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]

#Devil #Satan #Lucifer #Evil #Hero