ENDING THE COSMIC WAR

MY FIRST INTERVIEW: SATAN!

Today I have my first interview. I thought I would go hard or go home, and so I am starting at the bottom of the pits of Hell, so a very warm welcome please to the Prince of Darkness, the Man of Wealth and Taste, the Fallen Angel, coming from humble beginnings to stand behind the most important events of the age, the Man of the Moment, HAIL SAATAAAN!! \m/ \m/ (“Sign of an Open Eye” by Black Metal band Gorgoroth plays in the background, minions bow and scrape and back away slowly).

Satan: Hail yourself.

Me: Kia Ora, and welcome to Ending the Cosmic War with me, Karen Effie. And yes, we will come to hailing thyself business later.

Satan: What do you mean, humble beginnings?

Me: Well, I think your first appearance in the Old Testament is in Zechariah, am I right, where you are a title, not a person. You were a ha satan, an adversary, a bit like Yahweh’s attorney for the prosecution. You were there to accuse Joshua the high priest, and you are standing on the right side of the Lord. The word used implies you weren’t the only one, like it is saying “a satan”, like we might say “a lawyer”. And in Job, there you were an adversary too, like you and Yahweh basically tested Job together. Yahweh agreed to your suggestion. You fitted him up, the poor chap. You just did the necessary dirty work. Even what we now call the temptation of Christ is actually a test, it doesn’t mean temptation in the kind of licentious way we think of it now. You set the test, and he passed. Job done. Face it, your infernal majesty, you were a public servant. You were the government’s loyal opposition.

Satan: Conceded, I supposed, although many folks nowadays credit me with the fall of Adam and Eve. So I was there from the beginning.

Me: Were you though? It says in Genesis there was a serpent, or Serpent if you like, and then when people read The Book of Revelation, there is a reference to “Satan, that old Serpent” so they put the two together but there is no necessity there, I think.

Satan (needled, somewhat): You’ve got a lot of teeth for a cheeky human. You will agree, I think, there is the Bible, which became canon over time. Then, there is what people experience, and how they think about those experiences. There is the religion of society, and then there is the wilder stuff, the old magic and the folklore, and the things the ordinary people say. Folklore lasts longer than religion. I am in the folklore more than in the scripture, I am in the fears and the dreams, that is where I am most powerful even now. It is in the realm of folklore that people put together tropes that may not have been meant to go together in the first place. You may be right about the Serpent in Genesis, and the old serpent in Revelation, but over the centuries the people have spoken, and they say I am both, and I am happy with that.

Me: I will give you that. In fact the idea of the Bible canon is pretty fraught, isn’t it. There are books like Enoch that never made it in at all. There are stories within the books that have weird-ass contradictions, as if they were several folk stories that got stuck together, like the story of Balaam and the donkey in Numbers. Then there are even stories that never quite fit anywhere, like the story of Jesus and the adulterous woman, which seems to have been a piece of folklore that got inserted into John after a lot of debate.

Satan: So your point is?

Me: that folklore and canon are blurred at times. That they come together and fall apart over time. Although, on the other side, the makers of the Bible thought hard about evidence and consistency. That is why a lot of texts were rejected.

Satan: So, let’s talk about evil, then. There are some states of being, and some actions, that you want to call by a name that is more than “mistake” or “lack of awareness” or “problematic” or even “vice”. They just have a social and psychological heft that requires something metaphysical. They are incomprehensible without that. And there are situations where there seems to be only wrong, only suffering, and it’s meaningless without the metaphysical. Humans need meaning. My friends Jordan and Russell would agree. Something so powerful needs a source, and it is beyond human.

Me: May I quote Isaiah 45:7 in the Authorized Version: ‘I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things’ The Yahwistic perception of God evolves throughout the Bible. In the beginning, Yahweh was the god of a particular people. Then, he became head of a divine council, head of a pantheon. Once YHWH emerged from the pantheon, he (and he was a “he”, back then) became omnipotent and eternal. So God created evil. You are God’s creation. All along, we wrestle with the idea of how an omnipotent God can create evil or allow it. So I will buy your “beyond human” but I will give you only God.

Satan: I am the answer to that, then. I am also, bear in mind, Angra Mainyu or Ahriman in the Zoroastrian tradition. I was there right from the start, as soon as creation kicked off; either some unknown force made me along with Ahura Mazda, or I was the first thing Ahura Mazda made. Either way I kicked myself into Creation and messed with it. I was the Adversary from the start. Meanwhile, as Yahweh became God, I developed too. By the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, I was Belial, the leader of the Sons of Evil who fought with the Sons of Light.

Me: That’s the War Scroll you are talking about, aren’t you. So, we are now around 300 BCE to 100 CE.

Satan: And in the intellectual stew of the Hellenized/Romanized Middle East with a side order of Egyptian magic, Gnosticism, and Zoroastrian dualism, I flourished. I was the evil demi-urge who created the universe against the wishes of the Pure Divine. I was the husks of wrongness that survived the descent of the Divine into creation in the Kabbalah. By the time Medieval thinkers got hold of me, I was the leader of the fallen angels, I was the Lord of Hell. You would have no Cosmic War without me, kiddo! You would have no material to write about!

Me: So, you know you’re bound to lose, then? And any day now, so they say.

Satan: You know how long they’ve been saying that.

Me: (sighing) Yes, I do. It is very tiresome for both of us.

(We commiserate, share a laugh and a very fine wine, which somehow turns to donkey urine in my mouth. Satan has a very rudimentary sense of humour for a fallen angel)

Me: That reminds, me, where did the fallen angel bit come from?

Satan: (sarcastically) “Humble beginnings” of course. The Enochian tradition. Not the standard Bible, the fan fiction. You know about the Nephilim? The idea that some of the angels came down to earth, and got the human women pregnant, and the offspring were the race of giants called the Nephilim?

Me: Don’t talk to me about the Nephilim. I had to write an essay about them at university earlier this year and I am heartily sick of them, or at least those Christians who believe they are behind every so-called evil in the world and every conspiracy theory…..

Satan: Well, you did ask, and I’m afraid you can’t get by without them. I was their leader, and we got banished for it. I go by many names, you see. Mastema was my name at one point. Iblis to the Muslims. Belial to the Essenes, or Beliar. But we did some good along the way. The Nephilim taught humans the arts of progress, such as metallurgy, writing, astronomy. That’s what angers the Christians, that we taught humans the things only God and the angels are supposed to know. They think that these things give humans the idea they are gods. And maybe they are! Maybe humans are gods in training, and it is religion that holds you back. Think about some of the most basic and most powerful magic. It’s theurgy. You do what God does, and you get the powers of God.

Me: I understand theurgy. Much ritual is theurgy. But I have known Satanists who are trying to become gods. They call it apotheosis. I don’t like them much. They are Ayn Rand types. You know Anton LaVey was just Ayn Rand in black? Right wing libertarianism. You can’t make a better world with it.

Satan: My kind of people! They get me! Hail yourself, and the god in you!

Me: Well thanks I guess, but I have no desire to become a god. I would make the worst god. It is hard enough being the best at being myself.

Satan: So you’re with the Christians, then, who think every bit of progress is my work, who think any self-improvement is trying to usurp God? I am being my own advocate here. If I and my demons are interested in humans at all, it is to see what they can do when they are set free from norms and morals. I am what you get when you set yourself free. I am a cipher for desire and its fulfilment.

Me: If that is all there is to you, I would not be interviewing you. Have you read Anatole France, “The Revolt of the Angels”?

Satan: If you insist.

Me: It is the last bit of that book that gets me. The bit where Satan and his fallen angels have overthrown Heaven and eternity is theirs, and the angels are saying to Satan, now you are lord and master and you will rule for ever, and Satan says no. He doesn’t want to be God. Having freed humanity of the shackles of religion, he will step away and humans will rule themselves. No gods, no masters. It is a completely conscious, and completely moral decision.

Satan: Ha ha! So I get to win the Cosmic War after all!

Me: You do! So thank you, Satan, attorney for the prosecution, at large, inventor of Main Character Syndrome, populist dickhead (sorry, but you are a bit), and genuine anarchist. We have a lot more to talk about, I think, so I might just invite you back.

Satan: It would be my diabolical pleasure. (Leers, winks, and disappears in a puff of greasy smoke, accompanied by goats bleating, downwards-pointing pentacles, black candles etc etc.)

Me: Seriously, folks, since he wasn’t real, we had to invent him. If you managed to read through all of these shenanigans, thank you, and ma te wa.

Further: The Data Over Dogma podcast with Dr Dan McLellan and Dan Beecher is an excellent and often amusing academic take on Biblical scholarship. And read the Dead Sea Scrolls; there are free PDFs online.