HISTORY (OCCult 60's (67-8)

[_The Black Arts_, by Richard Cavendish, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1967; 
 pp. 309-18; this work is the first scholarly treatment of Satanism 
 and Satan from the books and papers culled from my library;
 especially from a modern occult perspective, as compared to
 the scrawlings of various Inquisitory compilations, Murray-
 derivations, or fevered Christimaginings.]

The name Satan comes from a Hebrew word meaning 'adversary'.
In the older books of the Old Testament, written before the
Jews were carried away into exile in Babylon in the sixth
century B.C., a satan is merely an opponent.  The angel of
God 'stood in the way for an adversary (satan)' against
Balaam.  A satan was not necessarily supernatural.  The
Philistines refused to accept David, because they were
afraid he would turn his coat in battle and become their
satan or adversary.

In two later passages, written after the exile, 'the satan'
appears.  He is an angel and a member of God's court who acts
as an accuser of men before God.  In the book of Zechariah,
possibly dating from the late sixth century B.C., the prophet
sees Joshua the high priest standing before God to be judged.
The satan stands at Joshua's right hand 'to resist him' or
argue the case against him.  There is already a suggestion
that the satan is excessively zealous as a prosecutor, because
God rebukes him for accusing a righteous man.

The first two chapters of Job, perhaps written a hundred years
after Zechariah, the satan is still the accuser of men and he
now seems definitively malignant.  The sons of God present
themselves before Jehovah and the satan is with them.  In words
which were probably intended to have an ominous ring, the satan
says he has come 'from going to and fro in the earth and from
walking up and down in it'.  Jehovah praises Job as a righteous
man, but the satan argues that it is easy for Job to be
faithful to God, because he is happy and prosperous....

In this story the satan is determined to destroy Job's credit
with God and he is the direct instrument of Job's punishment.
But he acts only under God's instructions and he is felt to be
performing a useful function.  He tries to bring to the surface
the wickedness inherent in men.  Later, it was thought that the
satan's malicious zeal must make him as repulsive to God as he
was to man.  In 1 *Enoch*, a Jewish book which is not included 
in the Old Testament but influenced early Christians, there is
a group of satans who by this time are not welcome in heaven
at all.  Enoch hears the voice of the archangel Phanuel 'fending
off the satans and forbidding them to come before the Lord of
Spirits to accuse them who dwell on the earth'....  These
passages were probably written in the first century B.C.  

It was from this notion of an implacable angel who accuses men
and punishes them that the Devil of medieval and modern
Christendom eventually grew.  When the Old Testament was first
turned into Greek, 'the satan' was translated as *diabolos*,
meaning 'an accuser', with the implication of a false accuser,
a slanderer, and this is the word from which our 'Devil' comes.

Later Jewish writers tended to separate good and evil, and to
see Jehovah as entirely good.  They found the actions of Jehovah
in some biblical stories distinctly unedifying and so they put 
them down to an evil angel.  When the story of David numbering
Israel and God's vengeance for this crime was first told --
in 2 Samuel, which may date from the early eighth century B.C.
-- Jehovah puts the idea of taking the census into David's
mind.  But when the same story is retold in 1 Chronicles,
possibly written in the fourth century B.C., it is Satan who
is responsible.  'And Satan stood up against Israel, and
provoked David to number Israel.'  This is the only use of
Satan as a proper name in the Old Testament.

In the later Jewish writings and in Christian theory the figure
of Satan becomes clearer and his powers are magnified until he
is beyond God's control.  It was natural for people to wonder
how the satan, originally a valued if unpleasant official of
God's court, had fallen from grace to become God's enemy.  One
explanation was found in the story of the Watchers, the germ of
which appears in Genesis.  When the race of men began to increase
in numbers, 'the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they
were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose'.
In those days 'there were giants in the earth' and the daughters
of men bore children by the angels which 'became mighty men which
were of old, men of renown'.  The story may have been meant to
account for the supposed existence of giants and heroes in early
times, but, intentionally or unintentionally, the next verse
connected it with the coming of evil to the earth.  'And God saw
that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that
every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
continually.'  It was because of this that God decided to destroy
mankind in the Flood.

There are several possible references to this story in other Old
Testament books, but the first full versoin of it in its later
form is given in 1 *Enoch*, in passages probably written in the
second century B.C.  'And it came to pass when then children of
men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them
beautiful and comely daughters.  And the angels, the children of
heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another:
Come, let us choose wives from among the children of men and
beget us children.'  These angels were of the order of the
Watchers, the sleepless ones.  Their leader was Semjaza -- or
in other passages, Azazel.  Two hundred of them descended to
earth on Mount Hermon.  They took wives 'and they began to go
in unto them and to defile themselves with them'.  They taught
their wives charms and enchantments, botany and the cutting of
roots.  Azazel taught men to make the weapons of war, swords,
knives and shields.  He also introduced the evil art of 
cosmetics....

...God explains to the angels that because they are immortal
and need no descendants they have not been given wives and
children.  But to later ages the point of the story was that
evil and bloodshed and forbidden arts came to earth through
an appalling crime against Nature, the physical union of the
angelic and divine with the mortal, which produced monstro-
sities -- the giants.  It seems likely that the medieval
insistence on, and horrified fascination with, the sexual
relations of witches with the Devil owes something to the
legend of the Watchers.  The story is the diabolical counter-
part of a revered mystery of the Christian faith -- the
descent of the Divine to a mortal woman and the birth of the
Saviour.

Some of the early Christian Fathers, including St. Augustine,
rejected the legend of the Watchers and found the origin of
evil in a revolt against God by a great archangel who rebelled
through pride.  Their scriptural authority was the famous
passage in Isaiah which foretells the the approaching doom of
the King of Babylon.

	How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the
	morning!  How art thou cut down to the ground which
	didst weaken the nations!  For thou hast said in thine
	heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my
	throne above the stars of God: I will sit also in the
	mount of the congregation upon the sides of the north:
	I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will
	be like the most High.  Yet thou shalt be brought down
	to hell, to the sides of the pit.

This was the foundation of the Christian doctrine of the Devil's
attempt to make himself equal of God and his expulsion from
heaven in punishment.  As an explanation of the satan's fall
from grace it had the advantage of fitting the tendency of later
Jewish and Christian writers to exalt Satan's status to almost
the position of an independent god.  Lucifer, it was said, had
been the archangel's name in heaven and Satan was his name after
his fall.

The passage in Isaiah may refer to a legend of the beautiful
morning star who walked in Eden, blazing in jewels and light,
and in his insane pride attempted to rival God.  'Lucifer,
son of the morning' is in Hebrew Helel ben Shahar, 'day-star,
son of the dawn'.  The Jews, Arabs, Greeks and Romans identified
the morning star (the planet Venus) as male.  In Greek it was
called *phosphoros* and in Latin *lucifer*, both words meaning
'Light-bearer'.  It has been suggested that the story of
Lucifer may have been based on the observation that the morning
star is the last proud star to defy the sunrise, and the belief
that it must have been punished for its defiance.

The legends of Lucifer and the Watchers both find the origin of
evil in the fall of divine beings, driven to sin by pride or by
lust and condemned to hell in punishment.  It was natural for
them to be combined, with the Watchers becoming Lucifer's
followers.  There are already hints of this in 1 *Enoch*....

By the first century A.D. Lucifer and Satan and the Watchers
had all been connected together and the serpent of Eden had
been added to the story.  A book called 2 *Enoch* says that 
the archangel Satannail tried to make himself the equal of God
and seduced the Watchers to rebel with him.  They were all
banished from heaven and to revenge himself for his fall
Satanail tempted Eve in Eden.  According to *Vita Adae et Evae*,
Satan was expelled from his glory among the angels because he
refused to worship Adam, which the angels were ordered to do
by God.  Michael told him that God would be angry, but Satan
said, 'if he be wroth with me, I will set my seat above the
stars of heaven and will be like the Highest.'  Then God hurled
Satan and his followers down to earth  and Satan tempted Eve
in revenge.  Here the Devil's rebellion from pride is combined
with the idea of angelic jealousy of man.

There is no suggestion in Genesis that the serpent who tempted
Eve was the Devil, but Christian writers generally accepted
that the serpent was either the Devil's agent or the Devil
himself in disguise.  On this basis St. Paul constructed the
central doctrine of Christianity, that Adam's crime plunged
all subsequent generations into the power of the Devil and
the toils of sin and death, from which God sent his Son to
release them.  As Adam's disobedience brought death to men,
so Christ's willing submission to death brought men to
eternal life.  'For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ
shall all be made alive.'

[much skipped, including the addition of 'Leviathan' and the
 dragons of the Book of Revelations to the mix]

It ws the Christians who gave the Devil almost the position
of a god.  Convinced of the stainless goodness of God, they
sensed and feared the presence of a great supernatural Enemy,
the quintessence of all evil.  That the Devil sinned through
pride became and remains the orthodox Catholic belief.

In the Middle Ages and the early modern world the Devil was
a familiar reality.  He figured in popular tales, stage plays,
mumming dances; he ws preached from pulpits; he leered or
frowned from the walls and windows of churches.  He and his
legions were everywhere, subtle, knowing, malicious and
formidable....

People who worship the Devil do not regard him as evil.  To
the Satanist the supernatural being who is the Enemy of
Christendom is a good and benevolent god.  But the word 'good',
applied to the Devil by his followers, dows not carry its
Christian or conventional meanings.  Satanists believe that
what Christians call good is really evil, and vice versa,
though there is an ambivalence of attitude in Satanism, as in
black magic, a perverse pleasure in doing things which are
felt to be evil combined with a conviction that doing these
things is really virtuous.

Worship of the Devil as a good god natually involves the
belief that the Christian God the Father, the God of the Old
Testament, was and remains an evil god, hostile to man and
the enemy of morality and truth.  In full-blown Satanism,
Jesus Christ is also condemned as an evil being, though sects
accused of devil-worship in the past have frequently not
believed this....

The followers of the Devil are intensely excited by and
preoccupied with sensual pleasure and worldly achievement.
They admire pride, strength and force.  They revel in self-
assertion and dominance, lust, dirt, violence, cruelty and
all passionate sensations.  Christian piety, with its virues
of otherworldliness, self-denial, humility, cleanliness of
heart and mind, they condemn as spineless, colourless, dead.
They whole-heartedly  echo Swinburne's accusing line --
'Thou has conquered, O pale Galilean, and the world has grown
gray from thy breath.'

As in black magic generally, actions which are conventionally
condemned as evil are valued for their psychological and
mystical effects.  Devil-worshippers usually believe that the
attainment of perfection and the experience of the divine come
through an ecstasy achieved in sensual orgy, which is likely
to involve perverse sexual practices, homosexuality and
flagellation, sometimes cannibalism.  Because the Christian
churches, especially the Roman Catholic, are regarded as
abominable institutions devoted to the worship of an evil god,
their ceremonies are parodied and degraded.  Doing this is not
merely to make a gesture in the Devil's cause; it captures and
twists to Satanic uses the power which is believed to be 
inherent in the Christian rituals.

Preoccupied with this world and this life, his worshippers
believe that the Devil rules the world and that the immediate
rewards of his service are pleasure and power.  After death,
they expect to be reborn on earth, or, in some cases, they
hope to go rejoicing to hell which is not an infernal torture-
chamber but a place where all pleaures are intensified and
the capacity to experience them greatly increased.  They 
believe that the Devil will eventually vanquish and overthrow
the God of the Christians and return in triumph to the heaven
from which the Christian God wrongfully ejected him.  In that
day Satan's faithful flock will reap their reward of eternal
power and eternal bliss.

Holding one or more of the beliefs which make up this pattern
of Satanist theory has frequently been enough to bring down
an accusation of devil-worship.  Many sects and groups have
been accused of it, but genuine Satanists have probably
always been rare, as they are today.  The accused sects
cloaked themselves in secrecy, to avoid persecution, and it
is often impossible to tell whether they were consciously
devoted to adoration of the Christian Devil or not.  Even
the true character of witchcraft in Europe is sill violently
disputed, in spite of great quantities of evidence.  But
there is a common factor in the accusations made, justly or
unjustly, against suspected devil-worshippers -- the reversal
of Christian values.

[much more concerning Gnostic sects and history omitted;
 the general idea is formulated here very succinctly, even
 while the Church of Satan was established (May 1966) and
 well on its way to creating its own ideologies concerning
 the Dark Lord]

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[_Witchcraft: it's Power in the World Today_, by William Seabrook, 
 Lancer Books, Inc., (1940) 1968; p. 14.]

If extra-sensory power does exist and anyone possesses it,
it is certain that those who have proclaimed themselves
specially possessors of it and frequently made lasting
spots in the world's history for good and evil for close
to ten thousand years, including spiritualists, *illumines*,
and faith healers, but also including Satanists and "faith
killers," have been using it since the dawn of time, and
must know more about it intuitively and pragmatically than
has yet been learned by honest scientists in laboritories.

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[_The Black rt_, by Rollo Ahmed, Paperback Library, (1938 copyright;
 1966) 1968; 166-7; this is a wonderful book!  full of the legends 
 of evils told from the puritanical perspective of the Church, though 
 not sparing on *any* anthropological details, even when embarrasing
 to said Church; a wonderful resource, though it does take the popular 
 perspective of the time and equate witches, sorcerers and mages of 
 past ages within its language; makes little real mention of 
 'Satanists', though does talk about 'Devil-worship':]

Sorcery and witchcraft, being in themselves evil, naturally
seized upon the sexual instinct and passions to pervert them
to their own ends.  While, since the object of Satanic
worship or demonism, was to swamp the personality in evil,
no better means could be found than by first arousing
lust and then giving it free play.  In Europe the Witches'
Sabbaths were the outstanding examle of sexual depravity
in connection with sorcery.  Participants divested themselves
of their clothing, and yielded themselve to every conceivable
lustful impulse, this condition being further induced by the
drug-like properties of the ointments and oils which were
first smeared on the body.

From the end of the fifteenth century onwards small coteries,
practising spells and enchantments and indulging in performances
of the black mass, found an ugly fascination in lewd indulgences
and a taking part in rituals entailed entire nakedness or partial
exposure.  Many of the so-called rites of these secret societies
were so patently ridiculous, that it is quite obvious that they
were merely an excuse for men and women to indulge in sex-play
and lustful gratification, frequently of an abnormal kind.  We
can imagine how the fashionable women of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries, already robust to the point of crudity in
their love affairs, welcomed opportunities of greater coarseness,
with the added thrill of flirting with the Devil.

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