The devil made you do it, but which one? There’s more to the red guy with the horns, including the fact that he’s actually seven guys with very particular specialties to boot. Or cloven hoof. The Seven Princes of Hell are a collection of fearsome foes spread across various religions
And cultures, but they find their origins in the writings of notorious witch hunter and German bishop Peter Binsfeld. Binsfeld tortured confessions out of supposed witches that turned into what he perceived as the chief villains behind witchcraft — these seven princes. Each one lorded over a specific sin and has
Made appearances across various religious texts, from the Bible to the book of Tobit. The demon princes have also found their way into literature. Works such as Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno feature the Princes in various forms. And demonology experts across the centuries
Have kept them nice and organized in encyclopedias like the 1818 Dictionnaire Infernal or Infernal Dictionary by Jacques Collin de Plancy. Descriptions differ from source to source, but a few core ideas remain the same. For instance, each Prince is his own entity, and each possesses significant power that’s been seen throughout history.
For example, Lucifer presided over pride and Satan presided over wrath. Beelzebub represented gluttony, Belphegor symbolized sloth, Leviathan was in charge of envy, Asmodeus encouraged lust, and finally, Mammon presided over greed. None of them are friendly by any means, but here are some untold truths about them.
The name “Lucifer” has many meanings and interpretations, including light-bearer, giver of light, morning star, and the super cool “lightbeard.” The story of his name comes from his creation by God himself. “Satan at that time was Lucifer, or “the daystar.” He was the brightest of the angels.”
Lucifer is often conflated with Satan, and also with Beelzebub, but they are three separate entities. And in Lucifer’s case, his name sets him up as one of the most interesting princes of hell, given the power he had before his failed rebellion. This
Failed rebellion gives another interpretation of what his name means: “he who shuns the light.” The Book of Revelations tells the story of a battle fought in heaven between Michael and his angels against the rebel future-demons and their angels. The leader of the rebels
Was Lucifer himself. Lucifer was fed up with the state of the universe. He saw himself as superior to humankind and couldn’t understand God’s love for them. So he convinced a third of the angels to side with him and rise up against the rule of God.
The war lasted for years. Lucifer turned himself into a dragon. Fellow demons Leviathan and Behemoth showed up to help, but in the end, Lucifer lost the fight and was cast out. This is where there are several versions of the story. It’s possible that Lucifer’s
Rebellion continued after his exile. Perhaps, knowing how much God loved his humans, it was Lucifer who corrupted Adam and Eve to stick it to God out of pride — his deadly sin — and envy. There’s a lot of overlap between historical accounts of witches and warlocks and the
Power of demons. Binsfeld himself was a notorious witch hunter who used confessions obtained through torture to build out his seven princes of hell. That being the case, it makes sense that outbreaks of witchcraft, if you will, are often attributed to the intervention of a demon or evil entity.
According to Puritan Cotton Mather in Of Beelzebub and His Plot, Beelzebub was behind the witchcraft in his backyard. Mather was a prominent figure in the notorious Salem witch trials. And it’s interesting that he chose to write about Beelzebub out of all the other princes of hell. It could
Be a conflation of the devil and his various monikers, but throughout history, specific demons are chosen for specific instances that back up Binsfeld’s demonic descriptions. For instance, in the Encyclopedia of Demons in World Religions and Cultures by Theresa Bane, Beelzebub is linked to
Divination and possession, traits that Mather and his contemporaries piled on the accused witches. On top of that, in Arabic, Beelzebub means “the patron god of witches.” Beelzebub is often conflated with Satan and Lucifer, along with the more generic “devil,” but Binsfeld identified unique characteristics in each. For instance, Beelzebub has a very specific
Connection to flies. Flies tend to show up at demonic events — they were out in force at the Amityville horror house, for example. Beelzebub is the demon most often hailed as the “Lord of the Flies.” So much so that he’s often depicted as a giant fly himself, though
There are variations on his appearance including horns, tails, goose feet, and other delights. However, it’s the connection to flies that separates Beelzebub from his contemporaries. According to the Infernal Dictionary, he has complete power over flies on earth
And uses them to ruin harvests. And he’s also the leader of the Order of the Flies, a specific entourage in hell made up of all Beelzebub’s lieutenants and underlings. And there’s a third reason he’s known as the Lord of Flies. Beelzebub, himself, was
Capable of flying. In fact, his title is sometimes translated as “Lord of Fliers” for that reason. In what has to be one of the strangest tidbits surrounding a Prince of Hell, the patron prince of sloth, Belphegor, has a curious preference when it comes to sacrifices. According to various demonic
Grimoires, Belphegor accepts human excrement as an offering. According to the Infernal Dictionary, “One renders homage to him on a toilet and […] offers him the ignoble residue of ones’ digestion.” Or, as the Encyclopedia of Demons puts it, “Belphegor accepts offerings of excrement.” Mm. Mm mm mm.”
What this has to do with his status as the nefarious figurehead of sloth is a bit befuddling, but it explains his frequent representation on a toilet himself. One such illustration appears in the Infernal Dictionary, but there are memes galore depicting the goat-horned deity in deep contemplation on the can.
While Belphegor was assigned to the sin of sloth, his abilities actually go much deeper. He was inventive enough to create devices to do his work, and even tricked humans into doing his work then claimed credit for himself. So, in a sense, sloth gave way to ingenuity. He’s slippery,
Too. Belphegor’s able to take whatever form is most beneficial for him in the moment. That meant that Belphegor could appear as anything from a young girl to a giant phallus — whatever was necessary to get the job done. When we trace Belphegor back to his origins as Baal-Peor,
He was both a sun god and a moon goddess to the Moabites who worshiped him. Again, whatever got people to do what he wanted. Call him a crowd pleaser. Leviathan is the figurehead of envy. While Beelzebub, Lucifer, Satan, and the like are often conflated, Leviathan has always been a separate creature who was,
Quite literally, a monster. More specifically, a monster of the sea. In the Bible, Leviathan is the female counterpart to Behemoth, the male beast on land. If you want specifics, Leviathan is described in the Encyclopedia of Demons as: “a monstrous female sea creature three hundred miles long with
Eyes glowing as brightly as twin suns.” Although she isn’t named, Leviathan makes an appearance in Revelations 12:3, when a great red dragon with seven heads emerges from the sea. According to Howard Wallace’s article, “Leviathan and the Beast in Revelation,” this is the sea monstress fighting the war between
Good and evil, since Leviathan was known to have seven heads. Since Leviathan was a sea monster, it makes sense that the rulers of hell found a use for her monstrous size — as the gates of hell itself. Along with swallowing all those guilty of envy,
Leviathan’s gullet also served as the general entry point into eternal damnation. This concept arises through Anglo-Saxon art depicting the fires of hell spewing forth from a massive mouth. In the artistic renditions, and as a concept dating back to the middle ages, this maw is known as “hellmouth.”
The hellmouth motif can be seen in various works of Renaissance art, for instance “The Last Judgment” by Giacomo Rossignolo, as well as a slew of other examples. Asmodeus is the prince that presides over the sin of lust. There are many interpretations
And variations of this dark prince, but most agree that he looked terrifying. You may think the prince of lust would be sexier, or, if nothing else, human-like. But Asmodeus is a three-headed creature. The first head is a bull, the second is a ram or sheep, and the
Third is a fire-breathing man. Infernal Dictionary also adds that he has the foot of a goose and, because apparently all that isn’t enough already, he rides a dragon and carries a lance with a flag. Pick and choose which physical traits from which compendium, you’ve still
Got a monstrous visage that is understandably feared throughout his appearances in the Talmud. The Talmud offers one of the best stories about a prince of hell, and it occurs in the book of Tobit. As the story goes, King Solomon asked God for wisdom. Then he
Made a stupendously unwise decision. Solomon needed guidance about building the temple, so he took a rabbi’s advice and bound some demons to find the instructions given by God. There are multiple versions of this story. In one, the demon is helpful and friendly. In another,
The demon is used to build the temple. And in the third, he deposes Solomon and takes his place on the throne. In this version, Solomon unbound the demon as a sort of challenge, at which point Asmodeus literally punted Solomon across the world. This left the unwise ex-king
With the task of retaking his throne, which — spoiler alert — he does in the end. Still, for a while there, the temple was ruled by a prince of hell. It may not seem like a prince of hell thing to fall in love, but if ever one was going to,
Surely it would be the prince of lust, the three-headed Asmodeus. “My dream is of eternity with you.” According to the book of Tobit, Asmodeus fell in love with a woman named Sarah, but given that he was a horrid three-headed demon, he watched from afar, only coming
Close enough to kill her would-be husband every time she attempted to marry an actual human man. This happened seven times. Then Sarah met a man named Tobias and, ever optimistic, planned to marry for the eighth time. And this time, with the help of the Archangel Raphael,
Tobias defeated Asmodeus with a fish heart and a liver placed over burning coals. Apparently, Asmodeus couldn’t stand the smell and fled the scene in horror. While nothing explicitly says that Jesus had a specific rivalry with Mammon, it was the Christian Messiah who mentioned this particular prince by name in Matthew 6:24:
“You cannot serve both God and Mammon.” “You can’t serve God and Mammon both. Mammon being money.” The simplest interpretation is that Mammon is the figurehead of greed. There are countless references to Mammon in conjunction with capitalism,
Including links to the British empire and whether or not it was in service of Mammon. Of course, this would refer to the figurative Mammon, being the face of greed and empire, but the usage of the specific demonic entity can be seen in the Infernal Dictionary,
Which states how Mammon taught humanity to “wrest away” the treasures of the earth. Satan is by far the most common of the seven princes of Hell to be associated with the devil in general, but Binsfeld sorted him as the patron prince of the deadly sin of wrath. He was
Supposedly the primary opponent of Jesus in the battle for humanity, but Satan was so prevalent in the realm of man that his name became a common noun. In the Hebrew scripture, there was a difference between the Satan and a satan. The latter referred to a human
Adversary or obstacle, while the former was the actual prince of Hell himself. According to The Devil Made David Do It… or ‘Did’ He? by Ryan E. Stokes, early Hebrew writings didn’t necessarily subscribe to a belief in malevolent beings such as demons,
Let alone the seven princes. So when it came time to reprint the Bible, they used satan as a general term. The word often took on supernatural connotations, but the Bible doesn’t commit to Satan being a specific entity. Elaine Pagels digs even deeper in The Social History of Satan,
The “Intimate Enemy”: A Preliminary Sketch, highlighting how, at the time, Jews didn’t believe that a satan operated on his own volition, and that all of these supernatural beings were of Godly nature and therefore working according to his will.
How did we go from this to this wow, or well at least to this. Stay tuned to find out… Hello everyone, I’m Dr Angela Puca, and welcome to my Symposium. I’m a Ph.D. and a university lecturer and this is your online resource for the academic study of magic, witchcraft, and all things esoteric. In this video, we will talk about the romanticising of Satan and how that evolved from
The conceptualisation of him as the arch-enemy of God, which is – by the way – not found in the Hebrew Bible but in the New Testament if we are to endorse a collation between Satan and the Devil.
But this, along with the history of the worship of Satan, may be topics for future videos. In fact, leave me a line in the comment section and let me know if you’d like me to cover these areas. Now we are going to discuss how Satan became a romantic hero for poets,
Artists and how that played a role in the rise of modern religious Satanism. My source for this video is going to be ‘Children of Lucifer’ by Ruben van Luijk, published by Oxford University Press. Yet, you are welcome to recommend and pursue the investigation of other academic sources.
As my long-time viewers know, I always encourage your independent research and to see my videos as appetizers rather than “the truth” on a matter. Research is always ongoing and it’s more important to master the skills to find and critically evaluate reliable sources rather than clinging onto information as
Truth. As they might and will likely be obsolete in 50 years, sometimes in 5 years. Right, premises out of the way! Let’s move onto the topic now… According to Van Luijk, Satanism is an invention of Christianity as it was within the context of
Christian religion and of a society shaped by Christianity that the idea of Satanism first arose. Christianity played, in fact, a central role in the proliferation of the concept of Satan as the Devil as well as Lucifer, lumping together different – and diverging – adversarial roles
And depictions found across the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. After all, if we define Satanism as the intentional religious veneration of Satan, it follows that there can be no Satanism without a Satan. Another element that played a significant role in the conceptualisation and imagery of Satan was the
Demonising of the Pagan Gods and of their worship. The well- known image of the devil as goat-footed and horned is reminiscent of the Greek God Pan and of the Fauni and Silvani of the Roman forests. In other parts of Europe, the devil has assimilated traits of native gods from other traditions.
For instance, in a late medieval Dutch miracle play ‘Mariken van Nieumegen’ he appears as “One- Eyed Moenen”, quite resembling the Nordic God Odin, whose worship had already been abandoned for centuries. But when and how did Satan start to be seen as a heroic figure instead of the embodiment of pure God-less evil?
Well, that happened after the Enlightenment and during the Romantic era. As Van Lujik highlights, there were two main cultural changes that fostered a reshaped idea of Satan. And these are: Secularisation and Revolution. The demise of the literal belief in Satan brought about by a more
Secular society was an essential prerequisite for the emergence of the Romantic Satan. Those who endorsed this poetic view of the Devil didn’t quite believe in the existence of a real Lucifer just as they didn’t espouse the reality of the Christian God. This transition led to abandoning the perception that Satan constituted an
Actual threat and allowed cultural space for re-imagining its mythic role and the possible relatability to our human condition. And, what appeared to be domineering during the Romantic era if not rebellion against the status quo, in the form of Revolutions?! As Satan’s fall started to be associated with proud, unlawful insurrection against
Divine authority, that appeared to mirror quite nicely that sense of popular and political insurrection against oppressing monarchs and the subjugating systems of government of the time. Giving new meaning to his role in the grand scheme of things, the Romantic Satanists
Transformed the fallen angel into a noble champion of political and individual freedom against a supreme power that deprives people of their agency, leaving submission as the only option. From the nineteenth century onwards, the romanticised perception of Satan has been linked to three key elements: sex and sexual liberation, science and reason,
Individual freedom and agency. These elements, perceived as adversarial stances to the Christianity morality, have fostered the birth of both the atheistic and theistic Satanisms. Satan, in his aspect of Lucifer the light- bringer now works against the dogmatism of religion
And, as a fallen one, he got associated with Earth, nature, and “the flesh,” particularly in its manifestations of passionate love and sex. This sexually charged representation was informed by the Book of the Watchers in First Enoch, which embeds the Lust of Fallen Angels
For the daughters of men in its narrative. Van Luijk argues that there are three crucial ways in which Romantic Satanism contributed to the late rise of modern religious Satanism. 1. For once, they mark the first historical appearance in Western civilization of an influential cultural current that positively revaluated Satan.
2. Second, they show a new, post-Christian, and post-Enlightenment way of dealing with myth and meaning. This allowed for a resurrection and reconstruction of Satan as a cosmic symbol with which modern people could sympathize and even identify. 3. Third, romantic Satanism exerted a decisive influence on the shape of the
Rehabilitated Satan that would continue to haunt nineteenth-century counter-culture and eventually emerge in modern religious Satanism. So, this is it for today’s video. Please, if you like my content and want me to keep the academic fun going consider supporting my work with a one-off donation on PayPal,
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The devil the bane of human existence. The personification of evil, appearing in some from in almost every human religion and thought. The problem of evil is a touchstone of any religion. From our direct confrontation with evil results suffering, and thus endless questions about the meaning of life.
That is why all religions have to give a proper answer regarding the origin, nature and end of evil. The general pattern in Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism is to consider evil as the effect of spiritual ignorance. But in many ancient religions, pantheistic religions and Judaeo-Christian religions evil has a face.
Anthropologists say that the story of religion starts with animism – the concept that all people, animals, plants, water, air, the world and the heaviness are all spiritual beings. Anthropologists state that this was a means for man to interpret and understand the meaning of life and the world around them.
These Ancients also often believed in evil spirts, often people who could not find rest in the afterlife spirit and that disturbing the natural order of things brought pain and was the cause of evil and pain in the world.
This system of belief still exists in some parts of the world, notably Africa, and it led naturally to the pantheism found in ancient societies like Greece and Rome. And it also led naturally to the eastern spiritualist religions as well. In eastern religions the concepts of animism lead naturally to the concept that physical
Matter was bad and the spiritual was good. In these religions pain is caused by attachment to the harsh physical world and to truly gain power and perfection is to escape physical existence. Meanwhile this animistic thought lead to the concept that beings were the cause for all the pain and destruction in the world.
In many ancient religions such as the religions of the Aztecs, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans evil was explained through the imperfections of the gods and by gods of chaos and destruction who manifested evil. In many of these ancient religions good and evil were at war with each other and this
Led to dualistic religions such as Zoroastrianism where good (Ahura Mazda) and Evil (Angra Mainyu) oppose each other. Angra Mainyu – meaning evil spirit attempts to undermine god’s creation by creating death and tempting mankind to sin. Anthropologists often state that these religions owe Zoroastrianism for the concepts of heaven
And hell and Satan, but naturally Christians, Jews and Muslims would not accept this view. This brings us to the Judeo- Christian religions Jews, Chrisitans and Muslims explain evil entering the world through the creation account but all of them view the devil very differently.
Devil comes from the Greek word diabolos, “slanderer,” or “accuser” which is a translation of the Hebrew word Satan. Judism has an unclear view of the devil and view in judism vary from just being a metaphor to being an opposer to God.
Some Jews even think of satan as being an agent of Gods or even someone who acts as a courtroom prosecutor. The word satan appears numerous times in the Hebrew bible, but often it is unclear whether it is an evil spirit or an agent of god.
Forinstance in 2 Samuel 24:1 god tells David to have a census and 1 Chronicles 21:1 says that god did it. In the book of Job Satan speaks to god concerning Job and seems to be acting as ‘devils advocate’ no pun intended.
But it is clear that satan is an evil force in other passages like 1 king 22 and in the book of samual in the from of a evil spirt harassing saul. In Christianity satan is more clearly a fallen angel and an opposer to God.
The new testament interprets passages of the old and identifies the snake in the garden as being the devil. Romans (16:20) and revelation (Rev. 12:9; 20:2). Satan acts as an antagonist to Jesus, attempting to tempt him in the wilderness and unlimitly leading to Jesus death by insiting Judis to betray him.
But in this instance satan is acting according to Gods plan possibly without knowing it. The Devil in the end times will attempt one last rebellion but will usimitly fail. The devil is sometimes called Lucifer, particularly when describing him as an angel before his
Fall, although the reference in Isaiah 14:12 to Lucifer, or the Son of the Morning, is a reference to a Babylonian king. The new testament allows for this though, as it often adds second meanings to passages outside of their original context forinstace Psalm 22 which is originally about king David,
Is interpreted to be about Jesus in the new testament. In Islam the devil is often known as Iblis. Iblis also likely comes from the same root as the word devil, but Muslim scholars often link it to an Arabic word meaning ‘without hope’.
Iblis is mentioned in the Quranic narrative about the creation of humanity. When God created Adam, he ordered the angels to prostrate themselves before him. All did, but Iblis refused and claimed to be superior to Adam out of pride.[Quran 7:12] Therefore, pride but also envy became a sign of “unbelief” in Islam.
Thereafter Iblis was condemned to hell, but God granted him a request to lead humanity astray, knowing the righteous will resist Iblis’ attempts to misguide them. To summrise devils appear in many religions in the from of evil spirits or evil in general Some religions use the devil as a metaphor for evil
Some religions believe evil is caused by the physical world and our attachment to it Judaism has varied ideas about the devil, but usually identify him as an evil spirit or a metaphor Christianity and Islam both believe that Satan is a fallen angel or angelic creature who was guilty of pride.
In Christianity the angel wanted to be as great as God In Islam the angelic Jinn wanted to be greater than man What are your thinking on the topic of satan?
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]
– Hail oh deathless one. Who calls me from out of the pits? – [Voiceover] You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don’t want you to know. Here are the facts. In the 1980’s and 90’s people across the united states were convinced that satan worshippers worked in secret across the country. Stealing children for dark rights. Sacrificing animals and innocents and practicing sorcery.
In what became known as, “The Satanic Panic.” Numerous people alleged that they had been ritually abused during their childhood. They claimed that hypnosis and regression therapy revealed these long suppressed memories. Yet, when authorities investigated they ultimately found no proof to back up the accusations. Today the deluge of reports is considered part of
A moral panic. Like McCarthyism or witch hunts. Many people wondered if actual theistic satan worshippers existed at all. So, are there any real devil worshippers? Here’s where it gets crazy. Yes, though perhaps not the way you’d assume. Before we find devil worshippers we have to define the devil itself.
That’s tougher than it sounds. Afterall, one religion’s god may often be another group’s satan. Consider the Yazidis ethnic group. Often called devil worshippers by the nearby Muslim majority. The Yazidis worship an angel called, “Melek Taus.” Who in their religion refused God’s command to bow to Adam.
This bears great resemblance to stories of Shatam and Muslim lore. But the Yazidis don’t consider Melek Taus an evil deity. A similar disconnect occurs between gnostics and mainstream Christians. There are generally two broad camps in the world of genuine satan worship. Symbolic and theistic. The symbolic satan worshippers
Believe in philosophical aspects of satan as a concept. Or satan as an ideology. The theistic satan worshippers believe in a supernatural entity that can interact with the mortal world. Of these theistic satanists, many follow a Lucifer erratically different from the common Christian depiction.
Not an evil force, so much as a disruptive innovative one. Are there really any theistic satanists who genuinely believe they worship an inferno evil deity? While the tales of massive satanic conspiracies don’t seem to bear any fruit. There have been isolated cases of violent criminal acts
Carried out by people claiming to worship satan. And not just any ancient past either. In 2005, Louisiana pastor Louis Lamonica turned himself into the Livingston detective, Stan Carpenter. Lamonica listed in detail, ritualized child abuse that he and other members of his congregation participated in for a number of years.
This included things like animal sacrifice, ritual masks, and dedication of a child to satan. In 2011, Moises Maraza Espinoza confessed to killing his mother as part of satanic right. And there are a number of other proving crimes involving the use of satanic symbols and purported rituals. However, these crimes are not all representative
Of the satanic community. The majority of which, is law abiding. Despite these cyclical allegations of widespread, large scale of networks of devil worshippers, there simply hasn’t been any solid universally acknowledged proof. Those who believe in the conspiracies say the powerful groups have too much control to be reported.
And they point to other supposedly buried reports of abuse. Such as the infamous Franklin Case. Instead it seems that the only individuals or groups actually doing all of those sterotypical satanic things from Hollywood horror films are isolated and quite possibly, insane. Unless of course, there’s something more to the story.
Something they don’t want you to know. – So here comes satanism. Most of us would like to write off as harmless antics by some lunatic fringe. A few years ago maybe, but not now. We have seen that satanism can be linked to child abuse and murder. It has lead seemingly normal teenagers into monstrous behavior. They preach mysticism.
Other people, however, practice evil. And that is why we brought you this report tonight.
What If We Proved the Devil? For many, the devil is the embodiment of true evil. A terrifying and ancient, ever-present force existing in the shadows of humanity, orchestrating all the terrible things that have happened and ever will happen.
But what if this malevolent being wasn’t just the stuff of stories, but instead a real-world, accepted entity? This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; What if we proved the Devil? Are you a fiend for facts? Are you constantly curious?
Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one? And ring the bell for more fascinating content! Throughout theology, faith and cultural history, the exact identity and intention of the Devil is a complex and thorny issue. And various figures have assumed the title, without necessarily deserving it.
Take Hades, the Lord of the Underworld in ancient Greek mythology… He’s usually presented as the worst of the worst, but he’s only really there to watch over the souls of the dead and isn’t an explicitly evil figure. In fact, according to some representations, the Devil himself wasn’t actually evil at
First – but his evilness set in when he was cast out of heaven as a “fallen angel” after disagreements with God. Now, he mainly serves to tempt humanity into making selfish, dishonest and generally bad decisions – which, from some perspectives, means that the devil actually exists so that
Humankind can remain pure, by resisting his schemes. Many interpret the Devil’s first appearance in the Bible as when he takes the form of a serpent to convince Eve to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, which she does,
Turning humankind into a race of sinners all the way up until the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. At other points, the Devil goes by Satan, a title originally given to the ruler of hell, otherwise known as the archangel of death Samael in Jewish texts.
But, in the three thousand years since the Old Testament was first written, the Devil has morphed many, many times, from a figure more simply in charge of punishing those who give in to sinful temptation, to the ultimate personification of evil itself.
So, given that there are so many conflicting ideas about who or what he is and why he even exists, how could the devil ever be explicitly proven? Well, if he plays to type, then he’s actually far more likely to just plain reveal himself than, say, God would be.
After all, making himself known to potential sinners, or appearing at times of extreme hardship, is kind of his “thing”. But, if he did suddenly show, then it could also, adversely, reaffirm the faith that millions of people have in God as well.
With proof of the ultimate evil, the belief that there’s also a supreme good would naturally strengthen. That said, proof that the devil exists might also be seen by some as the final confirmation that God doesn’t, or at least that God isn’t supreme, isn’t all-powerful and all-forgiving,
But can in fact be challenged – this is otherwise known as the Problem of Evil. Regardless, if the Devil (as well as Hell) was shown beyond doubt, back on plain old Planet Earth there’d be mass hysteria. In amongst the existential crises that millions of people would likely be experiencing after
Confirmation of a higher power, the terrible threat of eternal damnation and endless torture would now be confirmed – leaving people to decipher exactly what that means for their own lives… And placing all new, urgent meaning on defining the parameters of precisely what sends you to hell, and what doesn’t.
We’d see huge ethical questions debated as a matter of fact, but with widespread disagreement on what those facts are – seeing as the meaning of the devil would still rely on interpretation. The confusion and chaos could quickly trigger a major crime wave, with people throwing caution
To the wind, convinced that for one reason or another the devil will target them anyway. Of course, if the Devil’s appearance also confirms the existence of an overriding God, then there’d be no major cause for concern and humanity could still make it through the pearly gates.
Elsewhere, the Devil in real life could have a severe impact on law, order and justice all over the world – with even convicted criminals now able to blame the actual devil, in a bid to claim they’re not accountable for their actions. Already, people have used this defence with some degree of success.
Take the infamous “The Devil Made Me Do It” murder case in 1981, where Arne Cheyenne Johnson killed his landlord, blamed demonic possession, was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter but not murder, and served a shortened sentence of five years in prison. Johnson’s controversial case obviously played out without categorical evidence that the devil exists…
But, if Satan really stood among us we’d likely see lots more crimes justified as the devil’s work, and a probable collapse of the criminal justice system as lawyers scramble to find a way to prove whether or not a criminal really was influenced by the fallen deity who now definitely is real.
And it’s not as though we could simply call the devil to the stand to testify, given that he’s characterised – among other things – as persuasive, manipulative and untrustworthy. And so, with the devil at our door and hell on our doorstep, perhaps there’d be only
One solution; we’d need to somehow eliminate Satan, and in so doing stop all bad things from ever happening again. It’d be a tall order, but with the Devil out in the open it’d no longer feel such a massive leap to actually go to war with him.
United by the ultimate in common enemies, the world’s militaries could stage a global effort to rid humanity of its greatest and most dangerous villain. Could he ever be defeated, though? And could our armies ever match his? It’s hard to believe that anything, even an arsenal of nuclear weapons, could kill the Devil outright…
More likely we’d wind up eradicating ourselves in the crossfire, probably as part of our opponent’s cunning plan. Having inspired continent-wide battlefields of bloodshed and violence, we could also assume that the now-confirmed devil would bring with him plenty of other dangerous demons and nightmarish monsters – including vampires.
They’re pop culture powerhouses nowadays, but the vampire myth can be traced as far back as the story of Lilith, Adam’s first wife according to some texts, who becomes the consort of Samael, aka Satan. So, if the devil’s real, then vampires probably are too, and who knows what else!
Ouija boards are suddenly viable, and crucifixes are desperately weaponised as the end of days apparently draws near. If Satan truly showed himself, humanity would struggle to comprehend it at first, then struggle to adapt, and finally, possibly, fall into his trap. And that’s what would happen if we proved the Devil.
What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.
For thousands of years, people around the world have believed in the existence of Satan, an entity that is thought to be the embodiment of pure evil. But is Satan just a myth, a figment of our collective imagination? Or is he lurking, ready to tempt us and possess our souls?
Well, that is what we’ll try and find out. [music playing] [non-english singing] WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): Jerusalem, Israel, the Holy Land. For thousands of years, religious pilgrims of many faiths have come to this sacred city to express their devotion to God. But just outside the walls of Jerusalem
Lies the Valley of Hinnom, an ancient place of unholy worship, where evil deeds were performed long ago in honor of God’s enemy, Satan. In the Book of Jeremiah, God reports through his prophet that people outside Jerusalem in a place called the Valley of Hinnom are sacrificing their sons and also their daughters.
And God explicitly says, I never asked you to do this satanic ritual, and expresses that he’s angry, that there’s going to be a terrible punishment for this. Historically speaking, in the days of the Bible, not everybody was faithful to the Lord. Satanism influenced the Israelite community.
And what they would do literally was they’d create a big pit of fire, and they actually would sacrifice their first-born male through the fire. This was performed in the Valley of Hinnom, which is actually the Hebrew word today for hell. I can’t imagine what would cause someone
To want to sacrifice their own child to anything for any reason, but this demonstrates how in antiquity, people believed that their crops wouldn’t grow, that the rains wouldn’t come, if they didn’t offer sacrifices up to some satanic demons, spirits, whatever. And now you have introduced this new being
That’s responsible for the bad things, and his name comes to be Satan. WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): What can explain the shocking events that took place in the Valley of Hinnom thousands of years ago? Was it simply the result of human wickedness? Or is it possible that, as the biblical accounts suggest,
Satan and his demons were and still are real entities that have the power to influence people? Some people think of Satan as Beelzebub or Lucifer or the Prince of Darkness or the Evil One or Old Nick. And some of these names come from scripture. A lot of them come from folklore.
And if you think of Satan as this ubiquitous figure who’s constantly tormenting and tempting people, then it makes sense that the devil can be known by all of these different nicknames. Is there really a character of the Satan? Well, the definition of that is going to differ between the major world religions.
But fear of an eternal damnation in the afterlife has always been sufficient to keep people religious and in line with the beliefs of their religious clerics, who warn them that failure to comply will lead to an eternity of suffering in damnation. Or in other words, the stories from which this developed
Were to teach moral lessons. Throughout history, many religions have interpreted the world through the lens of having a figure of evil, Satan, who is responsible for evil in the world. According to Christian tradition, Satan was one of the most powerful and beautiful of the angels. He rebelled against God.
A third of the angels sided with Satan, and there was a war in heaven. Satan lost and was cast down into hell. Satan is the embodiment of evil, a fallen angel who tempts you to not follow your best values. He is a god of sorts, and he can offer
Something like that to us– great knowledge, control, mastery, the stuff of transcendence. Of course, it will cost us everything. After all, this is not a straight shooter. This is not somebody who’s going to tell the truth. His job is to tempt you. CHRIS BADER: Satan is believed to have tried
To tempt Jesus when he was in the desert with visions of earthly delights. So Satan is continually throughout the Bible someone trying to draw people from God to evil.
You ‘ve heard of bible accurate angels, but what about Bible-accurate demons? You’ll be familiar with them from pop culture, but demons in the Bible – that’s a murky subject. For example. Where does Satan really come from? Who came before him?
Welcome to the realm of evil spirits, fallen angels, and ancient gods. Where the boundaries of good and evil are not as clear cut as you d expect. This is… an A to Z of biblical demons. I suppose I ought to get something clear. What even is a demon?
In its broadest sense, a demon is an evil spirit. A supernatural being that’s up to no good. Demons appear across all world religions in one way or another, but the demons we’ll be exploring are from the Bible. The sacred text plays a key role in Christianity, and to some extent, Judaism and Islam.
The Bible is made up of two halves: the Old Testament, ancient Jewish writings about the history of Israel; and the New Testament, early Christian texts about the life of Jesus. Now, not every letter has a suitable demonic counterpart. So sometimes, I’ll have to get
Creative with the term “biblical”. From books that didn’t make it into the Bible, known as the Apocrypha; to the wider world of demonology inspired by these religious texts. But enough caveating and demon-splaining. It’s time to learn our ABCs. Starting with A for Asmodeus
Asmodeus is from the Book of Tobit. It’s a strange story, not included in all versions of the Bible. In one tale, Asmodeus falls in love with a woman called Sarah. But Sarah is already betrothed. In a fit of jealous rage, Asmodeus slays the groom and repeats this every time Sarah remarries.
Seven times no less! Asmodeus is eventually banished with an unusual spell. The heart and liver of a fish are placed onto a bed of burning hot embers. The smoke it produces smells so bad that the demon flees to the deserts of Egypt. Sarah moves on to her eighth husband and lives happily ever
After. B is for Belial Belial never chose the demon life, the demon life chose him. The word “beliya’al” appears throughout the Old Testament, but not as the name of a demon, but instead as the Hebrew word for “wickedness”.
But over time, people began to read this word as a name. It’s not clear why exactly, but beliya’al became Belial and *poof* a demon was born. This newly created demon appears throughout the Dead Sea Scrolls, a group of Jewish writings found in pots beside the Dead Sea.
In the amazingly named War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness, Belial commands a vast legion of evil. It’s real Lord of the Rings stuff, shame it never got included in the Bible. This version of Belial offers the blueprint for Satan from the New Testament. More on that demon later.
From a Hebrew word that meant “wickedness”, to the demonic embodiment of wickedness itself, Belial has a surprising origin story. C is for Chemosh One person s deity is another person s demon. Chemosh appears in the Old Testament and was the chief god of the Moabites.
Now, a core biblical belief is that there is only one God, the God of Israel. So having another god in the picture simply won’t do. Chemosh became the victim of a biblical smear campaign. His worst crime: an apparent appetite for human sacrifice. Especially children.
Outside the Bible, Chemosh is far less bloodthirsty. He appears on this, the Mesha Stele, a carved stone dating to 840 BC. It was made by King Mesha of Moab to honour Chemosh. The god kindly gave them victory against their rivals, including Israel. This rock was a way of saying thanks.
D is for Dagon Dagon is another pagan God from the Old Testament. He was the god of wealth and prosperity and for some reason was depicted as a mermaid. A reference to lost treasure maybe? I say this as Dagon appears in an episode featuring the Ark of the Covenant, a golden
Box that supposedly housed the Ten Commandments. In the story, the ark is stolen by the Philistines and is placed at an altar to Dagon. Being the biblical superweapon that it is, the Ark destroys the statue and causes a deadly plague. It was returned shortly after E is for Exorcism
Mixing it up now, a key part of studying demons is learning how to get rid of them. A process known as exorcism. In the New Testament, many of Jesus’ miracles are exorcisms. In one story, Jesus encounters a man living in a cave. Inside him are not one, but several
Demons. When asked their name, they respond: “Legion for we are many”. Realising they are about to be forcibly ejected from their host, the demons persuade Jesus not to be destroyed. Jesus kindly agrees to transfer them into a nearby herd of pigs, which then run off a nearby cliff to their death.
This story establishes a quirky tradition in modern-day exorcism: asking a demon its name. Apparently being on a first-name basis helps banish them F is for Fallen Angel Another key word in demonology, a fallen angel is a good spirit that has been corrupted.
The idea of the fallen angel doesn’t really appear in the Bible but is common in those apocryphal books. Like the Book of Enoch. It s about a group of angels called “The Watchers” who visit earth one day. Things take a turn when they start falling in love with human women who
Then give birth to a monstrous race of giants called “Nephilim”. It s another great story that’s apparently too spicy for the Bible. The myth of the fallen angel really influenced Christian writers and works of fiction like Paradise Lost. It gave rise to the figure of Lucifer, God s right-hand angel who went rogue.
G is for Grimoire A Grimoire is an occult textbook. Full of magical spells, dark incantations and of course demons. One of the most famous is The Lesser Key of Solomon, a comprehensive compendium of demons. It s a staple of demonology today as it contains advice on how to summon them.
Like Gaap, a prince of Hell who is the patron demon of philosophy. Conjure Gaap to get help with learning the difference between Plato and Aristotle. Grimoires are not biblical per se, but many demons that appear in them do stem from the
Bible. Like the demon Belial from before, he is described as having a “comely voice”. H is for Hades You may have heard of Hades from Greek mythology, but it appears in Biblical mythology too. In the New Testament, Hades is the underworld a realm of fire and brimstone, demons and sinners.
When our spirits are not on the surface world harassing human women or leading legions of darkness, they’re in Hades. Blowing off some steam. It s very different to the Old Testament’s version of the underworld by the way, a gloomy chasm called Sheol.
All souls go here, regardless of whether you’ve been good or bad. I is for Ipos Finding a biblical demon with the letter “I” is a challenge. But I’ve settled on Ipos. Ipos is a little strange looking: it has the head of a goose, the body of a lion and the
Feet of a chicken. You can find him in The Lesser Key of Solomon, a demonic grimoire According to his entry, Ipos is one of the sixteen dukes of Hell, and has this rather splendid seal. He knows all things, past, present and future J is for Jezebel
J is another difficult letter for biblical demons, especially as this letter doesn’t technically exist in either language the Bible was written in, Hebrew or Greek. Jezebel is a character from the Old Testament, the wicked wife of King Ahab. She isn’t a
Demon, but there is a demon in her name: Ba al, the Lord of the Underworld. The name Jezebel is from the Hebrew phrase “ezeh Ba’al” or “where is Ba’al?”. A prayer used at ancient funerals to encourage Ba al to claim the souls of the deceased.
This demonic name might explain why Jezebel is a villain in the biblical story. For her various crimes, including Ba al worship, she gets defenestrated (aka thrown out of a window). Jezebel may not be a demon, but if there s an opportunity to talk about Levantine Death gods, I’ll take it.
K is for Kokkabiel Kokkabiel is one of our fallen angels from the book of Enoch. This angel is responsible for corrupting humans with the dark art of stargazing. Kokkabiel teaches the people astronomy. Apparently, that s a bad thing? Maybe it s because the
Sky was seen as the realm of God and shouldn’t be the subject of scientific study. Kokkabiel later appears in the Kabbalah, a series of Jewish mystical texts. But now he s a good guy: his knowledge of celestial bodies is regarded as a worthy thing to teach. Which is it Kokkabiel? Angel or demon?
L is for Lilith The demoness Lilith is perhaps the oldest one on this list. She appears in the Old Testament s Book of Isaiah, lurking in a ruined town. Lilith is surrounded by creatures of the desert: jackals, owls and goats.
But she goes back way further than this, to a Mesopotamian demoness called Lilitu a shadowy being who prowls the night. References to her reach back to the Epic of Gilgamesh the world’s first written story. Lilith s name also appears in old pottery. This is an incantation bowls: along the side
Are prayers to be read aloud, prayers that trap demons. In the centre is a figure who has been ensnared by the bowl. Many believe that this is Lilith. M is for Mastema We’re mid-way through the alphabet, and what better way to celebrate this milestone than with Mastema: the demon of persecution.
Mastema is from the Book of Jubilees. Again, another apocryphal book. Those banned biblical texts certainly contain the juiciest demonic lore. His job is to punish people. But strangely, Mastema gets his orders from God. Whether that be sending plagues to wreak havoc, to torturing folk who may or may not deserve
It. He’s kind of like a divine hitman. Mastema blurs the line between angel and demon. And what does this say about God? He not only allows demons to exist but actively uses them to carry out his punishments. Maybe demons aren’t so evil after all N is for Nephilim
The Nephilim are a race of demonic giants. In the Old Testament’s Book of Numbers, they are so big that people look like grasshoppers in comparison. The Nephilim also appear in the Apocrypha. Enter our old friend the Book of Enoch, which explores how they came to be.
In the story, the Nephilim are the cursed offspring of fallen angels and humans and go about causing trouble on Earth. At 450 ft tall they become a very big problem, so God decides to wipe them out with a big flood.
Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. The Nephilim are an enigmatic bunch for sure, and not much else is known about them O is for Ornias Ornias is a demon from one of the oldest grimoires in existence, The Testament of Solomon. Despite
The name, it was not written by the biblical King Solomon. It s a bizarre book, especially as it’s about how Solomon was a secret demon slayer. His first assignment is to deal with Ornias. He s been harassing a man by stealing his
Money and draining his life energy, classic demon stuff. Solomon traps Ornias by sealing him in a magical ring. Then he goes around collecting more demons. It’s a biblical precursor to the Ghostbusters franchise. None of King Solomon’s demon-busting exploits are in the Bible by the way. This story is
Biblical fan fiction at its finest. P is for pseudo-Christos We’re back in the New Testament to talk lies, deceit and false messiahs. That s what “Pseudo-Christos” in Greek: false messiah. You don’t have to be a biblical historian to know that Christians believe in one messiah: Jesus.
But there are others who claim to be divine, others that will deceive unwary followers. There are hard to spot, like a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”. One of these false messiahs is quite literally that. In the apocalyptic Book of Revelation,
The Antichrist takes the form of a little sheep monster, just with a few more horns. His job it is to hail the arrival of The Beast and get everyone to believe that somehow this creature isn’t evil. Q is for Qeteb We’re back in the Old Testament with Qeteb. The demon of disease.
Or maybe not. Depends on how you translate Qeteb. He appears in the Book of Psalms, alongside his brother, Deber. The poem encourages readers not to fear these demons. Whether that be: “Deber that stalks in the darkness or Qeteb that destroys at midday”.
But in Hebrew, the word Qeteb also means plague; and Deber, means pestilence. So it could also be translated as: You shall not fear: “pestilence that stalks in the darkness, or plague that destroys at midday”. Instead of demons, what if the poem is about disease? What if this is a case of personification,
Where the idea of plague is given demon-like behaviour for creative flourish. R is for Ruach Elohim Ra-ah Speaking of language, this next demon I’ve highlighted is the Hebrew phrase, Ruach Elohim Ra-ah. Which translates to: “an evil spirit of God”.
As we saw with Mastema, when God wants to punish someone, he sends a demon to haunt them. In the Old Testament, this happens too. In one story, an “evil spirit of God” is sent to torment King Saul, driving him to madness.
This has stumped people for a while. Is God responsible for evil? After all, he gets demons to do his dirty work It s an uncomfortable thought, we like to imagine God as all peace and love. But in early biblical texts, God is more morally questionable.
As time went on, people didn’t quite like the idea of a vengeful God. By the New Testament, people placed evil upon another figure S is for Satan Here we are. The big one. The demon of demons. Satan. In Christianity, Satan is the arch-prince of evil. From tempting Jesus in the desert
To a red multi-headed dragon, for the past two thousand years, Satan has been evil incarnate. Early Christian thinkers believed that the snake in the garden of Eden story was Satan himself. If so, all human suffering can be traced to him.
Before Christianity however, Satan was a little less well-defined. In the Old Testament Book of Job, there is a mysterious character known as “The Satan” literally meaning “the adversary”, who challenges God s judgement. A literal devil s advocate.
But The Satan doesn’t seem to be a bad guy, he s just one of the angels. Originally, the word satan didn”t exclusively apply to angels and demons. It’s common for people be called satans, even countries get called satans. Everyone s a satan!
It seems like the classic picture of the devil hadn’t yet evolved by this point. Satan grew into his horns by New Testament. T is for Titivillus Over our journey into biblical demons, they seem to spring out of spelling mistakes and mistranslations. But who is behind those errors?
Introducing Titivillus, aka The Printer’s Devil. The patron demon of typos. His speciality: biblical errors. Imagine if you had to write out the King James Bible by hand, that s 783,137 words. Mistakes are bound to creep in. In fact, they often did.
Like in 1631, when someone accidentally removed a “not” from one of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not commit adultery” was changed to “Thou shalt commit adultery”. Cheating on your partner was now permitted! Of course, the demon Titivullus was blamed, not the careless hands of an overworked bookmaker. U is for Unclean Spirits
Unclean spirits is what the New Testament often calls demons. But what has hygiene got to do with it all? There seems to be an idea that demons are dirty, if they touch you, you are spiritually contaminated. This partly explains the idea of Baptism, a literal bath to wash away your sins… and
Those demons. As they say: a shower a day keeps the demons away. V is for Vampire Yes, you heard me, vampires appear in the Bible. Well, only once. There s a quote in the book of proverbs which says this “The Vampire has two daughters. Give! Give! they cry”.
This pithy saying is not about the reality of being a Vampire dad. Instead, the two daughters in question could be a reference to two thirsty fangs. “Give! Give! they cry”. It’s either that or the passage is talking about leeches. Another bloodthirsty animal with sharp teeth.
Regardless, this biblical Vampire appears in Jewish folktales. The “alukah” is a beast that takes the appearance of a human but lives entirely off blood. When threatened it will transform into a fearsome werewolf. The question is, is a vampire a demon? It depends on how far you want to stretch the
Term “evil spirit” I suppose W is for Witches First vampires. Now witches? The Bible has a bunch of rules against the practice of witchcraft and divination. Like: “Thou shalt not allow a witch to live”. These biblical rules against magic were used to support the witch trials throughout Europe
And the Americas. There was a fear that witches lived among the population, and that they were in cahoots with demons. You’d even get specialised witch hunters who’d go accusing people of sorcery, predominately older women. These hunters took the Bible’s laws very literally. The punishment for witchcraft? Death. X is for Xezbeth
Xexbeth is one of the only demons out there beginning with the letter X. Xezbeth is from the “Dictionarre Infernal” or “Hell’s Dictionary”. A little catalogue of French demons. There s not a lot of information on this one. Perhaps for the best. Xezbeth is the demon
Of lies and deceit. Whether it’s a white lie or full-blown tax fraud, Xezbeth is behind it. No one knows the origin of this demon. There is an Islamic demon called “al-Khadab”, Arabic for “the liar”. But that’s pretty much it.
Khadab, Xezbeth maybe those names are related somehow. Or maybe it s all just lies. Y is for Yamm It s time for Yamm. But not the food, the Mesopotamian god of the Sea. Yamm appears in several ancient myths about Earth’s creation.
These stories take the form of a giant battle between Yamm, his giant sea serpent pet, and a heroic god. To the Babylonians, it was Tiamat vs. Marduk. To the ancient Hebrews, it was Leviathan vs El (aka. God). Once Yamm’s sea beast is vanquished, the god creates the earth out of its body parts.
German scholars refer to these myths as the “Chaoskampf” the primordial struggle. Today, it s widely agreed that life began in the ocean. So, I can t help but feel a bit sorry for Yamm. He doesn’t get the respect he deserves. Z is for Zedek
The final letter, one that I m cursed to pronounce as “Zed” not “Zee”. We’ve spoken a lot about demons, but not about the angels appointed to deal with the ones that get out of hand. Enter Zedek or Melki-Zedek. The “Angel of Righteousness”.
His big moment is in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness. In this epic battle at the end of time, Zedek defeats the demon Belial and his legions of evil. Truth, happiness, and love abound. And the demons are no more.
A good place to end this list. Twenty-six letters later we’ve covered biblical demonology from A to Z. It s a ragtag bunch, all from different stories and eras in time. But we can unscramble this lot, and draw out some wider themes.
You may have noticed that lots of biblical demons do not originally come from the Bible. Instead, they come from the Apocrypha: those books that didn’t quite make it into the canon. It seems that fallen angels, demonic hitmen, and giants were too scandalous for mainstream audiences.
The Bible itself has a mixed picture of demons. Take the Old Testament for example demons either take the form of ancient Gods like Chemosh, Dagon and Yamm, or “evil spirits” sent from God himself. Others like Belial, Qeteb and Satan were not originally demons, but just plain, everyday words that became names over time.
But then, fast forward to the New Testament writings, this had all changed. There’s an explosion of demons! Satan becomes a name and exorcisms are now a thing. These Christian writings were clearly inspired by those apocryphal books and their rich collection of demons.
From then onwards, demons have been a big part of Christianity and the Abrahamic faiths. Scholars of religion believe that demons offer a neat explanation for the problem of evil: if God is all good, where does evil come from? Answer: Demons.
Exploring evil spirits in the Bible and its Apocrypha reveals how these demons took root and began to grow and evolve. Nowadays, the study of demons is livelier than ever before. There is demonological content for every occasion, and enough to fill an entire alphabet.
Hey! Thanks for watching. I really hope you enjoyed this one. Any demons you think to deserve an honourable mention? If you liked this video and want to see more, why not subscribe? A like and comment also go a really long way.
The channel recently passed 700,000 subscribers. That’s a mind-boggling number, and I m truly grateful for your viewership! Regular visitors of the channel may be asking, where have I been lately? Well, I’ve been involved in a very exciting project. I can’t tell you what it is just yet, but all will
Be revealed very soon. Oh, and do check out the channel s merch over at Crowdmade, we have beanies, t-shirts and hoodies. Links are in the description down below! Anyway. I look forward to seeing you next time. Goodbye.
Lucifer, Satan, Father of Lies, Prince of Darkness…the Devil goes by many names, and almost all of them sound like Scandinavian heavy metal bands. In Christian religious writings, the Devil is a fallen angel that rules over hell. So what does the Devil actually look like?
And is it even possible to make a video about Satan and Christianity without offending a whole bunch of people? Well, we sent our world-class team of researchers through a portal to hell to find out. [Said as an aside:] We expect them back any day now.
Most Christians today have an image of the Devil as a red, horned creature. But what does the Bible actually say about the fallen angel that became Satan? Well, surprisingly, not a whole lot. In fact, the Bible alludes to the fact that the Devil doesn’t have a specific physical form at all.
In essence, the Bible describes the Devil as a spirit being with no physical form. When the book refers to angels – of which the Devil is a fallen one – it refers to them as spirits. Furthermore, since Satan is depicted as a master of deception and manipulation, he,
She, or them – we will use the traditional historical “he” for the purposes of this video – can apparently take many forms. And what better disguise is there for manipulation purposes than appearing as a beautiful angelic being? In 2 Corinthians 11:14, the passage reads “and no marvel; for even Satan fashions
Himself into an angel of light.” Many Christians believe that the first time the Devil appears in the Bible is early on, in Genesis 3. According to your one aunt who disapproves of you living with your girlfriend, the serpent
That tricks Adam and Eve into falling from grace is the Devil, or at least possessed by the Devil. This is taken from a line in Revelation 20:2 that says, “he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.”
This unfortunate reference would go on to give a bad reputation to snakes everywhere. Well…the poison doesn’t help either. Nor does the movie “Anaconda”. However, some modern scholars dispute that the Devil took the shape of a snake. Or, again, even that the Devil was that important in the Bible at all.
Henry Ansgar Kelly, a UCLA professor who published “Satan: A Biography”, believes our current interpretation and image of Satan is all wrong. According to Kelly, not only is Satan not nearly as important or ubiquitous in the Bible as most Christians currently believe, but he’s also not such a uniformly evil character,
And certainly not the antithesis of God. In the 45 books that make up the pre-Christian scriptures, Kelly only counts three direct references to Satan. That’s about as often as you’d mention the weird barista at your local coffee shop in a biography of your life.
Furthermore, in these books, Satan’s job “is to test people’s virtue and to report their failures”, according to Kelly. Even when the word Lucifer appears in the bible, Kelly explains that Lucifer was latin for “light-bearer”, and is unlikely to be a reference to Satan.
Rather, it’s the name the book gives to various other entities, such as Venus and the morning star. So any description of Lucifer can’t be used as an accurate assessment of the Devil’s appearance. Going back to Adam and Eve, Kelly believes the Revelations passage that casts Satan as a serpent is mistranslated and misunderstood.
“Nobody in the Old Testament – or, for that matter, in the New Testament either – ever identifies the serpent of Eden with Satan.” Christian philosophers of the second and third centuries were the ones who originally attributed all these references to Satan, as they considered him a figure of great importance.
If all that is true, then where did our ugly, horned, horrifying vision of the Devil come from? Turns out, a lot of it was due to one pissed off Italian literary genius named Dante Alighieri. Dante, as those who were at least partially awake in World Literature classes know, wrote
“The Divine Comedy” between 1308 and 1320. The narrative poem, now considered one of the best works of literature in history, was divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso. Because a lot of Italian really is just about adding O’s to English words, these mean, as you may have guessed: hell, purgatory, and paradise.
Therefore, the book included a lot of descriptions of the Devil. In Dante’s “Inferno”, the Devil is grotesque. He is a giant, winged demon, frozen in ice up to his chest, trapped in the center of hell. In Dante’s disturbing vision, Satan has three heads, each with a pair of bat wings under each chin.
To top it all off, his three mouths are always chewing on the following historical figures: Judas Iscariot, Marcus Junius Brutus, and Gaius Cassius Longinus. Judas was, of course, the disciple that betrayed Jesus, Marcus Junius Brutus was of “et tu, Brutus?” Caesar-killing fame, and Cassius was the guy that started the Caesar-killing plot along
With him. As gross as this vision of the Devil sounds, Dante’s version of the Father of Lies was a little more pathetic than in other descriptions. Dante envisions Satan as a slobbering, wordless demon subject to the same terrifying punishments of hell he is doling out.
Furthermore, Dante emphasizes that Satan once used to be beautiful until he rebelled against God. A line from the poem states, “Were he as fair once, as he now is foul”. Another medieval book, the Codex Gigas, also has very detailed images of the Devil.
Codex Gigas, which means “Giant Book”, is also nicknamed “The Devil’s Bible”. Given that the tome weighs a staggering 165 pounds, we actually think that “Giant Book” is the more accurate of the two names. We have also never been so grateful for Kindles.
Throughout the several, several, hundred pages of the book, the devil is depicted with a greenish face bearing red horns, eyes, and claws. This comes closer to our modern image of the Devil. But according to some scholars, it turns out Christianity also borrowed bits and pieces
From other religions and belief systems to fill in the Bible’s blanks. Bernard Barryte has curated an exhibit titled “Sympathy for the Devil” at Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center, which somehow escaped the notice of Mick Jagger’s legal team. Barryte says, “bits and pieces from lots of now-defunct religions got synthesized:
The cloven feet from Pan, the horns from the gods of various cults in the near east.” This image was highly popular in the 15th and 16th centuries, which depicted the Devil as the sworn enemy of Christianity and of all mankind. A horned, furry beast, barely human in appearance.
As we dive further in, the research shows that the image of the Devil, besides being influenced by important literary and artistic works of each era, changed along with the interpretation of what the Devil symbolized. For example, John Milton’s work “Paradise Lost” drew Satan as a sad figure deserving of pity.
This depiction, combined with the effects of the French and American Revolution, led to images of the Devil as a more human character. As Barryte says, “people interpreted the figure less as a demonic creature and more as a heroic rebel against the oppression of the paternal god.”
At this point in time, many Christians wanted to remove the superstitious elements of their religion altogether, considering them a bit backwards. Therefore, this new more human look for the Devil suited them just fine. By the 19th century, Goethe’s “Faust” leaned into the image of the Devil as a sly, cunning manipulator.
At this point, the image of Satan switches to a more weasley-looking trickster. Many bronze statues of this era depict him as a thin, drawn, frequently hunched over man with pointed features One thing many depictions share in common is the color red.
That’s usually a theme for images of Satan, which makes sense as he rules over a place where fire is eternally burning and people are bleeding from being tortured. Some Christians believe that the Devil still occasionally walks the Earth, presenting himself in the form of demonic possessions.
Popular shows and cartoons show him carrying a trident and wearing a red cape. A few last-minute, ahem, “sexy” Halloween costumes depict him in a red bodysuit and horns, wearing nothing much else at all, and prone to being fined for public intoxication.
Nowadays, many works of art depict the Devil as embodied by a person, or institution, right here on Earth. The Devil has been depicted as a tailor sewing Nazi uniforms in Jerome Witkin’s “The Devil as Tailor”, or even as a red-clad papal figure next to a bloody woman in “Heaven and Hell”.
We will not be showing that second image in this video, and trust us, your brain cells will thank us for that. In fact, as corruption and sex scandals came to light regarding the Catholic Church, it became common to depict the Devil as existing within the church itself, or at least its important figureheads.
Whether drawn by religious Christians or non-religious artists, as society moves more towards addressing issues and injustices right here on Earth, the concept of the Devil appears more and more in human form. Brutal dictators, genocidal psychopaths, and serial predators are all seen as evil to the point of non-comprehension.
Aka…”they have the Devil inside them.” However, the concept of an evil spirit, religious or otherwise, is hardly unique to Christianity. Most cultures and religions around the globe have a being similar to “the Devil”, and each has its unique take on what this spirit may look like.
Islamic mythology speaks of a demonic creature below the level of angels and devils called the Jinn, a spirit that can take human or animal form. They live in inanimate objects and are responsible for mental illnesses, destruction, accidents, and other maladies. In English we know them as…genies.
Clearly, Disney sanitized this creature a bit for its movies. In many Caribbean countries, their folklore speaks of evil spirits known as Jumbees. These Jumbees come in all different shapes and sizes, and carry different intentions as well. In Guyana, native people speak of the Massacooramanis, a large, excessively hairy man-like creature
That boasts a sharp set of teeth protruding from its mouth. He always lives in rivers, where he drags boats into the water and feasts on the men inside. The Moongazer, on the other hand, comes out only during the full moon.
He looks like an extremely tall, slim, muscular man who straddles a road and stares at the moon. Anyone who tries to pass the road underneath him instantly gets crushed to death. And really, if you see a naked 8-foot tall creature straddling a road and try to pass
It anyway, your death might be a little bit on you. The most terrifying spirit of all is the Dutchman Jumbee. It unfortunately makes sense that indigenous and Black Caribbeans would name the most horrifying demon after the colonizers that enslaved and slaughtered them.
These Jumbees are said to be the spirits of Dutchmen who killed and buried slaves. They reside in Dutchman trees, and if anyone climbs these trees, the Dutchman will make them horribly ill, break their bones, or even kill them. Some of the strangest looking devils in the world might be the Baku of Japan.
According to Japanese legends, the gods created the Baku with all the leftover parts they had after completing the rest of the animal kingdom. In one manuscript, the Baku is said to have an elephant’s trunk, rhinoceros’ eyes, an ox’s tail, and a tiger’s paws.
Other illustrations show it with an elephant’s head and tusks, claws, a hairy body, and horns. The Baku isn’t necessarily all bad. Children in Japan would call on the Baku to come eat their nightmares. However, the legends warned that people who called on the Baku too often would make the
Creature too hungry, and it would end up eating their dreams, hopes, and desires, leaving their life empty and miserable. So the next time you dream that you are naked in class and forgot to study for the past four years of school while your crush points and laughs at you…maybe just deal with it
On your own. The Devil has taken many shapes throughout both Christian history, and in whatever analogous demonic form he takes in cultures around the world. Frequently, the Devil changes appearance depending on beliefs of the time, holding a mirror to
What role religion is playing in society during each era rather than having one fixed appearance. Now that you hopefully have a good grasp on how to identify the Devil and various other demons, as well as several images to fill your nightmares tonight – remember, don’t
Call on the Baku unless you really need it – check out some of our other stories and legends on The Infographics Show!
NARRATOR: He is the personification of evil. Satan was the source of torture and death and destruction. NARRATOR: He is the ruler of hell. He grew arrogant, and he lost his heavenly position. He was thrown out of the heavens and fell. NARRATOR: And he commands an army
Of demons united on a vengeful quest to destroy mankind. A demon needs a body to accomplish its evil purposes– You can’t have her. So they can bring about their plan of death and destruction. NARRATOR: But is the character known as the Prince of Darkness merely a myth?
Or could he be something much, much more? Satan may well be a person, a god, an angel, an ET who’s been maligned in a sense. NARRATOR: Millions of people around the world believe we have been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings. What if it were true?
Did ancient aliens really help to shape our history? And if so, could evidence be found in centuries old stories of a fallen angel? Could there really be a Satan conspiracy? [theme music playing] He is called Satan, Lucifer, the devil, and his name conjures up horrifying images
Of a horned demon whose sole purpose is to corrupt and destroy mankind. Satan is portrayed as the enemy of God, trying to destroy good people, to make good people bad, and to keep them from being saved, keep them from going to heaven so that they can go
To hell where he’s in charge. KATHLEEN MCGOWAN: Satan has become the catchall for the embodiment of evil. When we think of Satan, I think there are two different ways that our brains can go. The first is this almost comical character that rules over the land of flames,
The red guy with the horns and the pitchfork. But then on the darker side, I think that Satan has become this very, very terrifying, frightening embodiment of evil who causes man to do terrible things, who is the source of torture and death and destruction. NARRATOR: But are these perceptions of Satan correct?
Is he really the master of all things evil in the universe? Lakeland, Florida, 2012. Hundreds of faithful followers congregate at the Ignited Church to witness the removal of demons from those who believe they’re possessed by the devil. You let him go. All the pain and the hurt you’ve caused this man,
You let him go. The devil wants to get even. How else to hurt the heart of God to the greatest possible extent but to harm the beloved of his creation, the height of his creation, the thing that God loves most, humanity, human beings, me, you, every single person on Earth?
NARRATOR: In the ritual known as exorcism, a priest or minister performs a sacred right in order to confront Satan and drive him back to hell. It is a ceremony that dates back hundreds and perhaps thousands of years and is considered quite controversial even within the Catholic church.
I torment you by the blood of Christ. When I’m battling Satan, there are a lot of mind games going on, and it’s a bit of a chess match. You think you have her, don’t you? Don’t you? – Yes. You think she’s yours, don’t you? Well, she’s not.
So I have to be mentally and spiritually prepared for that. How long have you had her? Long time. Yeah? Well, now it’s going to be a short time. Torment to you. Torment! Torment you. NARRATOR: But just who or what is Satan? And why is he determined to corrupt all of humanity?
Perhaps the answers can be found in the myths and legends that describe Satan’s ancient origins. ADAM BLAI: In the beginning, Satan was one of the angels that was created by God before the physical universe was created, and there was basically a sphere of angels around God, worshiping God.
And Satan at that time was Lucifer or the day star. He was the brightest of the angels. KATHLEEN MCGOWAN: Satan is actually one of the archangels. He is one of the high angels, one of the highest ranking, one of the most beautiful, the most beloved. He is beloved of God.
He is a bringer of light. When God created man in his image, he ordered all the angels to worship his image in this man. And Satan refused. He says, look, they’re mud people. We’re made out of fire. I’m not going to do it. And so he gets kicked out.
He grew arrogant. He began to challenge God. And for this arrogance, he lost his heavenly position. He was thrown out of the heavens and fell. ADAM BLAI: When Lucifer was cast down, it was instant and abrupt and total. And he was cast down to Earth to roam here
Until the end of time. NARRATOR: Although few references are made to Satan in the Hebrew testament, he is depicted as an opposer or accuser and is generally acknowledged to have been the inspiration for the serpent in the Garden of Eden. BRETT PETERSON: One of the great stories in the Bible
Is Adam and Eve in the garden. You know, we have this picture of a beautiful garden scene, and Adam and Eve in their innocence just enjoying God and each other and this beautiful creation. And all of a sudden enters Satan in the form of a snake.
And he finds Eve close to the one thing, the one law God gave mankind. NARRATOR: According to the book of Genesis, God placed two trees in the garden, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge and forbade Adam and Eve to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge.
Satan convinces Eve to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and she convinces Adam to do that. And, of course, we see that suddenly their whole personality changes. BRETT PETERSON: Prior to eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve were sinless.
It means that the one law that God gave them, they had not disobeyed. Satan himself decided that if he could get them to break that one law, then sin would enter mankind. And when Adam ate, all mankind from that point on has been selfish, prideful, and were genetically
Given the ability and really the desire to rebel against authority and thus obtained the knowledge of good and evil. NARRATOR: But is this story of Adam and Eve really a fanciful account of how evil entered the world? Or might there be another even more profound explanation?
You can make a case that Eve actually wants to mature. She wants to grow up. God wants to keep us in a state of perpetual innocence, infantility perhaps. Eve decides that knowing everything she can know about this world into which she has been placed
Is more important even than obeying a particular command of God. The serpent enables her. Satan’s wanting to give humanity all this incredible wisdom that maybe can even elevate humankind to the level of gods. But the Old Testament God Yahweh is saying not so fast. Humankind aren’t perhaps worthy of this knowledge,
And this becomes then the battle between God and Satan. NARRATOR: Was the serpent’s temptation of Adam and Eve really a case of sabotage? Was it a deliberate effort to seduce mankind into sinning against its creator? Or might Satan’s real purpose have been to encourage mankind to share the fruits of God’s wisdom?
Ancient astronaut theorists believe more clues may lie in another book of the Hebrew testament. Southern Israel, this dry sun-blasted desert was once the realm of Edom, an ancient kingdom that some researchers believe was home to the biblical figure Job. According to the Hebrew Bible, Job was among the wealthiest men in the kingdom
And owned enormous herds of cattle, sheep, and camels. He was also among the most righteous, making sacrifices to the Almighty God to atone for his transgressions and the sins of his family. BARRY H. DOWNING: In the story of Job, Satan as part of the heavenly council of angels
And the council meets and God is at the council meeting and basically he and Satan have a discussion. WILLIAM FULCO: And God says, you know, look at Job. He’s very faithful. And Satan, in charge of quality control, and says, well, of course, you know. You give him everything. What do you expect?
KATHLEEN MCGOWAN: And Satan actually challenges God and says if Job were tempted, if he no longer had all of these wonderful things that God had given to him, what happens to him then? Satan convinces God the Job should be tested to see if he is really all that good.
And this is where Satan becomes the first adversary, the first tester of humans. JONATHAN YOUNG: So it’s interesting in this story, Satan is actually working with God as a kind of member of his staff or his heavenly council. WILLIAM HENRY: The divine council of God is very interesting because we learn
That it is composed of various angelic beings including Satan. And the idea is that these are advanced beings who carry out God’s orders and God’s wishes from the commands of this council. It really seems like we’re seeing some kind of divine bureaucracy, something like you would see in a corporate
Or a governmental bureaucracy. NARRATOR: Could our notion of Satan as an evil force be incorrect? Ancient astronaut theorists believe there is much more to this story and that the answer may be found not only in the pages of the Hebrew Bible but on ancient scrolls, scrolls whose origins date back thousands of years.
Qumran, the West Bank. Here during a series of excavations beginning in 1949, archaeologists unearth hundreds of ancient scrolls. They are believed to have been written by a Hebrew sect known as the Essenes more than 2,000 years ago. Several of the scrolls contained fragments of what has become known as the Book of Enoch
And the account of a rebellion launched by a group of angels called the Watchers. One of the most famous parts of the Book of Enoch is the story of the Watchers. This is a story about 200 angels that were charged with watching over mankind in its early stages and basically taking care
Of us, looking out for us. The Watchers are a group of angels who were dispatched to watch humans and to help humans. Now the Watchers are very interesting because they are angels who interact with humans. ADAM BLAI: There’s a brief reference to this in Genesis,
But the Book of Enoch essentially expands that story and tells a more full story. This was taken out of the canon of the Bible early in the church’s life, but it was in for a period of time. KATHLEEN MCGOWAN: Once the Watchers begin to interact with humans, they become infatuated
With this new species, and they become lustful of this new species. And all of the sudden, the original idea, the original commands that they were given seem a lot less interesting to them. ADAM BLAI: They came to a point where they wanted to take wives and have children, and so they decided
To rebel, create bodies, marry, and bear children. NARRATOR: According to the Book of Enoch, the leader of this rebellion is a watcher known as Samyaza or Sataneal. Could this be the same character we know as Satan? So what we’re seeing in the story of Samyaza
And the Watchers is very similar to the story of Lucifer in charge of the angels. In both cases, we are confronted with a hierarchy of a species which is between us and God, the leader of which disagrees with God and basically wants to live amongst mankind.
When you look at a different versions of the Book of Enoch, the one thing that combines all of them is that they talk about the Watchers, the Watchers from heaven, and they are the ones who gave knowledge. And when I look at terms such as Watchers from heaven,
Then personally I interpret them as possible extraterrestrials. NARRATOR: Do the ancient accounts of Samyaza’s revolt and Lucifer’s fall suggest that Satan’s efforts to corrupt mankind in the Garden of Eden were actually an attempt to give man forbidden knowledge? And might these legends be based not on myth
But on actual historical events, events involving extraterrestrial visitors? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes and believe that close examination of the Book of Enoch may point to physical evidence of where Satan’s so-called rebellion against God may have actually occurred. Mount Hermon, Lebanon. Straddling the border of Syria, this legendary mountain
As described in the Book of Enoch is the peak where Samyaza and the Watchers descended to Earth. ADAM BLAI: In the Book of Enoch, there’s a reference to Mount Hermon. We see the angels basically descending to Mount Hermon. So Mount Hermon was both a place of connection with heaven
And kind of sally port between Earth and heaven. The Watchers being angels from heaven knew the sciences of heaven. Samyaza was basically an expert in enchantment and lute cutting. You could think of it as basically witchcraft, the casting of spells, creating magic, and using roots to create potions.
The Book of Enoch lists very specifically the subjects that are taught to humans by the Watchers, by these angels, who begin to share their wisdom with them. NARRATOR: The Book of Enoch describes Mount Hermon as the place where Samyaza taught humans about magic and medicine.
Other powerful angels passed on knowledge of metallurgy, weapons, astrology, science, and even warfare. SCOTT ROBERTS: The Watchers delivered to humanity the forbidden knowledge of God. All the stories in ancient cultures cross-cultural had these tales of beings that would deliver the forbidden knowledge of the gods to humans,
And they were all condemned for it. KATHLEEN MCGOWAN: The Watchers through Samyaza give us extraordinary tools which make our lives much, much better on Earth. So is Samyaza really a bad guy, or did he in fact liberate humans from ignorance? And if Samyaza actually is the forerunner of Satan,
Has Satan actually been misrepresented all of these years? NARRATOR: Is it possible that Samyaza and the other Watchers were extraterrestrial beings that gave humanity the foundations for civilization? Then if so, how did Satan come to be so misunderstood and misinterpreted by history? PHILIP COPPENS: If we equal Samyaza and Satan, what we’re
Confronted with here is a larger framework which basically tells us that Samyaza, Satan we’re here to civilize us. The Watchers were civilizing deities. They basically helped us to develop our skills of civilization. And so what we are confronted with here is basically the conclusion that civilization
The way we know it is not something divine but is literally satanic. It was Satan who gave us the tools of civilization. NARRATOR: Was Satan really a civilizing force for early humans as some ancient astronaut theorists believe? And if so, might further evidence be found by examining other ancient myths and legends?
In ancient Sumeria, you have these very curious stories of the Annunaki. The Annunaki where half god, half man who came down from the stars. They were instructing the Sumerians in various arts of civilization. They were very strange looking. They had elongated heads. They looked almost like insect-type people
Or what they call reptilian features in a sense or a viper visage as the Watchers were called in the Bible. In global cultures, we find constant references to these giant celestial beings coming to Earth and initiating or instructing humankind. Satan himself is considered to be a Seraphim, which means
Winged serpents or fiery serpents, but yet the word Seraphim contains the word ser meaning serpent and raphim them meaning giant. NARRATOR: Was the character we know is Satan really an extraterrestrial being, one who broke with his own species in order to live among our distant ancestors?
Did he, along with other so-called fallen angels, actually break with God not out of spite or arrogance but instead to help mankind? Perhaps further clues can be found in legends of a flying serpent and in the story of a titan who is savagely punished for all eternity. The Yucatan Peninsula.
Here in the jungles of Southern Mexico lie the ruins of the great Mayan city Chichen Itza. Constructed more than 1,000 years ago, Chichen Itza was one of the largest and most powerful cities in the Mayan world. And dominating the site is the Great Pyramid El Castillo.
A temple built to honor the Mayan serpent god Kukulkan. WILLIAM HENRY: Kukulkan is a name for Satan or for the winged serpent. He’s always portrayed as a wisdom burying being who delivers this cosmic knowledge to humankind. Often we’ll see Kukulkan portrayed
As half human or half serpent or as a human being coming out of the mouth of a serpent. This is how Christianity will traditionally portray Satan as a dragon figure or a serpentine like being. The question is why is he depicted as such,
And I think we really can find out that Kukulkan is not unique in this sense. NARRATOR: One of the most powerful gods in the Mayan pantheon, Kukulkan was believed to have descended from the stars. He is also credited with teaching astronomy, mathematics, and agriculture to mankind.
WILLIAM HENRY: This is identical to the Christian tradition of Satan being the serpent of the tree of knowledge delivering the forbidden wisdom to humanity. In the Book of Enoch, we learn of the Watchers who are described as having visage as of vipers or the face of a serpent and delivering
This powerful knowledge to humankind. So it’s possible that what we’re seeing in all of these instances is the same figure or representative of the same tribe of angels, the satanic beings or these serpentine like angel beings. NARRATOR: Are the stories of Satan and Kukulkan
Really based on the same being as many ancient astronaut theorists believe? And if so, might this same character also be found in the myths and legends of other ancient cultures. PHILIP COPPENS: Satan is a creature who comes out of nowhere to live amongst mankind
And teaches is not something which is limited to the Bible. We find it in most traditions across the world. NARRATOR: According to the legends of ancient Greece, the titan known as Prometheus sinned against the gods by stealing the secret of fire and giving it to man. For his transgression, he was doomed
To suffer a gruesome eternal punishment by being chained to a rock and having an eagle eat his liver only to have the organ grow back each night so that the eagle could continue to feast on it the next day. RICHARD RADER: He’s a God that becomes associated with humans
Because he is a champion for humans. Right and the mythological stories talk about how Prometheus is basically like they’re representative. NARRATOR: Another such deity was the god Viracocha. Worshipped by the ancient Inca in the Andes of South America, Viracocha was a powerful creator god who came to Earth to pass on celestial knowledge.
Like Prometheus, this Incan god was described as a bringer of light and is depicted in ancient Incan sculpture as holding two lightning bolts and wearing the sun as a crown. WILLIAM HENRY: The Inca describe a luminous being called Viracoco or Viracocha who brought knowledge of medicine, astronomy, and other advanced sciences.
It’s possible that Viracocha is the same as Samyaza or Satan as a figure bringing this liberating wisdom to humankind that seeks to bring us along the path of advancement and enlightenment. So you have to ask yourself why would such diverse cultures have such similar mythologies. PHILIP COPPENS: In the case of Viracocha,
What we see is a deity which manifests itself from Earth, lives amongst mankind, gives us sciences, and after a number of years, disappears again. NARRATOR: The ancient Egyptians had cults that worship the god Set, a divine being who like Satan ruled over darkness and chaos. PHILIP COPPENS: The tradition traditional civilizing deities
Who go around civilizing, educating us is something which we find in all traditions whether they are the great cultures of Egypt, Inca, or the Mayan empires, or smaller cultures elsewhere in the universe. And so what we’re finding is that the story of Satan has a civilizing deity is definitely not unique
But sits within a clear framework across the entire world. And it shows you that the importance of Satan is not just something limited to the Bible but really tells us an awful lot about civilization as a whole. NARRATOR: Could it be that these ancient myths were actually
Describing the same creature, the fallen angel we now refer to as Satan? But how then did a creature who is so often credited with bringing mankind knowledge and enlightenment become thought of as the personification of all things evil. ERICH VON DANIKEN: The word Lucifer comes from Latin, makes looks fiery, making light.
It’s the same as in the Greek mythology from Matthaios, who stored the light from the gods. It’s really a sympathic idea that all these figures are finally just one figure in different languages but they were all sympathetic to the humans. It is quite possible that our religious traditions and those
Who selected the old holy texts some thousands of years ago, they made out an evil figure out of Lucifer and the devil. And maybe it was the other way around. He was the good one. PHILIP COPPENS: When we’re looking at something like Satan, we’re not necessarily
Talking about morality, but we’re actually exploring things about our ancestors. We’re exploring mythology. We’re exploring accounts of our ancestors saying that they developed civilization not on their own but with the help of non-human intelligences. And in the case of one such story, we see that that intelligence is Satan.
DAVID CHILDRESS: In many ways, Satan may well be a person, a god, an angel, an ET who’s maligned in a sense. Lucifer is Prometheus. He’s the light bringer. He’s the god of hard work. He’s the one who brings us fire. He’s the one who gives us the opportunity to do things ourselves.
NARRATOR: If the biblical character of Satan is really based on an extraterrestrial being, one who stole technology from his masters in order to benefit early man, then why is he now reviled as a creature of consummate evil? Ancient astronaut theorists believe the answer may lie not in ancient scriptures
But in numerous accounts of demonic possession. Klingenberg, Germany, located 32 miles southeast of Frankfurt. This small city is home to one of the most famous and frightening cases of demonic possession ever recorded. In September 1973, a young woman named Anneliese Michel began hearing voices that told her she was damned
And would rot in hell. When medical treatments failed, she sought the help of an exorcist. [speaking german] Demonic possession is perhaps the most frightening and visceral of all phenomena associated with Satan. According to Christian tradition, possession occurs when a demon enters the body, corrupting a person’s physical and spiritual being.
The belief in demonic possession is widespread. It seems to show up pretty much all over the planet. It was believed to be the presence of a satanic energy, truly dark, terrible evil that could take over a person, take over their body, take over their mind.
And they would be acting with no free will. They would be a complete slave to the power of the dark side. ADAM BLAI: Demons manifest on Earth to interact with people to afflict us and tempt us in various ways. The oppression involves physically wounding us attacking us, causing effects
On our body and our mind. Possession is when we surrender our lower faculties to them and they take over our body and use it as their own. And in rare cases, they can appear visibly to multiple people as supposed human spirits. NARRATOR: Most Christians believe
Demons are evil incarnations of the other angels who followed Lucifer in his rebellion against the Almighty God. They bear names like Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Moloch, and Mammon and are dedicated to corrupting the souls of mankind. Biblically speaking, the demonic comes from the fallen angels, those who fell with Lucifer during the great wars
In heaven. And their purpose is to deceive humanity, to lead them astray, to distract them from God, and there are many castes. They range from your basic thugs in the bottom all the way up to your, if you will, your intelligentsia that is governing behind the scenes of the affairs of mankind.
ADAM BLAI: It is essentially you can imagine a military structure with generals, officers, privates. There’s basically nine levels which are fallen angels of various ranks serving under each other, ultimately serving Satan. NARRATOR: In many religious traditions, there are sacred rites to exorcise these demons from the bodies of the afflicted.
Let her go. Let her go. I come against you again, Satan, by the blood of Christ. NARRATOR: The Reverend Bob Larson is an evangelical minister, an exorcist, who says he has come face to face with the demonic and the truly satanic. The blood of Christ, I torment you, Satan.
You can’t have her. She belongs to God. Torment you. I torment you by the blood of Christ. Torment you! I’m here to be an instrument of God to cast out the devil, to free human souls. It’s not my power that does it. It’s God’s power. I’m simply the instrument that he uses.
But my mission is to get every demon possible out of every possible human being and send them straight to hell. How long have you had her? Get me some oil please. I anoint you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. How long have you had this woman?
How many generations? How many generations? The demon is metaphysical. It is invisible. It’s spirit. Doesn’t have a physical body so a demon can’t really do anything evil. A demon can’t start a war, can’t pull the trigger of a gun, can’t rape anybody. A demon needs a body to accomplish its evil purposes.
So demons are looking to inhabit human souls so that through the physicality of human beings, they can bring about their plan of death and destruction. NARRATOR: According to Larson and other Christian theologians, demonic forces have always been present on Earth, and demons are continually traveling to Earth to sow the seeds of ruin.
But where exactly are they coming from? Is it hell or perhaps someplace else? BOB LARSON: Both the Jewish and Christian scriptures as well as other religious books that delve into the subject of demonism never fully describe the nature of their existence, where they operate.
It seems to be in a kind of parallel reality, another dimension, out of our time, space continuum. They’re there. We’re here. Einstein opened a little bit of a door into the possibility of other realms. We are getting a small glimpse of the reality that exists beyond our understanding.
We just need to know there’s another realm out there, and when I do an exorcism, I step in and out of those realms. I’m in the physical natural realm, but I’m also invading the realm in which demons operate. So I step from the physical into the metaphysical.
I don’t have to understand what’s going on there. I’m on a simple mission, not to find out everything I can about that world but to get the demon out of the human soul. NARRATOR: Might devils and demons really be beings from another realm?
And might that realm not be hell but an actual extraterrestrial world? And are they really malevolent? Or might they have another perhaps even more profound agenda? Ancient astronaut theorists believe the answers may be found in the mysterious prophecies of the Book of Revelation. Megiddo, Israel. Located 11 miles from Nazareth, this ancient city
Is mentioned more than a dozen times in the Bible, most prominently in the prophetic Book of Revelation. According to the religious text, it is outside this city on the so-called plains of Megiddo where the forces of the Almighty God will wage a final battle against Satan and the forces of evil.
The Book of Revelation is certainly one of the most complicated books in the Bible, and it belongs to a separate set of material that’s called apocalyptic. It is a book that gives visions of the future to come. BRETT PETERSON: There’s a battle that will take place
In a valley in Israel called Megiddo or Har Megiddo, thus Armageddon we get the term. Satan himself will gather the armies of the world to Megiddo to fight Jesus Christ. Satan takes on a more physical appearance, uses various technologies to enslave more and more of mankind.
Ultimately, he becomes a geopolitical force, basically essentially a dictator of the entire world. NARRATOR: The Book of Revelation further describes that this battle will be fought in heaven and on Earth. Angels will descend from the sky. Demons will spread out across the land to destroy with fiery swords.
And the Almighty God will reign destruction down upon Earth. KATHLEEN MCGOWAN: The Book of the Revelation is really a pretty terrifying document if we’re to look at it and think that these things could happen literally. I mean, when you look at what’s happening in the book, we have cataclysms on the Earth.
We have earthquakes. We have fire raining from the sky. We have angels doing battle in heaven. And then repeatedly we have Satan coming back. NARRATOR: But could it be that this biblical prophecy isn’t a doomsday prediction of cataclysm and war but it has another even more profound interpretation?
The Book of Revelation gives us some of the clearest depictions of what not a few moderns would call extraterrestrial activity. Think about it. We have supernatural beings flying through the cosmos blowing trumpets, casting fire upon the Earth. We have great conflict between light and darkness, good and evil.
There’s a cosmic dualism going on here that involves in the end the reassertion of divine authority over those wayward angels who had gone astray so long ago. NARRATOR: Extraterrestrial combat? Could the Bible’s Book of Revelation really be referring to a galactic war, one waged over the ultimate fate of mankind?
If so, who or what is Satan? Is he a demon, the devil, the personification of evil? Or was he, in fact, a benevolent extraterrestrial being, one who stole technology from alien beings in an effort to lead early man out of darkness and ignorance?
If so, then why did Satan become a force for evil? Does he seek to punish mankind for siding with our creator against him? Perhaps he is testing us, using alien technology to modify human behavior in ways we have yet to understand. He’s this idea of an adversary, this idea of a liar
Or a tester combined with this concept of Lucifer, the fallen angel, combined with this leader of the Watchers who also leads rebellion. I think that ultimately what we find is that Lucifer is a conflation, a character who is a composite of all of these different ideas and different characters.
It’s important for us to remember that Satan is part of the class of angels called Seraphim. The Seraphim were sent to Earth as benefactors of humankind bringing wisdom. The church has created this evil monster out of Satan, perhaps even out of thin air, when in reality Satan’s entire mission
Was about bringing knowledge and wisdom to humanity and, in fact, caring about humanity, not seeking to destroy humankind. DAVID CHILDRESS: In a sense, Satan’s not such a bad guy. You cannot have the light without the dark. You can’t have right without wrong. And we have to learn these things for ourselves.
And ultimately through choice, wrong and right, we grow, and we become who we are. And ultimately that is to be like our makers to become gods ourselves. NARRATOR: Might Satan’s reputation as the personification of evil really have been his punishment for giving mankind scientific knowledge? If so, might his evil acts really
Be expressions of revenge against the human creatures that abandoned him? Or are the evil deeds associated with Satan really a part of a grand plan, a series of moral challenges intended to prepare us for our next and perhaps final close encounter?
