THE DEVIL MYTH

The Devil is the patron genius of theological Christianity. This dogma of the Devil and redemption seems to be based upon two passages on the New Testament: “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the Devil” [1 John 3.5]. “And there was war in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the Dragon; and the Dragon fought, and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great Dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world” [Revelation 12.7-9]. Let us, then, explore the ancient theogonies, in order to ascertain what was meant by these remarkable expressions.

The first inquiry is whether the term Devil, as here used, actually represents the malignant [evil] deity of the Christians, or an antagonistic, blind force—the dark side of nature. By the latter we are not to understand the manifestation of any evil principle that is malum in se, but only the shadow of the Light, so to say. The theories of the kabbalists treat of it as a force which is antagonistic, but at the same time essential to the vitality, evolution, and vigor of the good principle. Plants would perish in their first state of existence if they were kept exposed to a constant sunlight; the night alternating with the day is essential to their healthy growth and development. Goodness, likewise, would speedily cease to be such, were it not alternated by its opposite. In human nature, evil denotes the antagonism of matter to the spiritual, and each is accordingly purified thereby. In the cosmos, the equilibrium must be preserved; the operation of the two contraries produces harmony, like the centripetal and centrifugal forces, which are necessary to each other, if one is arrested, the action of the other will immediately become destructive.

[Everything that helps your evolution or helps you on in life is good or spiritual to you and everything that obstructs you evolution, or prevents you from going forward in life, is evil to you….Also, “everything is relative” and something that is evil to you might be spiritual to your younger brother because he has to experience something to be able to learn the lesson which you do not want to repeat. When you have learned everything a certain religion can teach you and the time has come for you to learn more of the truth than it will be evil for you to stay trapped in that religion and highly spiritual to move on, but not so for your younger brother. ..E.B.] 

This personification, denominated Satan, is to be contemplated from three different planes: the Old Testament, the Christian Fathers, and the ancient gentile attitude. He is supposed to have been represented by the Serpent in the Garden of Eden; nevertheless, in the Hebrew sacred writings the epithet [description or nickname] of Satan in nowhere applied to that or any other variety of snake.

The temptation, or probation, of Jesus is the most dramatic occasion in which Satan appears. As if to prove the designation of Apollo, Aesculapius, and Bacchus, Diobolos, or son of Zeus, he is also styled Diabolos, or accuser. The scene of the probation was the wilderness. In the desert around the Jordan and Dead Sea were the abodes of the “sons of the prophets” and the Essenes [Pliny, Nat. Hist. 5.16]. These ascetics used to subject their neophytes to probation, [an initiation], analogous to the tortures of the Mithraic rites, and the temptation of Jesus was evidently a scene of this character. But the Diabolos, accuser Devil, is in this instance evidently no malignant principle, but one exercising discipline. In this sense the terms Devil and Satan are repeatedly employed [see 1 corinthians 5.5; 2 corithians 11.14; 1 Timothy 1. 20]. 

The story of Satan in the Book of Job is of a Similar character. He is introduced among the “Sons of God,” presenting themselves before the Lord as in a mystic initiation. The Lord counsels with Satan and gives him carte blanche to test the fidelity of Job. The latter is stripped of his wealth and family and smitten with a loathsome disease. In his extremity, his wife doubts his integrity, and exhorts him to worship God, as he is about to die. His friends all beset him with accusations, and finally the Lord, the chief hierophant Himself, taxes him with the uttering of words in which there is no wisdom and with contending with the Almighty. In all these scenes there is no such malignant diabolism as is supposed to characterize ‘the adversary of souls.”

The allegory of Job, if correctly understood, will give the key to this whole matter of the Devil, his nature and his office and will substantiate our declarations. Let no pious individual take exception to this designation of allegory. Myth was the favourite and universal method of teaching in archaic times. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, [Corinthians 10.11.] declared that the entire story of Moses and the Israelites was Typical, and in his Epistle to the Galatians asserted that the whole story of Abraham, his two wives, and their sons was an allegory. [Galatians 4.22, 24] Indeed, it is a theory amounting to certitude that the historical books of the Old Testament were of the same character. We take no extraordinary liberty with the Book of Job when we give it the same designation which Paul gave the stories of Abraham and Moses.

But perhaps we ought to explain the ancient use of allegory and symbolism. The symbol expressed some abstract quality of Deity which the Laity could easily apprehend. Its higher sense terminated there, and it was employed by the multitude thenceforth as an image in idolatrous rites. But the allegory was reserved for the inner sanctuary, when only the elect were admitted. Hence the rejoinder of Jesus when his disciples interrogated him because he spoke to the multitude in parables. “To you,” said he, “it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath” [Matthew 13.11-12].

The whole allegory of Job is an open book to him who understands the picture language of Egipt as it is recorded in the Book of the Dead…. Initiation into the Mysteries, as every intelligent person knows, was a dramatic representation of scenes in the underworld. [spiritual world] such was the allegory of Job….which is a complete representation of ancient initiation and the trails which generally precede this grandest of all ceremonies…..

It will be perceived from these extended illustrations that the Satan of the Old Testament, the Diabolos or Devil of the Gospels and Apostolic Epistles, were but the antagonistic principle matter, necessarily incident to it, [materialism] and not wicked in the moral sense of the term. The Jews, coming from the Persian country, brought with them the doctrine of two principles. They could not bring the Avesta, for it was not written. But they—we mean the Asidians [Chasidium] and Pharsi—invented Ormazd with the secret name of Jehovah, and Ahriman with the name of the gods of the land, Satan of the Hittites and Diabolos, or rather Diobolos, of the Greeks. The early Church—at least the Pauline part of it—the Gnostics, and their successors further refined their ideas; and the Catholic Church adopted and adapted them, meanwhile putting their promulgators to the sword.
ISIS UNVEILED by Helena p. Blavatsky, pp221-230.

In the last analysis, and from the standpoint of the Hierarchy, the present conflict between the personality of humanity (expressing the material values as the dominating factor in life experience) and the soul of humanity (expressing the spiritual values as the dominating factor in human affairs) is identical with the conflict which takes place within a human being's consciousness when he has reached the stage of discipleship and is faced with the problem of the pairs of opposites. This conflict is expressed in many ways according to the point of view and the background of thought. It can be called the conflict between Christ and anti-Christ but not as those who usually employ those phrases understand them. No one nation is expressive of the spirit of anti-Christ, just as no one nation expresses the spirit of Christ. Christ and anti-Christ are the dualities of spirituality and materialism, both in the individual and in humanity as a whole. Or you can speak of God and the Devil with the same basic implications. For what is man himself but an expression of divinity (God) in a material form (the Devil), and what is matter but the medium through which divinity must eventually manifest in all its glory? But when that takes place, matter will no longer be a controlling factor but simply a medium of expression. [THE EXTERNALISATION OF THE HIERARCHY, P137]

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