for the paper with a couple of quotes.
“Awake, Arise or be Forever Fallen.” from paradise lost by John Milton and “Wisest and fairest from the Angel’s sprung, God whom fate betrayed and left unsung.” I thought that these two quotations kind of set the tone for what we’re talking about,
Which is not as much as a hero or what became to be seen as a hero but more like a heroic figure with some heroic tones. First of all, let’s talk about terminology and I want to thank, I want to give thanks to Per
Faxneld because we went to Dublin together, we had very long conversations – he’s kind of the expert on Satanism and also esoteric Satanism. We had a lot of conversations, so I just want to acknowledge his help in getting a better understanding of the matter.
So here in this paper, I will be using the Devil synonymously for Satan and Lucifer. And also I’m not going to touch on theological themes in Christianity but more in depictions in pop culture and how that influenced esoteric Satanism and contemporary magick Practitioners.
Also the rationale, of course, for collating these figures is that in popular culture and literature these figures are used as synonymous, whereas I am, at the same time, aware that contemporary Practitioners now have established a distinction between Lucifer, Satan,
And the Devil. More specifically Lucifer, or instance, in Luciferian Witchcraft, it is seen as quite different from the Devil and from Satan. So I acknowledge the difference but it’s not what I’m talking about because I’m talking about the figure of the Devil and which includes Satan
And Lucifer and this happens to be the case that these are collated when it comes to pop culture and also in the scholarship, in the academic scholarship that I work with. So first let’s talk about the romanticising of Satan. So Satan became romanticised as a figure
As Van Luijk, if I’m pronouncing it right, explains in “Children of Lucifer.” There have been two cultural changes that posted a reshaped idea of Satan or indeed the Devil during the Romanticism and that happened after the Enlightenment with some also key changes that
Occurred in the Enlightenment, more specifically the secularisation. And during Romanticism, the process of secularisation that occurred during the Enlightenment allowed for people to not see the Devil or Satan as evil, in and of itself. So the ontological weight of this figure was
Lessened and that allowed for, that left enough space for people not to feel as fearful about this figure because if you have that a specific figure is associated with evil incarnate and you have a process of synchronisation that allows you not to see
That as the actual evil incarnate but more as a symbol of evil, that allows you to challenge that kind of symbolism because it doesn’t feel as threatening any longer. And also during the Romanticism, you have the famous political revolutions and so the combination of
The process of secularisation that allowed for the Devil to not feel as real and as scary, along with the revolutions and the association of the Devil with, you know, this person that has the arch… well he moves from being the arch-enemy of God to the person that was
Heroic enough to rebel against the most powerful creature on the earth. And that sort of mirrors what happened with revolutions because a monarch could have been seen as a sort of God and the people rebelling against the monarch could feel a sympathy for the Devil,
In that sense, because they would be rebelling against the main power, the dominant power. Now from the 19th century onwards. So we have this shift during the Romanticism and thanks to the process of secularisation during the Enlightenment, from the 19th century onwards
The romanticised Satan has been linked to a few different traits. So sex and sexual liberation, which comes from the idea, from the concept of Satan being a fallen angel which, you know, you have the base of that in Genesis 6 and then it is expanded more in First Enoch.
Science and reason, science and reason also become associated with the figure of Satan and Lucifer as the bringer of light and because it is associated with, you know, the rebellion not only against monarchy, in the political sense, but also the rebellion against the hegemonic Christianity and also individual freedom and
Agency. So then when it comes to esoteric themed-investigations of Satan and the Devil, we see that there has been a very interesting influence that Satanism has played on the left-hand path and left-hand-path traditions that are still in the contemporary esoteric milieu.
And Granholm and Petersen highlight the main traits of the left-hand path traditions which are an ideology of individualism, the goal of self-deification, the appraisal of life in the here and now and antinomianism, which is the rejection of social and cultural norms. Now, this re-imagined Satan as this rebellious figure, as
Someone who is able to rebel against God and at the same time is a link to sexual liberation and revolution and to science and reason, these are all elements that have fostered and we see that with Kenneth Grant, for instance and in Satanism but these have fostered the
Left-hand path and that’s why the left-hand-path tradition, among other things, you also see esoteric Satanism. And these are also elements that you find in esoteric Satanism as well because these are elements that are associated now with these re-imagined perceptions of the Devil.
Now when it comes to art and pop culture the first occurrences that we see, where we see a re-imagined figure of the Devil, where the Devil presents the kind of traits that I talked about, where first of all in “Paradise Lost” by Milton there was
Definitely a pivotal moment in literature where we see a re-imagination of the Devil, not as much as a hero but more as a heroic figure and it also inspired a lot of art. So if we see
Art and pop culture on a timeline we can see that literature comes first, in terms of depictions and re-imaginations of the Devil as this heroic figure that is able to rebel against the highest power and go towards a process of self-education or self-realization in its own terms.
Then we have depictions in art, which I’m not really touching on. Then we have music and then it really it arrives at Esotericism, Western Esotericism and how these depictions have been incorporated esoteric Satanism, in the left-hand path and as we will see,
They are also influencing or are useful to better understand contemporary Magick practices. Then we have, of course, there are many many literary pieces that have this kind of perception of Satan, you know, representing the traits that I just showed but I just selected
Three representative ones. So we have “Paradise Lost” which was a pivotal moment and it really affected the perception of Satan and the Devil from that moment onwards. Then we have the Italian poem “Inno a Satana” by Giosue Carducci and here Satan is depicted as Satan, reason and meaning,
Matter and spirit and you can see how this links very well with the first positive depiction of Lucifer in Esotericism, which is by Theosophy and we see that first positive depiction in the Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book ( The Secret Doctrine) where she defines Lucifer as the
Source of light and as a source of knowledge and a link to the achievement of gnosis. Then we have “The Hour of the Devil” by Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese poet and my favourite poet and in “The Hour of the Devil,” the Devil and Mary are going to a masquerade and the Devil
Describes himself as the king of the interstices and of poets and of everything that is created and is able to channel a creative force that goes beyond what is bounded by limits. So it gives a sense of a boundless creativity and also of a boundless sense of self-creation.
So I think that it is a short story “The Hour the Devil” or “The Devil’s Hour” depending on how it’s translated in English. But it’s really representative, I think, of the esoteric perception that we have in literature of the Devil in esoteric imagination.
Then we have, of course, the Rock and Metal scene which was expanded more earlier and especially the Black Metal scene in Northern Europe was extremely important setting the scene for the Devil and Satan as this figure that presents the traits that I showed earlier. So
A sort of creative figure that rebels against the most powerful creature and creates his own self on his own or her own terms. So some examples that present the elements that I showed earlier where, you know, that is associated with rebellion, sexual freedom,
Knowing your dark side and even humanism. You have “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones where the Devil is depicted as a man of wealth and taste. “NIB” by Black Sabbath where Lucifer is in love with humanity and this links well with certain forms of Satanism like LaVeyan Satanism.
And then “Lucifer Rising” by Rob Zombie where there is the sexual love allure that you find linked to the figure of the Devil. And then of course we have Marilyn Manson, you know, the whole of Marilyn Manson in just one song where it is connected to LaVeyan themes
Of the Devil. So you have the rebellion against the capitalist society, the hegemony, the Christian hegemonic morality and the centralised state power. So you have LaVeyan Satanism, it’s often described as an atheistic form of Satanism, even though the words of LaVey there are, you know, also elements that
Could be seen as theistic and there is, of course, Esotericism as well, part of esoteric practices. Then let’s move on to the TV shows. So this is the image that I use for my slides and it comes
From Lucifer, the TV show Lucifer and it is based on the DC Comics character in the Sandman series. Lucifer in this TV show is tired of being the Lord of Hell and he’s tired of punishing people.
So since he is bored and unhappy with his life in Hell he abdicates his role in defiance of his father and moves to LA where he runs his own nightclub called Lux, which means light in Latin and collaborates with the police department. And it’s interesting how he’s depicted because
Basically one of the reasons why he’s able to help the police department is because he is able to see the deepest desire of every person and once you know somebody’s deepest desire then you have a leverage on how to influence them. So here we have a depiction of Lucifer that, in a way,
Incarnates all the elements that I said earlier. So he’s very charming and sexual, he’s able to influence people, know their darkest desires, at the same time he’s independent and he helps people. So there is also this theme of Lucifer wanting to help humanity
Which is also another element you define in this re-imagination of the Devil and of Satan. Now I would say that this re-imagination of the Devil is an indicator of a general reassessment of ethics in our society, in a society that was prior, perhaps, to the Enlightenment and
Romanticism, was more influenced by a Christian, dichotomous morality of good and evil. But you don’t just see that with the figure of the Devil and Satan but even with other ‘so-called’ evil figures that in recent years, in recent decades have become more nuanced. So, for instance,
You have The Good Place, this is The Good Place this is Good Omens and here, in both cases, the Good Place is meant to represent sort of heaven and hell but they don’t use Christian terminology. So they call it the Good Place and the Bad Place. But then as you move forward there’s
Also one of the protagonists who is a moral philosopher, a professor, so there are interesting ethical discussions and you have this very romance perception of the Good Place and the Bad Place. So you can see how it is not, you know, you don’t have a perception of good and evil in such strict
Terms, not even of the so-called heaven the Good Place or the Bad Place. In Good Omens you have a demon and an angel, the demon is called Crowley. And even in this case and at first, it seems like
One is evil and one is good but then the more they progress, the more inevitably you realize that actually the two are interspersed and intermingled and it’s impossible to disentangle the two. And in “Vampire Diaries” and in “Buffy” you have the demonic figures such as vampires but
In both cases, you see that they actually have or develop a soul. So I think that this re-imagination of the Devil, which used to be seen as evil incarnate, and now in pop culture is depicted more as sort of the cool guy that allows you
To be free and to explore, you know, your sexuality or explore your individuality beyond the binds and the limits created by society or by a certain dichotomous morality. You see that also, across the board, not just with the Devil, that’s why, perhaps analysing the Devil,
Who has been considered in the Christian dominant ethics in western countries, certainly in Italy and that’s where I do most of my fieldwork, even though this is not based primarily on Italy but you can see how that Christian dichotomous morality is loosening up over time. So
You don’t have that very demarcated and stark sense of good and evil any more and that, you know that re-imagination of the Devil, perhaps, helps us understand this change better. Now let’s see why does pop culture matter. So pop culture matters for us scholars because it
Is a new ongoing myth-making. We see that even with new religious movements how important it is when it comes to TV shows and even comics, even video games, everything plays a massive role in how Practitioners, contemporary Practitioners create, make meaning of their practice. Because
I would say that religion and religious practices are ultimately about belief-making and myth-making and meaning-making, in all these things, you know, stories are important for human beings. Stories have value for human beings and if you see a story that is gripping, that you resonate with,
That will become part of the meaning-making process and the belief-making process that will inform your religious beliefs and your religious worldview as well. Also, TV shows and generally pop culture, even video games and yeah, literature can be gateways to religious practices and beliefs. So there are many, for instance, many Pagans that got
Interested in Heathenry or Norse Paganism thanks to “Vikings,” the TV show because they felt it resonated with them and they got interested in Norse Paganism. So it can be, in a lot of cases, a gateway to religious practices and beliefs and so it’s important for scholars to acknowledge that
So that we can better understand how these new religious movements that develop and how they develop and their conception. Also, it has a bi-directional resonance because pop culture influences viewers or consumers of the pop culture but at the same time, a show or
A specific pop-culture output becomes popular only in so far as it resonates with the viewers. So it means to respond enough to the Zeitgeist of the time to become popular and at the same time by becoming popular it influences people and their beliefs and how they make meaning of the world.
Now, why is this re-imagined Devil useful and to whom? To whom? To scholars, in this case, this re-imagined Devil allows scholars to better understand a few things. So the inclusion of Lucifer, the inclusion of Lucifer by Pagan and Magick Practitioners.
So, as I mentioned in my paper for the EASR on Hecate there are many Magic Practitioners that are currently working with Lucifer alongside either Hecate or Lilith and they employ Lucifer as… not employ, they work with Lucifer in a duodeistic scheme that is influenced by Wicca.
So that the idea of the Goddess and the Gods, they work with Goddess and God but in this case, it’s Lucifer and Hecate or Lilith – those are the most popular combinations. So it is this re-imagined Devil that allows Pagan Study scholars and Esoteric Study scholars to
Better understand how come contemporary Practitioners, even those that are not Satanists, they do not define themselves as Satanists, how come they are employing Lucifer and Hecate, for instance, in their practice. And that is because Lucifer is now associated, just as Hecate is,
To a darkness that allows to shed a light. So an enlightening darkness, if that makes sense. And also it still retains that perception of freeing you from certain boundaries. So for some people, it is useful, to something as it’s useful to work with Lucifer because it allows you to detach
Yourself from a certain Christian background that you may have been raised into. And also, as I said my in my paper on Hecate, you know Hecate is associated with shadow work which is connected to Jungian interpretation and Jungian psychological interpretations.
Also, it allows us to better understand the endorsement of a nuanced ethics, in this case, by Practitioners because I’m talking about how it can be useful for scholars but as I said, I think this is a trend that you see in the wider culture, in wider culture but especially
Within Magick Practitioners, I would argue. And also the emergence of ‘hex positivity.’ I don’t know if you guys are familiar with this term but hex positivity is a thing and it’s going on among the community of Magick Practitioners,
Even Thelemites and hex positivity is kind of a response to the Wiccan ethics when it comes to Magick. Where, you know the Wiccan ethics say everything that you do will come back threefold and so some Practitioners feel that we can assume, you know, light and love and that nobody talks
About the darker aspects of Magick and so some Practitioners have coined the term hex positivity and they talk about it on podcasts, blogs and their social media to mean that it is important to acknowledge the dark side of yourself as a Magick practitioner but also of your Magick practice.
And also the wider cultural exchange in society that inevitably affects esoteric practices. So I think that this is also important to acknowledge for us scholars because it allows us to better understand how esoteric Practitioners make meaning of their world and how
They interpret their ethics and I think that this re-imagined perception of the Devil, actually, really helps and has been quite influential for Magick Practitioners across the board. So thank you very much for your attention and I am also on social media.
I’m on TikTok and on YouTube. So in case you want to check out my work, which is not just about the Devil but I’m mostly a Pagan Studies scholar, I generally study Magick in religious practices. So thank you for your attention. [Applause]
In part one, we looked at the logical version of the problem of suffering and evil.This argument attempts to show that since suffering and evil exist, it is logically impossible for God to exist, and we explained why even atheist philosophers admit that this argument fails. But wait. It may still be argued
That while it’s logically possible that God and suffering both exist, is far from likely. There’s just so much pointless suffering, it seems improbable that God could have good reasons for permitting it. This is the probability version of the problem. Suffering provides empirical evidence
That God’s existence is not impossible, just highly unlikely. Is this a good argument? Consider three points. First, we are not in a position to say with any confidence that God probably lacks reasons for allowing the suffering in the world. The problem is that we’re limited in space and time, and in
Intelligence and insight. God, on the other hand, sees every detail of history from beginning to end, and orders it through people’s free decisions and actions in order to achieve his purposes. God may have to allow a great deal of suffering along the way. Suffering which appears pointless within our limited scope of
Understanding may be seen to have been justly permitted by God within his wider framework. Sometimes what we experience makes no sense until we gain a wider perspective and see the big picture designed by the Creator. Here’s the second point. Relative to the full scope of the evidence, God’s
Existence may well be probable. You see, probabilities are always relative to background information. For example, if we consider only how much this man weighs, we would say it’s highly improbable that he’s a world-class athlete. But when we’re willing to consider new information, that he’s a professional sumo wrestler and
The world champion, we quickly revise our view. In the same way, when the atheist claims that God’s existence is improbable, we should ask, improbable relative to what background information? If we consider only the suffering in the world, then God’s existence may very well appear to be improbable, but if we’re
Willing to look at the full scope of background information to take into account the powerful arguments for God’s existence, we may come to a very different conclusion. The third point is Christianity entails doctrines that increase the probability of the coexistence of God and suffering.
Consider four of these. First, the chief purpose of life is not happiness. People often assume that if God exists, his role is to create a comfortable environment for his human pets. They think the ultimate goal of our lives on earth is happiness, and therefore, God is obligated to keep us happy.
However, Christianity presents a radically different view, that the purpose of life is to know God. This alone brings true, lasting fulfillment. Suffering can bring about a deeper, more intimate knowledge of God either on the part of the one who’s suffering or those around him. The whole point of human history is
That God, having given us free will, is drawing as many people as he can into his unending Kingdom. Suffering is one of the ways God can draw people freely to himself. In fact, countries that have endured the most hardship often show the
Highest growth rate for Christianity. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Second, mankind is in a state of rebellion against God and His purpose. Terrible human evils are testimony to
Man’s depravity, a consequence of his alienation from God. The Christian isn’t surprised at moral evil in the world; on the contrary, he expects it. The third doctrine states that God’s purpose is not restricted to this life, but spills over beyond the grave into eternal life. This world is just the
Beginning, the entry way to an unimaginable, never-ending life beyond death’s door. Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, underwent afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, hunger; yet he wrote, we do not lose heart, for this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for
An eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. Paul understood
That life on earth, and whatever suffering it holds for each of us, is temporary. Our pain will not endure forever, but our lives with God will. Paul was not belittling the plight of those who suffer horribly in this life. Indeed,
He was one of them; but he saw that those sufferings will be overwhelmed forever by the ocean of joy that God will give to those who will freely receive it. And the fourth doctrine is this: the knowledge of God is an incomparable good. Knowing God
Is the ultimate fulfillment of human existence, an infinite good. Thus, the person who knows God, no matter how much he has suffered, can still say God is good to me. So if Christianity is true, it’s not at all improbable that suffering and evil should exist. In summary, for all these
Reasons, the probability version of the problem of evil is no more successful than the logical version. As a purely intellectual problem, then, the problem of evil does not disprove God’s existence. But even if those intellectual arguments fail, the emotional problem of suffering and evil
Remains very powerful. If you have suffered deeply, or if you’ve watched someone you love go to intense pain, you may be thinking, so what is God exists? Why would I want to respond to him or worship him? I feel cold and empty, and
Want nothing to do with him. You’re not alone. God knows your name; he knows who you are and what you’re going through. God promises to be with you through your suffering. He can give you the strength to endure. Jesus Christ also suffered;
Although he was innocent, he was tortured and sentenced to death.His suffering had a purpose: to provide you and me the life-giving connection to God. Not only does God exist, but he loves you. He seeks after you, he offers you hope, and in time, he will make all things new.
He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning, crying, or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.
If you read your whole Old Testament, you never see a demon being cast out of anyone. Ever. How in the world when Jesus shows up and he starts doing that? Did people automatically in their heads think: “Well, this is what the Messiah is supposed to do! This is a sign of Messiahship.”
Where does that come from? Psalm 91. Which, you know, in recent days, you’ve heard this quoted a lot: “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty… he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge… You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness.” In the corona environment, this passage gets quoted a lot.
And unfortunately, in some cases deeply out of context to suggest that well, you know, Christians can do whatever they want here because God will protect us and we won’t get sick and. Okay, that is not what the passage is about. The passage is much cooler than that. It’s more sinister too.
Psalm 91 is a psalm that was discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls in a jar with four other Psalms that are not in the Hebrew Bible. There are extra Psalms among the dead sea scrolls, we have 150 in the Hebrew Bible,
But this one that is in the Hebrew Bible, obviously, was put in this jar with four other ones. All four of those other ones are exorcism Psalm. So well, why would they lump Psalm 91 in there? That doesn’t look like an exorcism to me,
I’m, you read the whole thing and there’s no like casting devils out or anything like that. Well, if you read it in Hebrew, and you were a literate Israelite, you would know that words like pestilence (Deber). Okay, there’s pestilence there. Deber down here, Qeteb (destruction), “the arrow that flies by day.” Okay, right here.
This whole motif of the arrow flying by day and the tear of the night. Right here; Pahad. These are names and titles and epithets of Canaanite deities, all of them. To an Israelite, a Canaanite deity was a demonic, a sinister and evil spirit, you know, a power of darkness. That’s why Psalm 91 was lumped into that
Because this is a prayer of protection and thwarting of powers of darkness in ancient Jewish thought. What else is interesting is this psalm in the Hebrew Bible, you notice there’s no superscription. There’s a psalm of whoever. In the Septuagint, it’s a psalm of David. Okay, also in the Septuagint, there are certain different wordings,
The Septuagint would have been based on a Hebrew text. Is a translation of Hebrew, that don’t always align with a traditional Hebrew text. But in the Septuagint, where it’s a psalm of David, there are a couple of psalms that use specific words for the Psalms, and the hymns and the,
I want to use the word spell, because that’s what it means, or can mean, of David and Solomon. Okay, that in the poetry, the literature, they produced, some of that stuff uses vocabulary that you will find in exorcistic material in the Second Temple period. And so this answers an important question.
And here’s the question. And maybe you’ve wondered this. If you read your whole Old Testament, you never see a demon being cast out of anyone. Ever. There’s actually only two references in English Bibles to demons; Shedim is usually translated demon, which isn’t the greatest translation,
But we’ll run with it for the sake of the illustration, Deuteronomy 32. And then there’s a Psalm. Okay, but you never see a demon or a hostile evil spirit cast out of anyone. How in the world, when Jesus shows up, and he starts doing that, did people
Automatically in their heads think: “well, this is what the Messiah is supposed to do! This is a sign of Messiahship.” Where does that come from? It comes from what I just described. It comes from certain Psalms being associated with David, and a few with Solomon. In the Second Temple Period
There was the belief that David and Solomon had power over evil spirits. And so if the Messiah is a descendant, he is The David, The Son of David, he should be able to do that too. So this is something that we wouldn’t get because we’re not living in the culture.
And we’re not familiar with how Psalm 91 in particular was viewed. But when Jesus shows up and starts doing this, the bells and whistles are going off in people’s heads. This is an important thing he does to convince them that he’s the Messiah. And Isn’t it odd that Satan would choose Psalm 91
To quote to Jesus, in a temptation, and he quotes the part, down here, “he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” So what’s really going on here is Satan is fishing for information.
He’s got Jesus in front of him, he knows who he is, he knows why he’s there. His silly Kingdom of God stuff, okay. But he doesn’t know what the plan is. So he’s there to tempt Jesus. Try to shortcut the thing. And you know, the last one is the worst because it’s idolatry.
It’s just kind of a terrible attempt. But this one’s interesting because let’s say that Jesus looks at Satan and says, “Yeah, that’s a good quotation. Yep. Yep, you know, that’s a, that’s an exorcistic psalm. And I’m the son of David, and I’m supposed to be able to cast out demons.
And if that’s true, then the rest of the stuff in the song must be true too. So go ahead, it’ll take me up to the top here, I’m going to throw myself off.” What happens? Okay, let’s say the angels catch him. What is Satan learned? He can’t kill him,
So we’ll take killing the Messiah off the strategy plan. But Jesus knows, that’s exactly what needs to happen. “So I’m not going to demonstrate anything for you. You’re not going to learn anything in this conversation.” He just tells him that you hit the road, “you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”
And that could be a reference to himself. But it could also be another way of saying; “You shall not try to convince me to let God show you the hand that he’s going to play.” He has to die. He must die. Again, it’s an interesting tit for tat conversation
between these two. And again, my take on it is that Satan actually was fishing for information. It’s not a worthless conversation. And the fact that he quotes Psalm 91 I find really interesting because of its nature. You know, the servant (Israel) out in the wilderness. I mean, let’s think of Jesus
Now as the representative of the corporate nation. Did Israel in the Old Testament pass the test of being God’s servant? Well, yes, and no. You know, they get to the promised land? Sure, after they fail, and then they wander around for 40 years. So there’s that checkered past. They don’t really complete the conquest.
They ask for a king to replace God as the one who fights for them. And then three kings later they go off and start worshipping other gods and end up in exile. So probably no, they really don’t pass the test of being God’s representative son and his servant, but Jesus does.
He passes the test. And now it’s Game on. His ministry begins.
It is often said that many texts were not included as the bible was translated from its original language to a common language, or were intentionally removed in the course of the numerous translations over the centuries and years.
One of these texts is the Testament of Solomon, which tells of Solomon, son of David, who was king in Jerusalem, and mastered and controlled all spirits of the air, on the earth, and under the earth. By the help of these spirits he built the magnificent temple and all its transcendent works.
It tells of the authorities these spirits wield against men, and by what angels they are made powerless. Let us begin. Behold, when the Temple of the city of Jerusalem was being built, and the workmen were all busy, a demon called Ornias came among them toward sunset he took away half of the pay
Of the master workman’s little boy, as well as half his food. Everyday Ornias sucked the thumb of the child’s right hand, and every day, the child grew thin, although he was very much loved by the king. Thus, King Solomon called the boy one day, and questioned him, saying: “Do I not love
You more than all the artisans who are working in the Temple of God? Do I not give you double wages and a double supply of food? How is it that day by day and hour by hour you grow thinner?” The child said to the king: “I pray you, O king.
Listen to what has befallen all that your child has. After we are all released from our work on the Temple of God, after sunset, when I lie down to rest, one of the evil demons comes and takes away from me one half of my pay and one half of my food.
Then he also takes hold of my right hand and sucks my thumb. And lo, my soul is oppressed, and so my body waxes thinner every day.” When Solomon heard this, he entered the temple of God, and prayed with all his soul, night
And day, that the demon might be delivered into his hands, and that he might gain authority over him. And it came to pass that grace was given to him from the Lord God, by Michael his archangel. Michael brought him a little ring, having a seal consisting of an engraved stone, and
Said to him, “Take, O Solomon, king, son of David, the gift which the Lord God has sent you, the highest Sabaoth. With it you shall lock up all demons of the earth, male and female; and with their help you shall build up Jerusalem. But you must wear this seal of God.
And this engraving of the seal of the ring sent thee is a Pentalpha. Solomon glorified the God of heaven and earth, And on the next day, he called the boy, and gave him the ring, and said to him: “take this, and at the hour in which the demon shall
Come unto you, throw this ring at the chest of the demon, and say to him: ‘In the name of God, Come! King Solomon summons you! And then do come running to me child, without any fear of what you may here from the demon.”
So the child took the ring, and went off; and behold, at the customary hour, Ornias, the fierce demon, came like a burning fire to take the pay from the child. But the child according to the instructions received from the king, threw the ring at
The chest of the demon, and said: “King Solomon calls you.” And then he went off at a run to the king. But the demon cried out aloud, saying: “Child, why have you done this to me? Take the ring off me, and I will give to you the gold of the earth.
Only take this ring off me and give it back to Solomon. But the child said to the demon: “As the Lord God of Israel liveth, I will not stand you anymore. So come now.” And the child came at a run, rejoicing, to the king, and said: “I have brought the demon,
O king, as thou did command me, O my master. And behold, he stands before the gates of the court of your palace, crying out, and supplicating with a loud voice; offering me the silver and gold of the earth if I would not deliver him to you.”
And when Solomon heard this, he rose up from his throne, and went outside into the vestibule of the court of his palace; and there he saw the demon, shuddering and trembling. And he said to him: “Who art you?” And the demon answered: “I am called Ornias.”
And Solomon said to him: “Tell me, O demon, to what zodiacal sign you are subject.” And the demon answered: “To the Aquarius. And those who are consumed with desire for the noble virgins upon earth, these I strangle. While in a trance, I am changed into three forms.
Whenever men come to be enamoured of women, I metamorphose myself into a comely female; and I take hold of the men in their sleep, and play with them. And after a while I again take to my wings, and fly to the heavenly regions.
I also appear as a lion, and I am commanded by all the demons. I am the offspring of the archangel Ouriel, the power of God.” Having heard the name of the archangel, Solomon glorified God, and sealed the demon and set
Him to work at stone-cutting, so that he might cut the stones in the Temple, which, lying along the shore, had been brought by the Sea of Arabia. But the demon, fearful of the iron, continued and said to him: “I pray you, King Solomon,
Let me go free; and I will bring you all the demons.” He was not willing to be subject to Solomon, so Solomon prayed to the archangel Ouriel for succour, and lo! he saw the archangel Uriel coming down to me from the heavens.
The angel bade the monsters of the sea out of the abyss. In the book of Ezra, male sea monsters are named Behemoth, and the female are named Leviathan. The archangel cast his destiny to the ground, the destiny which made the great demon subject
To him, and he commanded the great demon and bold Ornias, to cut stones at the Temple, and to bring to completion the construction of the Temple. Solomon glorified God, and called forth Ornias, and gave him the seal, saying: “Away with thee, and bring to me the prince of all the demons.”
So Ornias took the finger-ring, and went off to Beelzeboul, who has kingship over the demons. He said to him: “Come! Solomon calls you.” So Ornias took the finger-ring, and went off to Beelzeboul, who has kingship over the demons. He said to him: “Come! Solomon calls thee.”
But Beelzeboul, having heard him, said to him: “Tell me, who is this Solomon of whom you speak to me?” Then Ornias threw the ring at the chest of Beelzeboul, saying: “Solomon the king calls thee.” Beelzeboul cried aloud with a mighty voice, and shot out a great burning flame of fire;
And he arose, and followed Ornias, and came to Solomon. When Solomon saw the prince of demons, he praised the Lord God, saying: “Blessed are you, Lord God Almighty, who has given to Solomon your servant, wisdom, the assessor of the wise, and has subjected unto me all the power of he devil.”
Then he questioned Beelzeboul, and said: “Who art thou?” The demon replied: “I am Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons. Solomon demanded that without interruption, the chief of the demons seat close to him, and explain the manifestations of the demons.
And Beelzebub sat next to the king, and promised to bring him all the spirits under his rule. solomon asked of the demon if there were any females among them. And when he told me that there were, the king desired to see them.
So Beelzeboul went off at high speed, and brought unto him a female demon called Onoskelis, who had a very pretty shape, and skin so fair, but her legs were those of a mule, and she tossed her head from time to time. The name Onoskelis means she who has ass legs.
As she stood before the throne, Solomon said to her: “Tell me who are you?” And he said to him: “I am called Onoskelis, a spirit which has been made into a body, and lurks upon the earth, There is a golden cave where I lie, But my most frequent dwelling-places
Are the precipices, caves, and ravines. I have a many sided character, and I pervert men from their true natures. I creep up from nature into the arms of men and strangle them with a noose. But sometimes I do consort with them in the semblance of a woman, especially with those
Of a darker skin. They who share my star with me, they who privately or openly worship my star, know not that they harm themselves, and fuel my appetite for further mischief. They wish to obtain money by the worship and commemoration of me, however, I supply a little to those who worship me fairly.”
Solomon questioned her about her birth, and she replied: “I was born of an untimely voice, born from an echo of the utterance of a man, made in the woods. This spirit is similar to the hebrew spirit and daughter of the voice named Bath kol, as well as the Greek spirit named Echo.
Solomon said to her: “Under what star do you pass?” And she answered him: “Under the star of the full moon, for the reason that the moon travels over most things.” Then he said to her: “And what angel is it that frustrates you?”
And she said to him: “It is he that lives in you.” By this, she probably meant the spirit of god in Solomon, but Solomon thought that she mocked him, and had his soldier strike her. Onoskelis cried aloud, and said: “I am subject to you, O king, by the wisdom of God given
To you, and by the angel Joel.” So Solomon commanded her to spin the hemp for the ropes used in the building of the house of God; and accordingly, when he had sealed and bound her, she was overcome and made powerless and to do nothing night and day spinning the hemp.
After he had dealt with the succubus onoskelis, Solomon at once bade another demon to be led unto him; and instantly there approached him a spirit, intimidating and menacing, but he was bound, this was the demon Asmodeus. And the king asked him: “Who are you?”
But Asmodeus shot him a glance of anger and rage, saying: “And who are you? And Solomon said to him: “You are subject to me and to be punished by me, you must answer me” But the demon, with rage, said to him: “How shall I answer to you, you who are born
Of a man, whereas I was born of an angel’s seed by a daughter of man.” No word of our heavenly kind addressed to you earth-born can be too offensive and arrogant. Behold, my star shines bright in heaven, men call it the Great Bear, some call it the
Dragon’s child, and I keep near unto this star. So ask me not many things; for your kingdom after a little time, will fall, and your glory is but for a season, and short will be your tyranny over us; and then we shall again have
Free range over mankind, so as that they shall revere us as if we were gods, and being men that they are, they shall not know the names of the angels set higher above our kind.” And Solomon, on hearing this, bound Asmodeus more carefully, and ordered him to be flogged
With the whip of ox-hide, and to tell him humbly what was his name and what was his business. And the demon answered him thus: “I am called Asmodeus among mortals, and my business is to plot against the newly wedded, so that they may not know one another, and I sever
Them utterly by many calamities. I waste away the beauty of virgin women, and estrange their hearts.” And Solomon said to him: “Is this your only business?” And the demon answered him: “I tempt men into fits of desire and madness over other women,
When they already have wives of their own, so that they leave them, and go off by night and day, to women who belong to other men; so that they fall into sin and commit murderous deeds. Solomon listened in awe to this demon, this was the same act for which his father – David
Committed murder. He appealed to the demon by the name of the Lord Sabaôth, saying: “Fear God, Asmodeus, and tell me by what angel you are frustrated.” And Asmodeus said: “By Raphael, the archangel who stands before the throne of God.
But the liver and gall of a fish also put me to flight, when smoked over ashes of the tamarisk. Solomon again asked him: “Hide nothing from me, For I am Solomon, son of David, King of Israel. Tell me the name of the fish which you fear.”
And the demon answered: “It is the Glanos, by name, and is found in the rivers of Assyria. It is why I merely roam about in those parts. And Solomon said to him: “Have you nothing else about you, Asmodeus?”
And he answered: “The power of God which has bound me with the indissoluble bonds of your seal, knows that whatever I have told you is true. I pray you, King Solomon, condemn me not to go into water.”
Solomon smiled, and said to him: “As the Lord God of my fathers liveth, I will lay iron on you to wear. But you shall also make the clay for the entire construction of the Temple, treading it down with your mighty feet.”
And the king ordered his men to give him ten water-jars to carry water in. And the demon groaned terribly, and did the work he was ordered to do. As an act of caution, Solomon had the liver and gall of the Glanos fish hung on the spike
Of a reed and burned it over Asmodeus, because this demon was so strong, because this demon knew even the future. And this he did, to frustrate this demon’s unbearable malice. After Asmodeus had been bound, Solomon summoned again to stand before him, Beelzeboul, the prince of demons.
And he sat him down on a raised seat of honour, and said to him: “Why are you alone, O prince of the demons?” And the demon said to him: “Because I alone am left of the angels of heaven that came down, For I was an angel in the first heaven.
And now I control all those who are bound in Tartarus. But I too have a child, and he haunts the Red Sea. He is subject to me, and comes up to me on occasions and reveals to me what he has done, and I support him”.
Solomon said unto him: “Beelzeboul, what is your duty, what are your inclinations?” And the demon answered him: “I destroy kings. I ally myself with foreign tyrants. And my own demons I set on to men, so that they may believe in them and be lost.
The servants of God, the priests and faithful men, I rouse in them, desires for wicked sins, lawless deeds, and evil heresies. Fickle men that they are, they obey me, and are led to destruction. I fill men with envy, and the desire for murder, for wars, for sodomy, and other evil things.
Hear me now, I shall detroy the world.” So Solomon said to him: “Bring to me your child, who, as you say, is in the Red Sea.” But Beelzeboul said to him: “I will not bring him to you. But there shall come another demon, one of the wind, called Ephippas.
Him will I bind, and him will I bring up from the deep.” And Solomon asked: “How is it that your son resides in the depth of the sea, and what is his name?” “And the demon answered: “Do not ask me, for you cannot learn that from me.
He will come to you by command, and will tell you openly.” So Solomon said to him: “Tell me, in which star do you reside?” And the demon answered: “The one men call the Evening Star.” And Solomon again said to him: “Tell me by what angel you are frustrated.”
And the demon answered: “By the holy name of the Almighty God. If I be commanded by the great name of the power Eleéth, I disappear at once. Solomon was astounded when he heard this, and ordered him to saw up the Theban marbles.
When the other demons saw Beelzeboul, they cried out with a loud voice, howling because of their king.” Solomon questioned him, saying: “If you would have the chance, would you tell about the things in heaven?” And Beelzeboul said: “Hear, O king, if you burn gum, incense, and sea-bulbs, with nard
And saffron, and light seven lamps during an earthquake, you shall firmly build your house. And being pure, if you light the 7 lamps at dawn when the sun rises, then you will see the heavenly dragons, how they wind themselves along, and drag the chariot of the sun.”
Having heard this, Solomon believed Beelzeboul was mocking him, and rebuked him, saying: “Be Silent this very moment, and continue to saw the marbles as I commanded you”. And by the divine power vested in him, the demon obeyed.
To the Jews, Beelzeboul is the same as Satan, as well as the Canaanite god Ba-al. Some say that Satan and Lucifer are the same, but many others believe they are not one, but are two separate beings, although they were both cast from heaven and rule over hell.
It is believed Satan is Baal-beelzebub, the cannanite lord of the flies and dung, while Lucifer is , well Lucifer, the morning star, the fallen seraphim. Having heard this, Solomon believed Beelzeboul was mocking him, and rebuked him, saying: “Be Silent this very moment, and continue to saw the marbles as I commanded you”.
And by the divine power vested in him, the demon obeyed. And Solomon commanded another demon to present himself. And a spirit appeared before him, with his face high up in the air, but the rest of him curled away like a snail.
The spirit broke through Solomon’s soldiers, and raised a terrible wind of dust on the ground, and carried it upwards, and threw it back on the people and their king, to frighten them. But Solomon stood up from his throne, and came forth, he spat in that spot on the ground
From where the dust was raised, and sealed that spot with the ring of God, and instantly, the wind of dust stopped. This is similar to the magic, some would prefer to call it miracle, that Jesus did in the
Book of John 9 verse 6, where Jesus spat on the ground, and made a clay of the sputum, and anointed the eyes of a blind man with the clay, and the man began to see. And mark 7 verse 33, where he spat and touched the tongue of a man whose speech was impaired,
And the man began to speak clearly. And so Solomon asked the wind demon, saying: “Who are you, O wind?” Then the demon once more shook up the dust, and answered: “What do you want, King Solomon?” Solomon said to him: “Tell me what you are called, and I would gladly ask you a question.”
And the demon answered: “I am Tephras, the spirit of the ashes.” And Solomon said to him: “What is your purpose?” And the demon answered: “I bring darkness upon men, I set fire to the fields; and I bring about broken homes and make them useless.
I am most busy in the summer, but whenever I get an opportunity, I creep into the corners of the wall, night and day, from where I wreck mischief. I am the offspring of the great one, and nothing less.” And Solomon said to him: “Under what star do you reside?”
And the spirit answered: “In the very tip of the moon’s horn, when it is found in the south. There is my star. I have the power to stop the convulsions of the terrible hemi tertian fever; and this
Is why many men pray to me when one is struck with this fever, and I heal them.” And Solomon said to him: “By whose aid do you cure this illness, and do you cause further harm?” And the demmon answered: “No harm is done, for it comes from the angel, by whose power
The fever fades on its third day. So Solomon questioned him saying: “By the power of which angel?” And he answered: “That of the archangel – Azael.” Calling upon the archangel Azael, some call him Azrael, Solomon set a seal on the demon,
Commanding him to carry the great stones, and toss them up to the workmen on the higher parts of the Temple. And by the archangel, the demon was compelled, and began to do as he was bade. After he had dealt with the wind demon Tephras, Solomon ordered another demon to come before him.
And there came seven female spirits, bound and woven together, fair in appearance and comely. And Solomon, seeing them, questioned them, saying: “Who are you?” And they, with one accord, said with one voice : “We are of the thirty-three elements of the cosmic ruler of the darkness.” The first said: “I am Deception.”
And the second said: “I am Strife.” The third: “I am Klothod, which means battle.” And the fourth said: “I am Jealousy.” The fifth said: “I am Power.” And The sixth said: “I am Error.” And the seventh said: “I am the worst of all, and our stars are in heaven.
Seven stars, blue and humble in splendour, and always together. We are called goddesses, and we live together. We change our abode, sometimes in Lydia, sometimes in Olympus, and sometimes in a great mountain.” These 7 spirits are said to be the same as the 7 Pleiades of Greek Mythology, the seven
Sisters who were companions of the moon goddess and huntress – Artemis, as well as the daughters of the great Titan – Atlas, and the sea nymph – Pleione. So Solomon questioned them one by one, beginning with the first, and going down to the seventh, saying: “What is your purpose?”
And the first said: “I am Deception. I deceive and weave snares here and there. I fuel and excite heresies. But I have an angel who frustrates me, It is Lamechalal.” Likewise, the second said: “I am Strife, the strife of strifes. I bring timbers, stones, hangers, and my weapons on the spot.
But I have an angel who frustrates me, It is Baruchiachel.” The third said: “I am Klothod, I am Battle, and I cause the well-behaved to scatter and fall foul one of the other. I have an angel that frustrates me,it is Marmarath.
And the fourth said: “I am jealousy, I cause men to forget their sobriety and moderation. I part them and split them into parties; for Strife follows me hand in hand. I separate the husband from the sharer of his bed, and children from parents, and brothers from sisters.
But why tell so much about my hatred? I have an angel that frustrates me, the great Balthial.” The fifth said: “I am Power. By power I raise up tyrants and tear down kings. To all rebels I give power. But I have an angel that frustrates me, it is Asteraôth.
And the sixth said: “I am Error, O King Solomon. And hear me now, I shall make you to err, as I have made you to err before, when I caused you to slay your own brother. I shall again lead you into error.
I teach men the art of Necromancy, so that they pry into graves. I lead errant souls away from all devotion to God Almighty, and many other evil traits are mine. But I have an angel that frustrates me, It is Uriel.
The incident this spirit of error spoke of, referred to Solomon’s elder brother, Adonijah, whom Solomon executed after he became king. It happened that at the death of the eldest sons of David, Amnon and Abaslom, Adonijah tried to proclaim himself king, for he was next in line for the throne.
But the prophet Nathan, warned David, through his wife Bathsheba, that it was the will of God that Solomon, the younger son, be made king, and as instructed, David proclaimed Solomon king. Adonijah was pardoned by Solomon who begged for mercy, but shortly into the future, Solomon
Would execute Adonijah over a very trivial matter, and the spirit of error claims it was she who made him react so strongly and unreasonably. And so the seventh spirit said: “I am the worst, and I shall make you worse off than you were; because I will impose the bonds of Artemis.
You shall set me free by the locust, for it is by that means that you shall fulfill my desire. If one were truly wise, he would not turn his steps towards me. By her statement, this spirit foretells that the time Solomon shall turn away from God
Was nigh, he shall build altars for foreign gods and worship them. He shall build an altar for the demon Moloch, and offer sacrifices of Locust to him. And It shall come to pass as the spirit foretold, Solomon would become far worse than he had ever been before.
Solomon wondered deeply at this revelation, and sealed them with the ring of God. But since they were so considerable and mellow in behaviour, Solomon only commanded them to dig the foundations of the Temple of God, which was 250 cubits in length.
He bade them to be industrious, and with one murmur of joint protest they began to perform the tasks as commanded. After the 7 sisters of darkness had been bound, Solomon bade another demon to come before him.
And there came a demon having the body and all the limbs of a man, but without a head. And Solomon, seeing him, said to him: “Tell me, who are you?” And he answered: “I am a demon.” So Solomon said to him: “Which are you?”
And he answered: “I am called Envy, For I delight to devour heads, being desirous to secure for myself a head. but I never eat enough, and as I stand before you, I desire to have such a head as yours. Solomon, on hearing this, stretched out his hand against the demon’s chest, and sealed
Him with the ring of God. The demon leapt up, and threw himself down, and gave a loud groan, saying: “I am doomed! where have I come to? O traitor Ornias, I cannot see!” So Solomon said to him: “I am Solomon.
Tell me then how it is you manage to see, when you are without a head.” And the demon answered: “By means of my feelings.” And Solomon asked him: “How do you manage to speak?” And he answered: “I, O King, am wholly voice, for I have inherited the voices of many.
In the case of all men who are called dumb, it is I who smashed their heads, when they were children and had reached their eighth day. When a child is crying in the night, I become a spirit, and move by the means of his voice.
Along the crossroads also do I pass, and whoever I encounter shall be harmed, For I grasp a man’s head with my hands, and with a sword, I cut it off, and put it on to myself. And through my neck, it is consumed by the fire which burns inside me.
I mutilate the dead in the graves, and inflict incurable sores on men’s feet”. And Solomon said to him: “Tell me how you emit the fire? Out of what sources do you emit it?” And the spirit said: “From the Day-star. For here has not yet been found that great demon Elburion, to whom
Men offer prayers and kindle lights. His true name is not known by men. He is invoked by the 7 sisters whom he greatly cherishes. Solomon said to him: “Tell me his name.” But the demon answered: “I cannot tell you, For if I tell his name, I render myself incurable.
He will come when he is called. And Solomon said to him: “Tell me then, by what angel you are frustrated?” And he answered: “By the fiery flash of lightning, and the angel Iax.” Not sure what to do with this headless eyeless demon, Solomon kept him in the custody of
Beelzebul until he summons the angel Iax. As Solomon was still contemplating on what to do with the demon, Envy, he ordered another demon to come before him, and there came into his presence an enormous hound, having a very large shape, and it spoke with a loud voice, saying, “Hail, Lord, King Solomon!”
Solomon was astounded. and said to it: “Who are you, O hound?” And it answered: “I do indeed seem to you to be a hound, but long before you were, O King Solomon, I was a man that wrought so many unholy deeds on earth.
I surpassed all in my vast knowledge of the letters, and was so mighty that I could hold the stars of heaven back, and many divine works did I create. I do harm to men who follow after our star, And I seize the frenzied men by the larynx, and so destroy them.”
Solomon said to him: “What is your name?” And he answered: “I am Rabdos”. And the king said to him: “What is your purpose? And what are the things you can do?” And the demon replied: ”Give me one of your men, and I will lead him away into a mountain,
And will show him a green precious stone tossed to and fro, with which you may adorn the temple of the Lord God.” Solomon, on hearing this, ordered his servant to set off with Rabdos, and to take the finger-ring
Bearing the seal of God with him, saying to the servant: “Whoever shall show you the green stone, seal him with this finger-ring, And mark the spot with care, then bring me the demon at once. The demon showed him a mine of the green stone, and as instructed, the servant marked the
Spot and sealed the demon, bringing him back to the king. Having decided at last what to do with the demon Envy, as well as Rabdos the hound, that was so huge, Solomon, with his right hand, confined his seal on the two spirits.
He commanded the fiery envy to keep the lamps alight night and day, so that they cast their lights on the artisans at work in the temple, and bade the gigantic Rabdos to keep watch of Envy, and ensure he does not fail in his light bearing duties.
Then Solomon took from the mine of that stone, 200 shekels for the supports of the table of incense, and had his men construct an enclosure round the mine of that stone. This is where the legends of King Solomon’s mines came from.
Before he dismissed Rabdos the hound, Solomon asked him: “By what angel are you frustrated?” And the demon replied: “It is by the great Brieus.” And lead the fiery Envy to do the work they had been bidden. After the demon hound Rabdos had been bound, Solomon bade another demon to come forward;
And there came before him a spirit in the form of a mighty roaring lion. He stood before the king and said: “O king, in the form which I have, I am quite a spirit who cannot be perceived. I leap upon all men who lie prostrate with sickness, coming stealthily along.
I render the man weak, so that his body is enfeebled. But I am equally capable of glorious deeds, for I cast out demons, and I have under my control, many legions of spirits. I am well received by all those who I take possession of, along with all the demons belonging to my legion.
Solomon asked him: “What is your name?” And he answered: “I am the Lion-bearer, Rath.” And Solomon said to him: “How are you to be frustrated along with your legions? What angel is it that frustrates you?” And he answered: “If I tell you the name, I bind not only myself, but also the legions
Of demons under me.” So Solomon said to him: “I implore you in the name of the God Sabaoth, to tell me by what name you are frustrated along with your host.” And the spirit answered him, saying: “He is The ‘great among men,’ who is to come, and
Who is to suffer many things at the hands of men. His name is Emmanuel, it is he who has bound us, and who will then come and plunge us into the deep. By the name Emmanuel, the Lion-bearer refers to the son of God – Jesus Christ
Solomon condemned his legion to carry wood from the thicket. And condemned the great lion bearer himself to saw up the wood, with his powerful teeth, for the burning in the unquenchable furnace of the Temple of God. When the lion bearer had gone, Solomon bade another demon to come forward.
And there came before him a great dragon, terrifying and with three heads. And Solomon questioned him saying: “Who are you?” And the dragon answered: “I am a caltrop-like spirit, and as I have 3 heads, so are my activities of 3 kinds. I blind children in women’s wombs, and twirl their ears round.
And I make them deaf and dumb. And I smite men in the limbless part of the body, and cause them to fall down, and foam, and grind their teeth. But there is a way to frustrate me. That cavalry outside the walls of Jerusalem, appointed to guard that spot, is an angel
Of great counsel, who now openly dwells on the cross. It is he who frustrates me, and to him am I subject.” “O King Solomon, listen. In the place where you sit, stands a column in the air, of purple. The demon called Ephippas has brought it up from the Red Sea, from inner Arabia.
It is he that shall be shut up in a skin-bottle and brought before you. But at the entrance of the Temple, which you have begun to build, O King, lies a storage of much gold, which you can dig up and carry off.”
Solomon, on hearing this, sent his servants to dig into that spot, and they found the gold just as the demon told him. Solomon said to the dragon: “What are you called?” And he answered: “I am the crest of dragons.”
And Solomon sealed him with the ring and bade him to make bricks in the Temple, since he had hands. After he had sealed the crest of dragons, Solomon bade another demon to present himself. And there came before him a spirit in woman’s form, that had a head and half a body, but
Without any limbs, for they were invisible, and her hair was disheveled. And Solomon said to her: “Who are you?” But she answered: “Nay, who are you? And why do you want to hear concerning me? But as I stand bound before your face, if you would learn, Go then into your royal storehouse
And wash your hands. Then sit down afresh before your tribunal, and ask me questions; and you shall learn, O king, who I am.” And Solomon did as she told him, so that he might hear of her deeds and the extent of
Her powers, so that he might suppress them, and manifest them to men. He sat down, and said to the demon: “What are you?” And the demon said: “I am Obizuth as men call me, and I do not sleep nor tire.
By night, I go round over the world, and visit pregnant women who are due to give birth, divining the hour I take my stand.As the woman goes into labour and as she pushes forth the
Child, I go in for the child and make sure it does not live, for I strangle it to death. But if I am not lucky, I retire to another place, and look for the next child and the next.
I do not retire unsuccessful even for a single night, for I am a fierce spirit, known by many names and able to take on many forms. Indeed, Obizuth is a fierce demon, a very terrible one. Known as Abyzou in European myths, and as Hal in Persian myths, she is said to cause
Miscarriages and the death of new-borns, motivated by envy for what she could never have. She was once human and could not beget a child, for she was infertile. Some say she is the same as the Geek medusa, Medusa’s head turned into a demon, but this
Is likely not so, as they share no similarities, except that sometimes Obizuth appears with a head full of snakes, similar to a gorgon, but as she said, she is a spirit of many forms. And Solomon asked her, saying: “Where is your residence, Obizuth?”
And she answered: “Here and there do I roam, and like the sun, from the east to the west do I go my rounds. But as it is now, you have sealed me with the ring of God, yet you can do nothing.
I stand bound before you, but you will not be able to command me, For I have no work other than the destruction of children, the making their ears to be deaf, the working of evil to their eyes, the binding of their mouths and tongues with a bond so they shall
Not speak, the ruining of their minds, and the affliction of pain in their bodies. I can be of no other service.” When Solomon heard this, he again slowly beheld this demon and marveled at her appearance. Her lower body was no where to be seen, for it was hidden by the darkness, or perhaps
She had none. Her voice was clear, her eyes were bright and shiny, and her long but unkempt hair was tossed wildly like that of a dragon. And he said to her: “Tell me by what angel you are frustrated, O evil spirit?”
And the demon answered me: “By the angel of God called Afarôt, who is better known to men as Raphael. by him am I frustrated, now and for all time. If his name be written on a woman in childbirth, then I shall not be able to enter her and harm her child.
Having heard this, Solomon sealed Obizuth, and ordered her hair to be bound, and that she be hung up in front of the Temple of God; so that all the children of Israel, may see her as they passed, and glorify the Lord God of Israel, who had saved them from this evil,
By the authority, wisdom and power he had given to Solomon, their king. When the evil Obizuth had been dealt with, Solomon again ordered another demon to come before him. And rolling itself along, came a spirit in the appearance of a half man half dragon,
Having the face and hands of a man, as well as the body and limbs of a man, but its feet were those of a dragon; and it had dragon wings and tail on its back. And when the king beheld it, astonished, he said to it: “Who are you, demon, what are you called?
And from where have you come and what is your purpose? Tell me.” And the spirit answered and said: “This is the first time I have stood before you, O King Solomon. I am a spirit made into a god among men, but now brought to nothing by the ring and wisdom
Bestowed onto you by God. I am the so-called winged dragon, and although I pair with quite many women, only those of fair shape do I bed. I copulate with them in the form of a winged spirit, And she on whom I have leapt goes
Heavy with child, and that which is born of her becomes eros. But since such offspring cannot be carried by men, the woman in question breaks wind. Such is what I do. If you are not satisfied, then all the other demons nested within me, whom you have equally
Disturbed and bound, will tell you the whole truth. ‘And if you so wish, those composed of fire will burn up the logs which are to be collected by them for the building of the temple. As the demon said this, and to demonstrate, there went forth a spirit from his mouth,
And it consumed the wood of the frankincense-tree, and burned up all the logs which we had placed in the Temple of God. And seeing it, Solomon marvelled at what the spirit had done. He asked the dragon-shaped demon, saying: “Tell me, by what angel are you frustrated?”
And he answered: “By the great angel which has its seat in the second heaven, and which is known in Hebrew as Bazazeth. And accordingly, Solomon invoked his angel, and sealed the dragon-shaped demon, condemning him to saw up marbles for the building of the Temple of God.
After the man dragon had been bound, king Solomon commanded another demon to come before him. And there came before his face another spirit, in the form of a woman, but with 3 heads, one in the middle, and two other heads by the sides, each with hands.
This was the spirit Enepsigos, known in Greek Mythology as Hekate or Hecate, the shapeshifting goddess of witchcraft, Necromancy and of the night. And Solomon asked her, saying: “Tell me, who are you?” And she said to him: “I am Enêpsigos, known among men by a myriad of other names.”
And Solomon said to her: “By what angel are you frustrated?” But the spirit said to him: “What do you seek, why do you ask? I undergo changes, like the goddess I am called. I change into a shape and I change again into possession of another shape.
Therefore do not be desirous to know all that concerns me. But since you are before me for this much, hear me. My abode is in the moon, and for that reason I possess three forms. At times I am magically invoked by the wise as Kronos, At times, in connection with those
Who bring me down, I appear in any form of any shape and size. And other times, I come down in the form as you see me. but I am frustrated by the angel Rathanael, who sits in the third heaven. This then is why I speak to you.
Your temple over there cannot contain me.” But Solomon did the thing he always did. He prayed to his God, and invoked the angel whom Enépsigos spoke of, then he sealed her with a triple chain, fastening the chain beneath her with the seal. He bound her with unbreakable chains.
And When he had done this, Enepsigos calmly looked at him and prophesied, saying:”This is what you do to us, King Solomon, is this how you treat us? Harken unto me, after a time your kingdom shall be broken, and this Temple shall be riven asunder.
All of Jerusalem shall be undone and conquered by the King of the Persians and Medes and Chaldaeans. The vessels of this Temple, which you make, shall be put to the service and worship of the gods; and along with them, all the jars, in which you shut us up, shall be broken by
The hands of men. And then we shall go forth in great power here and there, and be disseminated all over the world. We shall lead astray the inhabited world for a long season, until the Son of God is stretched
Upon the cross, For never before has there risen a king like him, the one who will frustrate us all, whose mother shall not have contact with any man. Who else can receive such authority over spirits, except he, whom the first devil will seek to tempt, but will not prevail over?
His name is Emmanuel. But for you, O King Solomon, your time is evil, and your years short and evil, and to your servant shall your kingdom be given.” Emmanuel, as mentioned before,refers to the son of god – Jesus Christ.
Solomon was shaken by the words of these spirits, for this is the third spirit to foretell his doom, but Of course, he would not acknowledge these prophecies, until they came true. He refused to believe their words; but when they were realized, he then understood how powerful these spirits are.
And right before his death, he would write this Testament to the children of Israel, and give it to them, so that they might know the powers of the demons and their shapes, and the names of the higher angels, by which these fallen angels are frustrated.
When the triple headed goddess, Enepsigos, had been bound in chains and dismissed from his presence, Solomon commanded another spirit to come before him. And there came before his face a demon, whose front the shape of a horse, but its behind was that of a fish.
He had a mighty voice, and said to the king: “O King Solomon, I am a fierce spirit of the sea, and I am greedy of gold and silver. I am such a spirit that rounds itself and comes over the expanses of the waters of the
Sea, where I trip up the men who sail there. I transform and round myself into a wave, and then throw myself at ships and come right in on them, and loot whatever money and treasures I may find.
That is what I do, for that is my way of getting hold of money and men. But I am not covetous of men’s bodies, For I have no use for them. I take the men, and whirl them round with myself, and hurl them so far away, casting them up out of the sea.
But Beelzeboul, ruler of the spirits of air and of those under the earth, and lord of earthly ones, has a joint kingship with us in respect that each one of us tell him of our deeds. Therefore I went up from the sea, to tell him of mine, only to be assaulted by bringing
Me here. I also have another character and role. I transform myself into waves, and come up from the sea, And show myself to men, so that those on earth call me Kunospaston, because I assume a human form.
As I pass up into men, I send forth a certain nausea, and cause them to be sea sick. I came then to take counsel with the prince Beelzeboul; and he bound me and delivered me into your hands. And I am here before you because of this seal, and you now torment me.
The waters of the sea sustains me. Behold now, in two or three days the spirit that stands before you and converses with you will weaken and fail, because I have no water.” And Solomon said to him: “Tell me by what angel you are frustrated.” And he answered: “By the angel – Iameth.”
And Solomon commanded that the spirit be thrown into a glass vessel filled with ten jugs of sea-water of two measures each1. And he sealed the mouth of the vessel round above the marbles and asphalt and pitch.
And having sealed it with his ring, he ordered it to be deposited in the Temple of God. After the demon seahorse had been sealed within a glass vessel, Solomon ordered that another demon be led unto him. And there came before his face an enslaved spirit, having obscurely the form of a man,
Very tall and large, with gleaming eyes, and bearing in his hand a sharp blade. This spirit was a Nephil, a member of the Nephilim, a race of Giants mentioned in the Christian bible, the children of the sons of God with the daughters of men. And Solomon asked him: “Who are you?
And the spirit answered: “I am a lascivious spirit, a lustful spirit who had risen from a giant man who died in the massacre during the time of the giants.” And Solomon said to him: “What do yo do on earth, and where is your dwelling place?”
And the spirit answered: “My dwelling is in fruitful places, but here is what I do on earth. I seat myself beside men who pass along and among the tombs of the dead, and in untimely season I assume the form of the dead; whereby if I catch any one, I at once destroy him
With my sword. But if I cannot destroy him, I cause him to be possessed with a demon, and to devour his own flesh, and the hair to fall off his chin.” Solomon said to him: “Do you you have fear for the God of heaven and of earth?
Tell me by what angel you are frustrated.” And the spirit answered: “He who frustrates me is he who is to become the Saviour, a man god whose name, if written on anyone’s forehead, will defeat me, and in fear I shall quickly retreat.
Likewise, if any one bears his sign on him, I shall be in fear and go no closer.” Like the spirits before him, this giant made reference to no other than Jesus Christ, the son of God. As soon as he heard this, Solomon glorified the Lord God, and shut up this demon like
He did the rest. After the Giant spirit had been bound, Solomon commanded another demon to come before him. And there came before his face thirty-six spirits, most of their heads shaped like animals, but in themselves they were in human form; having faces of all sorts, faces of asses,
Faces of lion, faces of oxen, and faces of birds. These were the spirits of the Zodiacal circle, and of the 36 constellations called Decans in ancient Egyptian astronomy. And Solomon, on seeing them, wondered, and asked them, saying: “Who are you?”
But they, of one accord with one voice, said: “We are the thirty-six elements, the world-rulers of darkness, and O King Solomon, you will not wrong us nor imprison us, nor lay command on us. But since the Lord God has given you authority over every spirit, in the air, and on the
Earth, and under the earth, we therefore also present ourselves before you like the other spirits, from ram and bull, from both twin and crab, lion and virgin, scales and scorpion, archer and goat-horned, water-pourer and fish. Then Solomon invoked the name of the Lord Sabaoth, and questioned each in turn as to
What was its character. He bade each one to come forward and tell of its actions. And the 36 spirits came forward in three’s, each set of 3 belonging to one Zodiac circle. The first 3 decans came forward, and introduced themselves as the decans of the first zodiacal
Circle, the one known as Aries or the ram. and Solomon questioned them, saying: “What are you called?” The first spirit said: “I am called Ruax, and I cause the heads of men to be idle, and I pillage their brows. But If I hear the words, ‘Michael, imprison Ruax,’ I retreat at once.”
The second said: “I am called Barsafael, and I cause those who are subject to my hour to feel the pain of migraine. If only I hear the words, ‘Gabriel, imprison Barsafael,’ I retreat at once.” And The third said: “I am called Arôtosael. I do harm to the eyes, and grievously injure them.
Only let me hear the words, ‘Uriel, imprison Aratosael’ and I’ll retreat at once. The fourth spirit was not given account of, or perhaps he declined to introduce himself, but from what we gather from the Decans, the 36 groups of constellations used in ancient
Egyptian astronomy, the same constellations these spirits represent, his name was Horopel. The fifth spirit said: “I am called Iudal, and I bring about a block in the ears and deafness of hearing. If I hear, ‘Uruel imprison Iudal,’ I retreat at once.” And The sixth said: “I am called Sphendonaêl.
I cause tumours of the parotid gland, and inflammations of the tonsils, and tetanic recurvation. If I hear, ‘Sabrael, imprison Sphendonaêl,’ I retreat at once.” These spirits from the 4th to the 6th were the 3 decans of the Zodiacal sign Taurus or the Bull.
The Seventh spirit said: “I am called Sphandôr, and I weaken the strength of the shoulders, and cause them to tremble. I paralyze the nerves of the hands, I break and bruise the bones of the neck, and I suck out the marrow.
But if I hear the words, ‘Araêl, imprison Sphandôr,’ I at once retreat.” The eight said: “I am called Belbel. I distort the hearts and minds of men. If I hear the words, ‘Araêl, imprison Belbel,’ I at once retreat.” And the ninth said: “I am called Kurtaêl.
I send colics in the bowels, and I induce pains. If I hear the words, ‘Iaôth, imprison Kurtaêl,’ I at once retreat.” These spirits were from the 7th to the 9th the 3 decans of the Zodiacal sign Gemini or the twins. The tenth spirit said: “I am called Metathiax.
I cause the reins to ache. If I hear the words, ‘Adônaêl, imprison Metathiax,’ I at once retreat.” The eleventh said: “I am called Katanikotaêl. I create strife and wrongs in men’s homes, and send on them hard temper.
If any one would be at peace in his home, let him write on seven leaves of laurel the name of the angel that frustrates me, along with these names: Iae, Ieô, sons of Sabaôth, in the name of the great God, shut up Katanikotaêl.
Then let him wash the laurel-leaves in water, and sprinkle his house with the water, from within to the outside. And at once I shall retreat.” And The twelfth said: “I am called Saphathoraél, and I inspire partisanship in men, and delight in causing them to stumble.
If any one will write on paper these names of angels, Iacô, Iealô, Iôelet, Sabaôth, Ithoth, Bae, and having folded it up, wear it round his neck or against his ear, I at once retreat and dissipate the drunken fit.”
These spirits from the 10th to the 12th were the 3 decans of the Zodiac sign Cancer or the Crab. The thirteenth spirit said: “I am called Bobêl, I am also called Bothothêl, and I cause nervous illness by my assaults.
If I hear the name of the great as thus, ‘Adonaêl, imprison Bothothêl,’ I at once retreat.” The fourteenth said: “I am called Kumentaêl, and I inflict shivering fits and torpor. If only I hear the words: ‘Zôrôêl, imprison Kumentaêl,’ I at once retreat.”
And The fifteenth said: “I am called Roêlêd, some call me Soubetti. I cause colds, frost and pain in the stomach. Let me only hear the words: ‘Iax, bide not, be not warmed, for Solomon is fairer than eleven fathers,’ I at once retreat.”
These spirits from the 13th to the 15th were the 3 decans of the Zodiac sign Leo or the Lion. The sixteenth spirit said: “I am called Atrax. I inflict upon men fevers, irremediable and harmful. If you would imprison me, chop up coriander and smear it on the lips, reciting the following
Charm: “The fever which is from dirt. I exorcise thee by the throne of the most high God, retreat from dirt and retreat from the creature fashioned by God.’ And at once I shall retreat.” The seventeenth said: “I am called Ieropaêl.
On the stomach of men I sit, and cause convulsions in the bath and on the road; and wherever I be found, or find a man, I throw him down. But if any one will say to the afflicted into their ear these names, three times over, into
The right ear: ‘Iudarizê, Sabunê, Denôê,’ I at once retreat.” And the eighteenth said: “I am called Buldumêch. I separate wife from husband and bring about a grudge between them. If any one write down the legends on paper as follows: ‘The God of Abram, and the God
Of Isaac, and the God of Jacob commands you — retire from this house in peace,’ and place it in the ante-chamber of his house, I at once retire. These spirits from the 16th to the 18th were the 3 Decans of the Zodiac sign Virgo or the Virgin.
The nineteenth spirit said: “I am called Naôth, and I take my seat on the knees of men. If any one write on paper: ‘Phnunoboêol, depart Nathath, and touch not the neck,’ I at once retreat.” The twentieth said: “I am called Marderô. I send on men incurable fever.
If any one write on the leaf of a book: ‘Sphênêr, Rafael, retire, drag me not about, flay me not,’ and tie it round his neck, I at once retreat. And The twenty-first said: “I am called Alath, and I cause coughing and hard-breathing in children.
If any one write on paper: ‘Rorêx, do pursue Alath,’ and fasten it round his neck, I at once retire.” These spirits from 19th to 21st were the 3 decans of the Zodiac sign libra or the scales. The 22nd spirit was also not given account of, or perhaps declined to share details of
Himself, but he is called Audameoth. The twenty-third spirit said: “I am called Nefthada. I cause the reins to ache, and I bring about dysury. If any one write on a plate of tin the words: ‘Iathôth, Uriêl, Nephthada,’ and fasten it round the loins, I at once retreat.”
And The twenty-fourth said: “I am called Akton. I cause ribs and lumbic muscles to ache. If one, on copper material, taken from a ship which has missed its anchorage, engrave this: ‘Marmarath, Sabaôth, pursue Akton,’ and fasten it round the loin, I at once retreat.”
These spirits from the 22nd to the 24th were the 3 decans of the Zodiac sign Scorpio or the Scorpion. The twenty-fifth spirit said: “I am called Anatreth, and I rend burnings and fevers into the entrails. But if Ihear: ‘Arara, Charara,’ instantly do I retreat.” The twenty-sixth said: “I am called Enenuth.
I steal away men’s minds, and change their hearts, and make a man toothless. If one writes: ‘Allazoôl, pursue Enenuth,’ and tie the paper round him, I at once retreat.” And The twenty-seventh said: “I am called Phêth. I make men consumptive and cause hemorrhagia.
,If one exorcise me in wine, sweet-smelling and unmixed by the eleventh aeon, and say: ‘I exorcise you, Pheth by the eleventh aeon to stop,’ then give it to the patient to drink, and I shall at once retreat.”
These spirits from the 25th to the 27th were the 3 decans of the Zodiac sign Sagittarius or the Archer. The twenty-eighth spirit said: “I am called Harpax, and I send sleeplessness on men. If one write ‘Kokphnêdismos,’ and bind it round the temples, I at once retire.” The twenty-ninth said: “I am called Anostêr.
I give rise to uterine mania and pains in the bladder. If one powder into pure oil three seeds of laurel and smear it on, saying: ‘I exorcise thee, Anostêr. Stop by Marmarath,’ at once shall I retreat.” And The thirtieth said: “I am called Alleborith.
If in eating fish one has swallowed a bone, then he must take a bone from the fish and cough, and at once I retreat.” These spirits from the 28th to the 30th were the 3 decans of the Zodiac sign Capricorn or the Goat.
The thirty-first spirit said: “I am called Hephesimireth, and I cause lingering disease. If you throw salt, rubbed in the hand, into oil and smear it on the patient, saying: ‘Seraphim, Cherubim, help me!’ I at once retire.” The thirty-second said: “I am called Ichthion. I paralyze muscles and contuse them.
If I hear ‘Adonaêth, help me!’ I at once retire.” And The thirty-third said: “I am called Agchoniôn. I lie among swaddling-clothes and in the precipice. And if any one writes on fig-leaves ‘Lycurgos,’ taking away one letter at a time, and write
It, reversing the letters, like so, ‘Lycurgos, ycurgos, kurgos, yrgos, gos, os.’I retire at once.” These spirits from the 31st to the 33rd were the 3 decans of the Zodiac sign Aquarius or the water bearer. The thirty-fourth spirit said: “I am called Autothith. I cause grudges and fighting.
Therefore I am frustrated by Alpha and Omega, if written down.” The thirty-fifth said: “I am called Phthenoth. I cast evil eye on every man. Therefore, the eye much-suffering, if it be drawn. frustrates me.” And The thirty-sixth said: “I am called Bianakith. I have a grudge against the body.
I lay houses to waste, I cause flesh to decay, and all else that is similar. If a man write on the front-door of his house: ‘Mêltô, Ardu, Anaath,’ I flee from that place.” These spirits, from the 34th to the 36th, were the 3 decans of the Zodiacal sign, Pisces, or The fish.
Having heard all of this, Solomon commanded them to fetch water in the Temple of God, but they resisted just as they warned him they would. And Solomon prayed to the Lord God to cause the demons to be bound and made to approach the Temple of God.
Then he condemned some of them to do the heavy work of the construction of the Temple of God, and Some of them, he shut up in prisons. and Others, he condemned them to wrestle with fire in the making of gold and silver, sitting
Down by lead and spoon, And to make ready places for the other demons who would also be confined. After the 36 spirits and the spirits before them had all been bound. Solomon had much quiet in all the earth, and spent his time in profound peace, honoured
By all men and by everything under heaven. With the help of the demons, he built the entire Temple of the Lord God, his kingdom was prosperous. His army was with him, and the city and people of Jerusalem had serenity, rejoicing and delighted.
All the kings of the earth came to him from the ends of the earth to behold the Temple which he built to the Lord God. And having heard of the wisdom given to him, they paid homage to him in the Temple, bringing
Gold and silver and precious stones, bronze, iron, lead, and cedar logs. They brought him woods that do not decay, for the equipment of the Temple of God. Among them also, the queen of the South, being a witch, came in great concern and bowed low before Solomon.
She tried all of his wisdom, and he instructed her, according to the wisdom imparted to him. Behold, one day, one of his workmen, of ripe old age, threw himself down before the king, and said: “King Solomon, pity me, because I am old.”
Solomon bade him to stand up, saying: “Tell me, old man, all you will.” And he answered: “I beg you king, I have an only-born son, and he insults and beats me publicly, and plucks out the hair of my head, and threatens me with a painful death. Therefore I beg you, avenge me.
And Solomon, on hearing this, felt pity as he looked at his old age; and commanded that the child be brought to him. When he was brought, Solomon questioned him whether his father’s accusations were true. And the youth said: “I was never so filled with madness that I
Would strike my father with my own hand. Be kind to me, O king, For I would not dare commit such impiety, poor wretch that I am.” On hearing this from the youth, and not sure which to believe, Solomon urged the old man to reflect on the matter, and accept his son’s apology.
However, the old man would not, and insisted he would rather let him die. And as the old man would not yield, Solomon was about to pass sentence on the youth, when he saw Ornias the demon laughing. He was furious at the demon laughing in his presence; and ordered my men to lead the
Two men outside for a moment, and bring Ornias forward before his tribunal. When Ornias was brought before him, Solomon said to him: “Accursed one, why did you look at me and laugh?” And the demon answered: “I pray thee , king, it was not because of you I laughed, but because
Of this ill-fated old man and the wretched youth, his son. For after three days his son will die untimely; and lo, the old man desires to foully make away with him.” Solomon said to the demon: “Do you speak the truth?” And he answered: “It is true; O king.”
And Solomon bade them to remove the demon, and that they should again bring before him the old man with his son. He told them to make friends with one another again, and supplied them with food.
Then he told the old man to bring his son to him again after 3 days, and they saluted him, and went their way. When they were gone, Solomon again had the demon Ornias brought before him and said to
Him: “Tell me how you know this;” and he answered: “We demons ascend into the heavens, and fly about among the stars. And we hear the sentences which go forth upon the souls of men. With this knowledge we come, and whether by force of influence, or by fire, or by sword,
Or by some accident, we unleash our act of destruction, thereby carrying out sentences upon those they were pronounced. For men who are not sentenced to die untimely by disaster or by violence,If a man does not die by some untimely disaster or by violence, then we demons appear to them in our human
Nature, and walk among them and be worshiped by them. Solomon again questioned the demon, saying: “Tell me how you can ascend into heaven, being demons, and intermingle with the holy angels.” And he answered: “Just as things are fulfilled in heaven, so also are they fulfilled on earth,
For there are principalities, authorities, and world-rulers, and we demons fly about in the air; and we hear the voices of the heavenly beings, and survey all the powers. But as we have no ground on which to alight and rest, we lose strength and fall off like leaves from trees.
And men seeing us imagine that the stars are falling from heaven. But it is not really so, O king; we fall because of our weakness, and because we do not have anything to lay hold of; and so we fall down like lightning in the depth of the night and
Suddenly, and we set cities in flames and fire to the fields. Finding it hard to believe, Solomon, ordered that the demon be guarded for five days. After the five days had expired, Solomon called for the old man again, and was about to question him about his son.
But the old man came to him in grief and with a sad face. And Solomon said to him: “Tell me, old man, where is your son? And why do you look gloomy?” And he answered: “Lo, I have become childless, and now sit by my son’s grave in despair,
For it has already been two days since he died.” And Solomon, on hearing this knew that the demon Ornias had told him the truth. The queen of the South saw all this happen, and was marveled. She beheld the temple of God with all of its great works and precious stones, and donated
A shekel of gold, and one hundred myriads of silver and of bronze. After the revelation of Ornias the demon, Solomon one day received a letter from the king of the arabians, which read as follows; “To King Solomon, all hail! Lo, we have heard
About the wisdom bestowed on you by the Lord, and that you are a merciful man. We know you have been granted understanding over all the spirits of the air, and on earth, and under the earth. Right now, in the land of Arabia there is a spirit of the following kind: at
Early dawn, caused by this spirit, there begins to blow a certain wind until the third hour. Its blast is so harsh and terrible, that it slays man and beast. And no spirit can live upon earth against this demon. I pray you then, forasmuch as the spirit is a wind, come
Up with a solution according to the wisdom given to you by the Lord you God, and accept to send a man able to capture it. If you would do this, King Solomon, I and my people and
All my land will serve you till death, and all Arabia shall be at peace with you, if thou will perform this act of righteousness for us. We pray you, despise not our humble prayer, and suffer not to bring to nothing, the province under your authority. because
We are supplicants, both I and my people and all my land. Farewell to my Lord. All health!” Because he had a pressing matter to attend to, Solomon gave the letter to his servant, telling him to remind him of it after 7 days. What was this matter? Even though the temple
Had been built, it had not been finished, for there was a great stone, lying there in front of the temple, the corner stone which Solomon desired to lay in the head of the corner for the completion of the Temple. But try all they might, none of his workmen could
Lift tht stone, not even when combined, and neither could any of their equipment. For days, Solomon wondered what this could be. surely he knew this was no ordinary stone, for it was the same stone the crest of dragons spoke of some time back, the stone which had
Been brought up from the red sea by Epphipas the wind spirit of Arabia, and perhaps only he could lift and place it at the exact spot desired by the king. After seven days, being reminded of the letter of the King of Arabia, Solomon called his
Servant and said to him: “Prepare your camel and get yourself a leather flask, and take also this seal. Go into the land of Arabia to the place in which the evil spirit blows; and there untie the flask, and place the ring in the mouth of the flask, and hold them towards
The blast of the spirit. When the flask is swollen and blown out, you will know that the demon has been trapped into it. Then hastily tie up the mouth of the flask, and seal it securely with the seal-ring, lay it carefully on the camel and bring it to me quickly. If
On the way the spirit offers you gold or silver or treasure in return for letting it go, see that you are not persuaded. But listen to it without swearing to release it. And then if it points out to the places where there are gold or silver, mark the places and seal
Them with this seal. And proceed to bring the demon to me. Now go, and fare thee well.” The youth did as he was bidden and entered the land of the Arabians. And when the people of that region saw him, they could not believe that he would be able to catch the spirit.But
When dawn came and the blast began, the youth stood up and laid the flask with the ring in its mouth on the ground before the spirit’s blast, and as the spirit blew the winds, it was sucked right into the flask by the ring. Seeing the flask had swollen up, and knowing
The spirit was inside, the youth promptly tightened the mouth of the flask, and sealed it in the name of the Lord God of Sabaôth. Thus, thedemon remained within the flask. The youth remained in that land for three days to make Sure this spirit had been conquered,
And indeed the spirit no longer blew against that city. And all the Arabians knew that he had safely captured the spirit. As the youth made his way back to Jerusalem, the Arabians sent him forth with much honour and precious gifts, praising the God of Israel.
When he arrived, he at once laid the leather flask in the middle of the Temple for the king to see. And when Solomon went into the Temple, still distressed about the corner stone which could not be lifted, the flask
Stood up and walked Seven steps towards him, and then fell on its mouth and bowed to him. Solomon marvelled that even while shut inside the bottle the demon still had power and could walk about. And so he bade it to stand up, and the flask stood up on its feet, all blown out.
Solomon questioned the spirit, saying: “Tell me, who are you?” And from within, the spirit answered: “I am the jinn called Ephippas, that is in Arabia.” And Solomon said to him: “Is that your true name?” And he answered: “It is.
And wheresoever I will, I alight and set fire and blow the winds and do as I please.” Solomon said to him: “By what angel are you frustrated?” And he answered: “By the only-ruling God, that has authority over me. It is he who is to be born of a virgin and crucified
By the Jews on a cross, He whom the angels and archangels worship. He does frustrate me, and enfeeble me of my great strength, which has been given me by my father the devil. And Solomon said to him: “What can you do?” And the spirit answered: ”I am able to remove
Mountains, and to overthrow the oaths of kings. I can wither Beautiful trees and make their leaves to fall off.” And Solomon said to him: “Can you raise this great stone, and lies at the corner of the Temple?” And the spirit answered: “Not only
Can I raise this stone, O king; but also, with the help of the demon who presides over the Red Sea, I will bring up the pillar of air, and will stand it where you wish in Jerusalem.” So Solomon released him from the flask, and at once, the spirit girded himself up, and
Lifted the stone effortlessly, and went up the stairs, with the flask tailing behind him, and laid it down at the end of the entrance of the Temple, just where it was meant to be. And Solomon, beholding the stone raised
Aloft and placed on a foundation, said: ‘Truly the Scripture is fulfilled, ‘The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief corner stone.’ For this is not mine to grant, but God’s, that the demon should be strong enough to lift up such a great stone and deposit it in the place I wished.”
After the Jinn Epphipas demonstrated one of his powers to the king, Solomon bade him to bring to him the demon of the red sea, the spirit he so much spoke of to him, so that he could also witness his powers.
But it was a trick, Solomon was not so interested in their demonstrations, he wanted to contain the spirits, to bring them to nothing, both of them. And as commanded, Ephippas led the demon of the Red Sea with the column of air.
And they both took the column and raised it aloft from the earth. once they were both under the massive column holding it up in the air, Solomon quickly sealed the 2 spirits on that very spot from both sides, so that they could do nothing
But stand day and night, year after year, holding up the column, so that they would never again shake the entire earth from the depths of the sea, nor blow destructive winds upon the earth, for as long as he Solomon had power over them. He had outwitted the two spirits.
And Solomon questioned the other spirit which came up with the pillar from the depths of the Red Sea, saying: “Who are you? What are you called? And what is your purpose? For I have heard many things about you.”
And the demon answered: “O King Solomon, I am called Abezithibod, and I am a descendant of an archangel. I Once sat in the first heaven, of which the name is Ameleouth. And now I am a fierce spirit with a single wing, plotting against every spirit under heaven.
I was present when Moses went in before Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and It is I who hardened the king’s heart. I am he whom the magicians, Iannes and Iambres invoked with Moses and Aaron in Egypt. I am he who fought against Moses with wonders and signs.“
Solomon said to him: “How were you then found in the Red Sea?” And he answered: “In the exodus of the sons of Israel, I hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and excited his heart and that of his ministers. I caused them to pursue after the children of Israel, And Pharaoh followed me with all
His army. I was present there, and we pursued them together. But when we all came up upon the Red Sea, and it came to pass that the children of Israel had crossed over, the water returned and hid all the host of the Egyptians and all their might.
The water hid me too as I remained in the sea thenceforth, being trapped under this pillar. But when Ephippas came, being sent by you, he freed me, and fetched me up to you. Having heard this, Solomon commanded the spirits not to disobey him, but to remain supporting the pillar.
And they both swore, saying: “As long as the Lord your God liveth, we will not let go of this pillar until the world’s end. But whatever day this stone falls, then shall be the end of the world.” As he writes this testament in his final days, Solomon says to his readers: “Watch.
The spirits have remained upholding the column until this day, for proof of the wisdom bestowed onto me. Look there, and you will see the pillar of enormous size, hanging in mid air, supported by the winds. These were the spirits appearing underneath, like the invisible air, supporting it.
And if one looks fixedly, the pillar is a little oblique, being supported by the spirits; and it is so to this very day. The demons had all been silenced, the temple of the lord was complete, his kingdom was prosperous and at peace.
He was wealthier than any king before his time, blessed with unfathomable wisdom and given power beyond mundane comprehension, the spirit of God was with him, and he had dominion over all the spirits of the air, on the earth and under the earth. What more could King Solomon ask for?
All lands far and near were subject to him, And Solomon began taking wives of his own from every land. He took so many that they were countless, yet he would not stop. One day he marched against the Jebusaeans, and there he saw a fair dame called Jebusaean,
Daughter of a man: and fell violently in love with her, desiring to take her as his wife, in addition to his many other wives. And he came to the Jebusaean priests, who were priests of Moloch, and said to them: “Give me the Shulammite as a wife.”
But the priests of Moloch said to him: “If you love this maiden, go in and worship our gods, the great god Raphan and the god called Moloch.” In fear of the glory of God, Solomon could not do as they bade him, And said to them: “I will not worship a strange god.
What is this proposal that you compel me to do so much?” And they said: “It is our custom, laid by our fathers.” And when Solomon answered that he would on no account worship strange gods, the priests instructed the maiden not to sleep with him until he complied and sacrificed to the gods.
Deeply conflicted, the king slowly began to succumb to his lustful desires. On a fateful day, that fair maiden, that crafty Eros, brought him 5 Locusts, and laid them beside her, saying: “Take these locusts, and crush them together in the name of the god Moloch; and then will I sleep with you.”
And Solomon did it, the worst thing he and his fathers could ever do. By sacrificing Locusts to the god Moloch, he had fulfilled the prophecy of the worst of the 7 sisters of the cosmos. And at once the Spirit of God departed from me, and he became weak as well as foolish
In his words. At the wish of the maiden, he built a temple of idols to Baal, and to Rapha, and to Moloch, and to many other spirits, worshipping and making sacrifices to them. He had fallen into error, just like the spirit of error told him he would.
Thus, God turned his back on Solomon, and his glory departed from him; and his spirit was darkened. The power vested in him was brought to nothing, and he lost his dominion and control over all the spirits of the air, of the earth, and under the earth.
They were finally free from his Tyranny, and the once great king, became an object of ridicule, not only among these spirits, but also among all men who once held in high esteem and reverence. What madness could make a man fall so low, as to give up everything of great importance,
For something so inconsequential, for pleasure that is fleeting? And so it came to pass, that the words of the great Asmodeus, and of the 7 star sisters, and of the powerful triple goddess Enepsigos, had all been fulfilled. Therefore, in his last days, Solomon wrote out this Testament, so that whoever sees it
May avoid the very mistakes he made, and attend to the last things, and not to the first. So that they may find grace for ever and ever.
