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The Devils Rejects: Unveiling the Mythology of Radical Evil

Reverend Seth Ethan Carey

In the quiet and lonesome countryside of the Midwest, along the outskirts of Collinsville, IL, are a series of
bridges and tunnels known by the locals as the Seven Gates of Hell. Would-be explorers and paranormal
researchers have confessed some difficulty in locating all seven, but thats probably for the best. Because
according to local legends, if you drive through all of the gates in the proper order, passing through the
seventh and final gate at the stroke of midnight, you will find yourself plummeting into the depths of Hell, a
fate from which there can be no escapesupposing your car even survives the fall.

The problem of evil is a troubling problem indeed, made more troubling still by the fantastic legends that
haunt the subject matter. For some, outlandish stories like the Seven Gates of Hell seem childish, and do a
disservice to the real tragedy of life, wrought by fire, flood, and murderous rampages. The question of how an
all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing God could allow evil to enter into the universe is the question weve
gathered here to ask this week, and for some, ruminations on the Devil may seem like a step backward into
the dark ages.

But the truth is an elusive target. And I am convinced that it can never be perceived from a single perspective.
I therefore believe that any answer to the problem of evilevil, which takes many formsmust be prepared
to answer for its every dark manifestation. Only by combining historys answers to the problem of evil will
the truth ever be glimpsed; and even then it will be glimpsed through a glass darkly.

The focus of this talk will be on one of humanitys most timeless responses to evil, that being the case for the
existence of a sentient, independent evila Dark Lord, if you willthat lies at the root of all chaos,
somewhere far beyond the gates of oblivion.

But first, I want to briefly examine two other pieces of the puzzle.

In the seventh book of his Confessions, St. Augustine argues for what some call a Swiss-cheese Theory, or
evil as a gaping hole in the good. Anselm made a similar argument in his attempt to prove the existence of
God. He asserted that existence is good, and indeed existence makes a thing good. Therefore the greatest
being of allGodmust have existence as one of its qualities, and therefore must exist. In a similar fashion,
Augustine argues that whatever is, is good; and evil, the origin of which I was trying to find, is not a
substance, because if it were a substance, it would be good."
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In other words, what we call evil is no more
than a corruption of Gods creationa kind of natural decay, if you willand has no independent existence
of its own.

Others have put forth a different argument, that being the case for human free will. Evil happens, not
because God wills itbut because we do. And for God to take away our free will, to strip us of our humanity
and turn us into robotic automatons, is perhaps the greatest evil of all.

I think were getting warmer here. We cant deny the potential for evil that lies within us. But for some, this
theory is also insufficient. It fails to take into account disease, natural disasters, and other horrors that are
beyond our control. Actually, Augustines argument comes in handy here, for he says that a disease is not a
thing in itself, but rather a defect of the flesha corruption of the goodand purely accidental.

In other words, disease is an inevitable accident of biology, and not the will of Godor the Devil. And
everything else is our fault. And that seems to wrap up the problem of evil pretty nicely.

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St. Augustines Confessions, Book VII, Chapter 12
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And yet the Devil remains in our imagination, as he always has in some manifestation or otherlurking in
the shadows in his red designer suit and angel-skin boots, stroking his nefarious goatee and looking for
another soul to steal.

Its important to realize that when we examine such portraits of evil, were always working in the realm of
mythology. And here I use Joseph Campbells definition of mythnot something that isnt real or true, but
rather an attempt to explain the inexplicable, an attempt to understand that which lies beyond human
understanding, an attempt to drape the otherworldly in human language. While myths may or may not be
true in the literal sense, they often express a deeper truth about the universe, or the human condition, or
both; which is one argument for why mythologies that arise independently of one another are often so
similar.

One final thing to understand before we delve into these myths is the ambivalence of the divine, which will
be a recurring theme. In the first volume of his extensive history of the Devil, Jeffery Burton Russell asserts
that

Seldom in myth is anything seen as wholly evil, for myth is very close to the unconscious,
and the unconscious is ambivalent. What comes from the unconscious is basically
perception of self, and the self is perceived as both good and evil.
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Its just as well-said in the Gnostic Gospel of Philip, which states that In the beginning God created man
and woman. Now they create God.
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And if our image of the divine is a projection of ourselves, then it is
only natural that it be, to some extent, both good and evil. This ambivalence can be seen in deities like Shiva,
Zeus, Ishtar, and even YHWH, all of whom exhibit characteristics of both creation and destruction,
embracing life and death with the same arms.

So without further adieu, our first demon today comes from the burning sands of Egypt; I give you the Dark
Lord Set.

According to popular legend, Sets brother Osiristhe god of life and deathwas living happily with his
consort, Isis. Isis was unbearably beautiful, and this made Set unbearably jealous. So one day, long before
Cain ever slew Abel, Set murdered and dismembered his brother and scattered his remains along the banks of
the Nile, where they were retrievedand to a limited extent, resurrectedby Isis. Isis then gave birth to the
sky god Horus. Now, as you can imagine, Horus grew up with a fierce hatred for his dear uncle Set, who
mutilated his father.

Long years passed, until the day had finally come when Horus was old enough, and mad enough, and strong
enough to challenge Set for the throne of Egyptian divinity. Their battle was epic, and took a fierce toll on
both of themin my estimation, Set fared worse. He was castrated. But even that couldnt stop him from
turning into a violent pig-like animal and tearing out one of Horuss eyes with his teeth. In the end, neither
was really victorious.


2
Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity . Cornell University
Press, London, 1977. Pg. 56.
3
Ed. Barnstone, Willis & Marvin Meyer. The Gnostic Bible. New Seeds Books, Boston, 2003. Pg. 283.
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Now, in the earliest periods of Egyptian history, Set was regarded as an ambivalent deity. He was the patron
of Lower Egypt, and god of the desertpowerful and fierce, but hardly evil. It was believed that Set and
Horusgod of Northern Egypt balanced one another and lent a sense of harmony to the universe.

But political events upset that harmony, as they so often do. When the Semitic Hyksos tribe seized power in
Egypt during the 17
th
century BCE, they nominated Set as chief of their pantheon. But when the balance of
power shifted once more, the Egyptians came to revile both the Hyksos and Set, and all that he stood for.

Often, we find that the history of demonology closely parallels political change. When one group of people is
in power, their gods reign supreme. But when they are deposed, the new rulers add those gods to their own
pantheon of demons. Perhaps the most well-known instance of this is the demonization of Canaanite deities
like Asherah and Baal in the Old Testament. The same might be said of Christians twisting pagan symbols of
fertility and nature into demonic goat-horns and pentagrams.

If people create God in their own image, then they surely create demons in the image of people they dont
like very much.

Around 600 BCE, the prophet Zarathustra began a theological revolution in Persia, taking the first real steps
towards radical dualismand, consequently, radical evil. There is no ambivalence here, but rather two
opposite principles: Ahura Mazda, the god of light, and Angra Mainyu, the lord of darkness and evil. Whereas
in Egypt Horus and Set are originally two sides of the same coin, Zarathustras gods are completely
independent of one another. This dichotomy is a crucial influence in the history of Western dualism.

In the beginning, Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyumore commonly known as Arhimanwere floating in
the Void. Discerning the light that is Ahura Mazda off in the distance, Arhiman wanted to possess it for
himself. And in his jealousy he attacked the god of light, who then bound Arhiman in absolute darkness for
three-thousand years.

While the dark lord slumbered, Ahura Mazda created the heavens and the Earth. He also emanated seven
angels called Amahraspands,as well as the prototype human being, the perfect man a man named Gayomart.

But after three-thousand years catastrophe strikes. Arhiman is awakened by the attentions of the whore-
goddess Jeh, and in awakening he regains his terrible power. Gathering that power, he attempts to destroy
what Ahura Mazda has made. He crashes through the sky like a missile, and plummets himself deep into the
earth, corrupting the soil. Arhiman goes about forging his own creations: scorpions, spiders, rats, a host of
demons, and Seven Archfiends to lead them in combat against Ahura Mazdas seven angels. And to draw out
the god of light, he kills Gayomart. Its Ahura Mazdas move.

According to his divine wisdom, Ahura Mazda forges the souls of humans yet to be born. Harnessing their
collective energies they bind Arhiman in time and space, that he might take physical form and therefore be
subject to death. If any of you have ever seen the 80s horror classic Evil Dead II, its basically the same
principle.

Meanwhile Gayomarts seedabsorbed by the earthgives birth to the progenitors of the human race
who, incidentally, bear a striking resemblance to Adam and Eveand who dwell in a fallen age, an age to be
redeemed at the end of time by the final destruction of Arhiman. No ambiguity, no ambivalence. This is good
versus evil in its purest form.

While our own ambivalence may give rise to ambivalent gods, as Russell claims, we also want to reject the
dark fact of our own potential for evil. So too do we crave a god of pure light, this all-powerful, all-loving,
and all-intelligent and unstained God that we worship. But someone has to stand for the evil thats been
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done. And soironicallyit is our lust for absolute purity that gives birth to scapegoat gods like Arhiman,
and arms them with black wings and hate.

As I mentioned earlier, Jewish theology and demonology was heavily influenced by other near Eastern
cultures. The ancient Israelite YHWH, for instancethe god of the Old Testamentis a portrait of
ambivalence, giver of life and death. We may be tempted to imagine YHWH as the almighty and all-loving
God that Christianity has embraced, but that isnt quite right. One could argue a strong case that the Christian
duality between God and the Devil has more in common with Persian Zoroastrianism than with ancient
Judaism.

What that means is that there is no equivalent in ancient Judaism to the Christian Devil. There is no dark god
responsible for the ills of the world, no single unified force opposed to the God of Abraham and Moses.

But that doesnt mean that Judaism doesnt acknowledge the existence of personified evil.

In fact, the Jewish tradition is rich with demonic mythology, and much of it is hinted at in the Old Testament.
Of course Satan appears a couple of times in the Hebrew Bible, notably in the Book of Job, but hes hardly
worth mentioning yet. For now, Satan is no more than a mischievous angelhes occasionally bothersome,
but its always understood that hes in the employ of YHWH. There are worse things than Satan in the
shadows of Jewish loreincluding YHWH himself. A recent translation of the Kabbalistic Sefer ha-Bahir, the
Book of Brightness, says this:

God has an attribute whose name is evil, or the Satan, or Samael. The form of this attribute is a hand. It has numerous
messengers, all named evil. Lilith is onethe hand grasping for Adam in his sleep.
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The legend of the succubus Lilith is a disturbing rabbinic tradition, born out of an early medieval text called
the Alphabet of Ben-Sira and elaborated upon in the Kabbalah, about the Garden of Eden. Before Eve was
even a twinkle in Gods eye, Adam was living in Eden with another woman a woman named Lilith. Now,
you might say that Adam and Lilith didnt really get along so well. You see, Adam was the kind of guy who
thought he could tell his wife what to do. If there were any such thing as pants in Eden, hed want to be the
one wearing them. But that didnt work for Lilith, who was just as headstrong as Adam, and it wasnt long
before they got into a particularly nasty fighta fight over dominance in the bedroom, of all thingsand
Lilith leaves him for another man.

Well, not a man, exactly. Actually, hes a demon named Asmodeous. Lilith takes up residence in his cave, and
nine months later she gives birth to an army of demon-children.

Meanwhile, back at the garden, Adam is understandably upset; his brutish mannerisms and misogynistic
tendencies have pushed away the firstand lastwoman on earth. So he does what any self-respecting man
wouldhe begs God to get her back. So God dispatches three angelsSenoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelofto
retrieve Lilith. But shell have none of it. And when the angels threaten to kill one-thousand of her demon-
children for every day that she stays away, Lilith vows to stalk the night for all eternity, feasting on the
children of Adam.

For centuries, it was believed that nocturnal emissions were in fact the result of Lilith seducing men in their
sleep in an attempt to conceive more demons. And women defended their children against her by arming
them with amulets inscribed with the names of the three angels who hunted her. You might call Lillith the

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Rosenberg, David. Dreams of Being Eaten Alive: The Literary Core of the Kabbalah. Three Rivers Press, New
York, 2000. Pg. 131.
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original succubus, although her origins can be traced to the ancient Mesopotamian Lilitu who served much the
same function.

She isnt mentioned in the book of Genesis, but she is briefly referenced in Isaiah 34:14: Wildcats shall meet
with Hyenas, goat-demons shall call to each other; there too Lilith shall repose, and find a place to rest.

The apocryphal Book of Enoch also speaks of monsters. It recounts a legend of angels who became enamored
with the beauty of human women. One day, about two-hundred of these so-called Watchers decided that they
were no longer content to watch. They descended to the earth, seducing the daughters of men and teaching
them a variety of forbidden arts, ranging from the application of eye-liner to the forging of weapons. But that
wasnt the worst of it. The women also got pregnant, and conceived the Nephiliminhuman giants who ate
their families out of house and home. When the food ran out, they began devouring humans to sate their
unholy appetite. The authors of Genesis reference these creatures in chapter 6:4: The Nephilim were on the
earth in those daysand also afterwardwhen the sons of God went into the daughters of humans, who
bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.

In spite of their renown, many believe that Gods true purpose in flooding the earth was to rid the planet
of these hungry abominations. As for the Watchers themselves, Enoch tells us that God condemned these
fallen angels to a realm of everlasting darkness.
With this tale of fallen angels, were getting closer to the Devil we all know and hate.

But in the cultural consciousness, Satans transition from an angel to demon is very gradual and terribly
complex. Perhaps rather than trying to explain the organic process, it would be more productive to have a
look at the ingredients in this Devils brew, the numerous influences that gave rise to the horned demon of
the Christian tradition, the angel who fell from Gods grace.

First, theres the question of blame. Over time, as civilization has become more civilized, people have become
increasingly unwilling to bow down before an ambivalent God who commits murder and destroys cities and
instigates war. To this day, many Christians have a hard time coming to terms with the bulk of the Old
Testament. Some of the Gnostics got rid of it altogether, insisting that YHWH was not God at all, but rather
a wicked demiurge named Yaldaboath that created this fallen world out of ignorance.

This unwillingness to attribute the violence of the universe to God requires a scapegoat. The Gnostics chose
the Demiurge, and orthodox Christiansinspired by a New Testament focus on exorcism and demonic
principalitieschose the Devil. And God was forever vindicated. The very notion of this radical dualism
the idea of an independent evil force with enough power to attack God directlyalmost definitely owes its
origins to the influence of Persian Zoroastrianism. After Persia gained control of Israel in 539 BCE under
Cyrus the Great, some exposure to Persian theology was inevitable.

And then theres the character himself, who already existed in a variety of forms. Theres Semyaza, one of the
leaders of the rebel Watcher angels in the Book of Enoch. Theres Baal, the Canaanite fertility god who came
to symbolize the infernal worship of alien gods in Israel. Theres the snake in the Garden of Eden, and of
course theres Satanthe adversarywho plagued Job with boils and murdered his family. While originally
different entities, they eventually coalesced into a single persona.

All that was left was to give him a face, and there were plenty to choose from. The pagan fertility gods gave
him horns; the ancient deities of the sky gave him wings; the early Christian emphasis on hellfire burned his
skin red; and the pagans of Greece gave him a pitchforka shameless rip-off of Poseidons trident.

It took more than a few years, but in time the brew came to a boil. And the modern image of the Devil was
born. The work of Dante and Milton only fed the fire.
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But why should it matter? The idea of the Devil has probably wrought more tragedy than the Devil himself, if
indeed he exists at all. Between the persecution of so-called heretics, the slaughter of so-called infidels, and
the burning of so-called witches, the damage has been incalculable. And if thats true, then maybe we
shouldnt even be discussing this. Maybe any attempt to resurrect the Devil in a rational information age is
pure madness.

But Ive got a feeling that it isnt.

Yes, we could settle for the two arguments made earlier; Augustines theory of privation accounts for our
unfortunate but inevitable biological decay, and the case for human free will accounts for murder, theft,
greed, rape, genocide, and every other conceivable wickedness on Gods green earth. Problem solved. But I
still feel like something is missing.

Perhaps it isnt the Devil himself that I miss, but rather the idea of him. Joseph Campbell once remarked that
if you want to see a world without myth, take a look in the newspaper. If the world somehow seems to have
lost its magic, its because it has lost its mythology. Since the advent of biblical criticism, even our religion
isnt safe from the cutting board. And while Im the first one to encourage my congregation in a metaphorical
reading of scripture, I often lament the loss of the magical stories that I learned in Sunday school.

Campbell believed that embracing mythology has given human beings a sense of purpose for thousands of
years. Myths give voice to our innermost hopes and fears, and he seemed to think them vital to the human
condition. There will always be things in this world that cannot be explained. But mythology can bring us just
a little bit closer to understanding, in its own strange way. Myths dont require that we take everything
literallybut they do require just a bit of child-like faith.

One could argue for cinema as the mythology of the modern world, and I would agree. Even Campbell
acknowledged the mythological significance of the original Star Wars trilogy. But in the case of the Devil
himselfwho, incidentally, directed the Star Wars prequelswell, I think that the media has damaged his
reputation. Hes become the fodder of a hundred bad horror movies that turn the Prince of Darkness into a
poorly-rendered, CG-animated monster who is more laughable than frightening. Perhaps thats giving the
Devil his due, but personally I think this phenomenon has gone a long way in destroying the credibility of
mythological evil in the modern world.

And perhaps thats the whole point of mythological demons: to inspire in us a sense of dread and awe, to
remind us that evilwhether in ourselves or in some otherworldly monsteris not a thing to be
underestimated; to remind us to take evil seriously. Fans of the Harry Potter series will remember that it is
considered tabooeven dangerousto utter the name of the Dark Lord Voldemort aloud. This echoes
Tolkiens Lord of the Rings, wherein it is forbidden to recite the language of Mordor, lest the very words draw
the gaze of Saurons evil eye.

This particular brand of fearful awe is alien to us in the modern world. But it keeps us humble in the face of
evil, and only mythology can give it back to us. But more importantly, such myths also exist to inspire in us a
sense of hope, because they create a scenario in which this darkness might one day be defeated.

I dont know if the Devil is real. But I do know that he is trueor at the very least represents an unpleasant
truth about the universe, and about ourselves. Furthermore, even if we are prepared to accept that disease is a
consequence of biology and that genocide is a consequence of free will, and not the result of demonic
machinations, that doesnt mean that demons dont exist. There is sufficient evidence of demonic possession
in certain well-documented cases to believe that demons could be real. Indeed, they may dwell among us,
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subject to the same corruptionif not of the body, than at least of the soul. Yes, the Devil may be like one of
usnot the progenitor of temptation nor the root of all evil, but just another victim of it.

Insofar as evil is concerned, we lack understanding. But evil is the damned offspring of madness, a toxic
poison. Mythology allows us to explore it from a safe distance. But if we should get too closeif we ever
truly make sense of what is senseless

then God help us.