KINGSFORD AND BLAVATSKY’S PHILOSOPHICAL AND METAPHYSICAL EXPLANATIONS OF SATAN AND THE ORIGINS OF SATAN ARE ILLUMINATING AND TEACHES A LESSON

“But St. James teaches two kinds of wisdom; a teaching with which we fully concur. He draws a strong line of separation between the divine or noëtic “Sophia”—the Wisdom from above—and the terrestrial, psychic, or devilish wisdom—the Sophia επιγειος ψυχη δαιμονιωδης. For the true Theosophist there is no wisdom save the former.” H.P. BLAVATSKY

Defining our terms

Demon (n.). c. 1200. “comes from Latin. daemon, or Greek. daimōn. divine power, lesser god, tutelary deity, guiding spirit, intelligence replete with wisdom, divine genius (divine principle, or inner oracle). A devil or malevolent spirit in Christian mythology.”

Demonology (n.). the systematic and theological study of demons, or beliefs about demons.

Demonolatry (n.). The worship of demons, and the practice of ritual magic, through the aid of a demon.

Superstition (n.). early 13th c. “false religious belief; irrational faith in supernatural powers,” “excessive fear of the gods, religious belief based on fear or ignorance and considered incompatible with truth or reason.”

INTRODUCTION

The term superstition has become used as a slur on religion and rejected (or heterodox) traditions, but that “excessive fear of the gods,” or a belief based on, or motivated by fear or ignorance is not a very common trait to an occultist, and in most cases for ritualists is in fact, the very opposite attitude any operator ought to have in their work. A cooperative of the gods could be hardly said to hold an irrationally excessive fear of them; other than an admiration, or respect, and the ancient theurgist conducted under this feeling their purported operations. The Jews, and cultures throughout the world held to beliefs in supermundane gods and the elements, and like many of them, the doctrine of Satan has its origin. Firstly, on two main beliefs: (a) the flux or altered idea of the shedim, or angels and demons, and the Devil from the Hebrew to the Christian tradition; and (b) the Old Testament role of the angel of death and Satan in the Torah, or Old Testament, which is more like that of an inspector, or tax [debt] collector. SATAN יְהֹוָה means adversary, and its original conception is different from that of the Dantian and Christian idea, and popular imagination, which became also an idea in constant flux. Satan is from the first we find him in the Jewish literature, an attorney in the court of El, one of the Bene Elohim בני האלהים, an angel of God, whom God sends to tempt man. This chief elohim of the Torah is made to say in Isaiah: “I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7), and therefore God commands and controls the angel (malak) of death and the adversary (satan). Concerning the dual principle of Good and Evil in The Secret Doctrine, Satan, the traditional principle of Evil, or the Shadow of Light, is also called Logos, or Wisdom. This is because of the doctrinal position of Theosophy on the nature of the “real existence” of all phenomena that make up the world; which demonstrates orthodox Christian interpretations of Theosophy as seen based in a heretical Gnostic dualism (itself an over-simplification) to be short-sighted. There are no two dual supreme gods in this position; a position identified with the heretical Shentong Great Madhayamaka position in Tibetan Buddhism, regarding the dharmatā, or true nature of all things. The Logos is Light and Wisdom (Sophia, or Dharma), according to the Ophites and Valentinian Gnostics under Ennoia and Ophis, the Serpent, or the symbolically “seven-headed” Adishesha (Ādi Śeṣa) of Vishnu. It is represented as dual-natured, but so long as there exists manifested worlds. So long as there exists manifested worlds, the One Unity manifests as dual principles — Good and Evil; centripetal or centrifugal force; negative or positive; ad[dis]vantageous, &c.

According to H.P. Blavatsky, SATAN, a concept held by other ancient nationalities, “is one of the most profoundly philosophical and ideal conceptions of ancient thought” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2., pg. 233). In this view put forth, the cause for good and evil is seen to lie in the necessity of contraries and contrasts — something that is inherent to it due to the nature of MATTER itself.

REFUTING THE IDEA THEOSOPHISTS ARE LUCIFERIANS AND SATANISTS

There are several quotations, that were and still remain commonly used to charge Theosophists and H.P. Blavatsky with Satanism, secret devil-worship, or promulgating a Luciferianism, through a “reinterpretation of Genesis.” Lucifer, having no literary existence in Bere’shith, nor the New Testament, rids us of the idea, that the occult philosophical interpretation is an untrustworthy one. There is a commonly referred to passage in The Secret Doctrine (1888) used to accuse H.P.B. and the Theosophists of being luciferians and satanists:

“It is “Satan who is the god of our planet and the only god,”† and this without any allusive metaphor to its wickedness and depravity. For he is one with the Logos, “the first son, eldest of the gods,” in the order of microcosmic (divine) evolution; Saturn (Satan), astronomically, “is the seventh and last in the order of macrocosmic emanation, being the circumference of the kingdom of which Phoebus (the light of wisdom, also the Sun) is the centre”.” (see The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2., pp. 234-35). see The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2., pp. 234-35

Recognized in The Secret Doctrine. are old Christian sects, known as the Luciferians and Lucianists. The Luciferians were a “sect of the fourth century who are alleged to have taught that the Soul was a carnal body transmitted to the child by its father; — and that other religious and still earlier sect of the second century A.D., the Lucianists, who taught all this, and further, that the animal Soul was not immortal, were philosophizing on the grounds of the real Kabalistic and Occult teachings” Blavatsky states (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2., fn. pg. 239). The quoted passage above that includes the out-of-context quoted, “Satan who is the god of our planet and the only god,” wasn’t written by H.P.B., but by theosophist and medical doctor, Anna Kingsford, MD, who was the proponent of a Christian Hermeticism. What H.P. Blavatsky is referencing is from the elegantly poetic Dr. Kingford’s Perfect Way, where H.P.B. celebrates it to be the true esoteric view of Satan, which is similar to the understanding of the role of the god of Hades — Pluto.

ORIGIN OF THE MISQUOTE IN KINGSFORD’S “PERFECT WAY” ON THE SECRET OF SATAN

Anna Kingsford, Prominent Theosophist.

H.P.B. states: The true esoteric view about “Satan,” the opinion held on this subject by the whole philosophic antiquity, is admirably brought out in an appendix, entitled “The Secret of Satan,” to the second edition of Dr. A. Kingsford’s “Perfect Way.” No better and clearer indication of the truth could be offered to the intelligent reader, and it is therefore quoted here at some length: —

“[1] And on the seventh day (seventh creation of the Hindus),* there went forth from the presence of God a mighty Angel, full of wrath and consuming, and God gave him the dominion of the outermost sphere.†

[2] “Eternity brought forth Time; the Boundless gave birth to Limit; Being descended into generation.”‡

[4] “Among the Gods is none like unto him, into whose hands are committed the kingdoms, the power and the glory of the worlds:”

[5] “Thrones and empires, the dynasties of kings,§ the fall of nations, the birth of churches, the triumph of Time.”

For, as is said in Hermes, “Satan is the door-keeper of the Temple of the King; he standeth in Solomon’s porch; he holdeth the key of the Sanctuary, that no man enter therein, save the Anointed having the arcanum of Hermes” (v. 20 and 21).

These suggestive and majestic verses had reference with the ancient Egyptians and other civilized peoples of antiquity to the creative and generative light of the Logos (Horus, Brahma, Ahura-Mazda, etc., etc., as primeval manifestations of the ever-unmanifested Principle, e.g., Ain-Soph, Parabrahm, or Zeruana Akerne — Boundless Time — Kala), but the 12. “Many names hath God given him (Satan), names of mystery, secret and terrible.”

[13] “The Adversary, because matter opposeth Spirit. Time accuseth even the Saints of the Lord.”

[28, 29, 31] “Stand in awe of him, and sin not; speak his name with trembling . . . . For Satan is the magistrate of the justice of God (Karma); he beareth the balance and the sword . . . . For to him are committed Weight and Measure and Number.”

Compare the last sentence with what the Rabbi, who explains the Kabala to Prince Al-Chazari in the Book of that name, says; and it will be found that the Weight and Measure and Number are, in Sepher Jezirah, the attributes of the Sephiroth (the three Sephrim, or figures, ciphers) covering the whole collective number of 10; and that the Sephiroth are the collective Adam Kadmon, the “Heavenly Man” or the Logos. Thus Satan and the anointed were identified in ancient thought. Therefore,

[33] “Satan is the minister of God, Lord of the seven mansions of Hades” . . .

The seven or Saptaloka of the Earth with the Hindus; for Hades, or the Limbo of Illusion, of which theology makes a region bordering on Hell, is simply our globe, the Earth, and thus Satan is called —

[33] “. . . . the angel of the manifest Worlds.”

It is “Satan who is the god of our planet and the only god,” and this without any allusive metaphor to its wickedness and depravity. For he is one with the Logos, “the first son, eldest of the gods,” 34. “And God hath put a girdle about his loins (the rings of Saturn), and the name of the girdle is Death.”

In anthropogony this “girdle” is the human body with its two lower principles, which three die, while the innermost man is immortal. And now we approach the “Secret of Satan.”

[37, 38, 39] “ . . . Upon Satan only is the shame of generation. He hath lost his virginal estate (so hath the Kumara by incarnating): uncovering heavenly secrets, he hath entered into bondage . . . . He compasseth with bonds and limits all things. . . .”

[42, 43, 44] “Twain are the armies of God: in heaven the hosts of Michael; in the abyss (the manifested world) the legions of Satan. These are the unmanifest and the manifest; the free and the bound (in matter): the virginal and the fallen. And both are the Ministers of the Father, fulfilling the word Divine. . . .” Therefore —

[55] “Holy is the Sabbath of god: blessed and sanctified is the name of the Angel of Havas” — Satan.

For, “The glory of Satan is the shadow of the Lord”: God in the manifested world; “the throne of Satan is the footstool of Adonai” — that footstool being the whole Kosmos. (Vide Part II., “Is Pleroma Satan’s Lair?”)

When the Church, therefore, curses Satan, it curses the cosmic reflection of God; it anathematizes God made manifest in matter or in the objective; it maledicts God, or the ever-incomprehensible Wisdom, revealing itself as Light and Shadow, good and evil in nature, in the only manner comprehensible to the limited intellect of Man.

This is the true philosophical and metaphysical interpretation of Samael, or Satan, the adversary in the Kabala; the same tenets and spirit being found in the allegorical interpretations of every other ancient religion.” (Helena P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2., pp. 233-35)

Anna Kingsford did state:

“Satan…is the god of our planet and the only god.” ANNA KINGSFORD QUOTE TAKEN OUT-OF-CONTEXT ALWAYS FALSELY ATTRIBUTED TO H.P. BLAVATSKY

IN FULL CONTEXT OF THIS ESOTERICIST’S VIEW

Helena P. Blavatsky argues in The Secret Doctrine (1888), from a philosophical view on the mythology of Satan, Lucifer, the Devil, and “God.” Kingsford’s meaning becomes very simple to understand. What Kingsford meant, was that the physical matter and MATTER in general holds sway over the terrestrial plane and mind. She is therefore not praising Satan, nor believes in the conception of Satan as held by common and occulture belief. We are told, that the “idea of God and Devil would make any chela [disciple] of six months smile in pity. Theosophists do not believe either in the one or in the other…” (H.P. Blavatsky). The accusers have failed to understand the position, because it threatens the structure of the Christian religious tradition; since it not only negates it, but aims to demonstrate the futility and unphilosophical basis of the doctrine itself.

Behold Anna Kingsford’s meaning —

Satan is the Great Illusion.

It is Polarity inherent to the Manifested World (MATTER).

This is the meaning of that often quoted passage. It does not take a thousand-page explanatory apologetic MAGNUM OPUS to explain what could be said in a few words, and no more. But let us explain more for the interested.

The idea in the Torah is also strung throughout the Zoroastrian tradition, regarding the dual gods and the rebellious daivas, H.P.B. explains. The spirit of duality in man and matter is explained again:

“The holy “Airyaman,” “the bestower of weal,” invoked in the prayer called Airyama-ishyo, is the divine aspect of Ahriman, “the deadly, the Dae of the Daevas” (Farg. xx., 43), and Angra Mainyu is the dark material aspect of the former. “Keep us from the Hater, O Mazda and Armaita Spenta” (Vendidad Sadah), has, as a prayer and invocation, an identical meaning with “Lead us not into temptation,” and is addressed by man to the terrible Spirit of duality in man himself. (…)” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1, pg. 517)

This duality is inherent in the order, due to the presence of MATTER.

Likewise, Anna Kingsford teaches, that the whole Kingdom of Nature is pervaded by MATTER, hence, is the Kingdom of Satan, the Universal Daimōn (or SPIRIT). Wherever there is MATTER, there is duality, the cycles of birth and death, growth and decay, the struggle of life, and conflict. All this is under the administration of Nature’s brute force and laws. The manifested world is inherently pervaded by polarity. Polarity is in all matter, and pre-eminently in man. Think of “anti-matter,” dark matter, the polarity in molecules, &c.

This is elaborated further when H.P.B. mentions in the S.D. that Satan represents metaphysically, the reverse or polar opposite of everything in nature, and to mortals, Abstract Evil. Blavatsky argues, that this principle in Nature is the reverse of the same coin, or natural law:

“Satan represents metaphysically simply the reverse or the polar opposite of everything in nature. He is the “adversary,” allegorically, the “murderer,” and the great Enemy of all, because there is nothing in the whole universe that has not two sides — the reverses of the same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be called Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since they are the adversaries of darkness, badness, and ugliness. And now the philosophy and the rationale of certain early Christian sects — called heretical and viewed as the abomination of the times — will become more comprehensible.”

“For over sixteen centuries the new masks, forced on the faces of the old gods, have screened them from public curiosity, but they have finally proved a misfit. Yet the metaphorical Fall, and as metaphorical atonement and crucifixion, led Western Humanity through roads knee-deep in blood. Worse than all, they led it to believe in the dogma of the evil spirit distinct from the spirit of all good, whereas the former lives in all matter and pre-eminently in man. Finally it created the God-slandering dogma of Hell and eternal perdition; it spread a thick film between the higher intuitions of man and divine verities; and, most pernicious result of all, it made people remain ignorant of the fact that there were no fiends, no dark demons in the Universe before man’s own appearance on this, and probably on other earths. Henceforth the people were led to accept, as the problematical consolation for this world’s sorrows, the thought of original sin.” (Helena P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, p. 484)

Theosophists divide WISDOM into two categories — Holy WISDOM and Lower (or terrestrial) WISDOM. Blavatsky had said in the very book she has been accused of Satanism on the Pentagram:

“The esoteric symbol of Kali Yuga [the Dark Age] is the five-pointed star reversed , thus — the sign of human sorcery, with its two points (horns) turned heavenward, a position every Occultist will recognise as one of the “left-hand,” and used in ceremonial magic. It is hoped that during the perusal of this work the erroneous ideas of the public in general with regard to Pantheism will be modified” (Helena P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg. 5).

In this view of Anna Kingsford and H.P. Blavatsky, the rulers of nations, as is given in the Appendix of Kingsford’s work cited, engage in all things contrary to the WISDOM, because engaged in the struggle for life. From the view of Physics, Biology and Chemistry, we live in a world pervaded by MATTER, in which that interminable and cyclical struggle of birth, death and transition occurs between all living things.

“The “dynasties of the kings” who all regard themselves as the “anointed,” reigning “by the Grace of God,” whereas in truth, they reign by the grace of matter, the great Illusion, the Deceiver.” Helena P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2., fn. pg. 233

It is clear here, that H.P. Blavatsky is not praising Satan, a myth.

While American and worldly politicians say, “God Bless our country,” in the name of Christianity, Hinduism or Islam, they war against one another in the next breath. In the early Jewish conceptions of Satan, this god is employed by their chief God as an attorney to test humanity. Mortals are rather good at failing the tests; therefore, the chain of causality (karma, providence, nemesis, etc) — the fates of nations, and dynasties of royals, etc., are not in the good graces of God, but in the graces of matter (the illusion), through which the divisiveness born from our Thought, that we stir and war against for — each in the name of the jealous gods is cyclically born.

The attributes SATAN is referred to be and believed in by theological Christianity is conceived as being the inverse nature of the Deity; and in allegories of antiquity, being known as the adversary, i.e., the deceiver, is the “illusion.” It is God inversed, and manifested in the World. It is still highly possible to gauge the significance of what Blavatsky and Dr. Kingsford are explaining, along with scholarly input.

The secret god of the Mysteries, the G.A.O.T.U. of the Masons is not the Devil, or Satan. A saying associated with the latter regards the mathematical idea that “God geometrizes,” and hence could hardly refer to the Biblical Satan, or better yet any Hellraiser of Dante’s Inferno or Faustian conception. The propensity towards evil originates from the thought of man, which is vaguely associated with what Lucifer and Satan is, as the blessing and curse of the mind and conscience is its constant struggling between its celestial and terrestrial nature entangled in MATTER. The “secret god” of the esoteric doctrine and the Masons is not a Baphomet-creature, but the Aniyamsam aniyasam, “the most atomic of the atomic,” the concealed deity, the Sanskrit terms Anu, the ONE LIFE that permeates every atom, a doctrine long antedating the Christian doctrinal beliefs.

The Kosmos is always depicted in ancient cosmogony as being pervaded by Fire or WATER, and Water symbolically meaning a protean Substance, generically termed MATTER, even since the times of the Presocratic philosophers. Modern physics suggests a theory of superfluid spacetime. The dark dregs of the Aither is the Astral element, which is believed to both interpenetrate and be more tenuous than physical matter in Theoretical Occultism; and it was Eliphas Levi, that called this element Lucifer, using Christian terminology.

Blavatsky explains that humanity can overpower the effects of evil, by practicing and living holy lives, so she is not ignorant of the dangers of the lower nature and practices.

…And Blavatsky can hardly be accused of condoning a malignant practice of occultism.

“There is a personal God, and there is a personal Devil!” thunders the Christian preacher. “There is no personal God, except the grey matter in our brain,” contemptuously replies the materialist, “and there is no Devil.” Between Science and Theology is a bewildered public, fast losing all belief in man’s personal immortality, in a deity of any kind, and rapidly descending to the level of mere animal existence.” HELENA P. BLAVATSKY

As H.P.B. states regarding matter, modern science has no real idea of the fullness of its nature:

“Modern science is secure only in its own domain and region, within the physical boundaries of our solar system, beyond which everything, every particle of matter, is different from the matter it knows; which matter exists in states of which science can form no idea. That matter, which is truly homogeneous, is beyond human perceptions, if perception is tied down merely to the five senses. (…) The Worlds, including our own, were of course, as germs, primarily evolved from the ONE Element, in its second stage— (“Father-Mother,” the differentiated World’s Soul, not what is termed the “Over-Soul” by Emerson), whether we call it, with modern science, Cosmic dust and Fire Mist, or with Occultism — Akasha, Jivatma, divine Astral Light, or the “Soul of the World.” No world, as no heavenly body, could be constructed on the objective plane, had not the Elements been sufficiently differentiated already from their primeval Ilus, resting in Laya.”

Christianity does teach that SATAN rules this world, however, through an anthropomorphic dualism. There is actually no difference from what Anna Kingsford is saying, when explaining matter and polarity. Theosophists explain however, that the Creator (elohim) is in one sense, actually a collective of MASONS (builders), and Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine elaborates, that the classical Védic atomic theory is inseparable from this position. This can be demonstrated in the Jewish tradition also, prior to the construction of monotheism:

“The “Builders” are a class called, as I already explained, Cosmocratores, or the invisible but intelligent Masons, who fashion matter according to the ideal plan ready for them in that which we call Divine and Cosmic ideation. They were called by the early Masons the “Grand Architect of the Universe” collectively: but now the modern Masons make of their G.A.O.T.U. a personal and singular Deity.” Helena P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings, Vol. 10, pg. 341.

This conception is throughout the Cosmogonies of the ancient world.

It is because the “high Initiates and Adepts (…) know no “God,” but one Universal unrelated and unconditioned Deity.”—The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1, p. 295. “The idea of God and Devil would make any chela of six months smile in pity. Theosophists do not believe either in the one or in the other…”—H.P. Blavatsky, Misconceptions: Reply to the Article “Révolution.” “The God of the Theologians is simply an imaginary power (…) Our chief aim is to deliver humanity of this nightmare, and to teach man virtue for its own sake, and to walk in life relying on himself instead of leaning on a theological crutch, that for countless ages was the direct cause of nearly all human misery. (…) Who but a Theologian nursed on mystery and the most absurd supernaturalism can imagine a self-existent being of necessity infinite and omnipresent outside the manifested boundless universe? (…) The One Life (…) is the essence of every atom of matter (…).’—K.H. The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter no. 10. “Theosophists (…) They preach against every dogmatic and infallible religion and recognize no other deity, which dispenses suffering and recompense, than Karma [Causality], an arbiter created by their own actions. The only God they worship is TRUTH; the only devil which they recognize and which they fight against (… ) is the Satan of egotism and human passions” (Helena P. Blavatsky, CW, Vol. 8, pg. 79-80), which in contrast (regarding the last part), Leveyan Satanism embraces.

The core beliefs of Satanism† can be listed —

Individualism

Epicureanism

Secularism

Egoism

Self-Deification

Naturalism

Social Darwinism

Lex Talionis, or the Law of Retaliation

H.P.B. ON THE CHRISTIAN MYTH OF SATAN – “OCCULTISM SHOWS THE FALLACY OF SUCH A BELIEF”

Painting. Lightbringer. Artist. Leoncio Harmr

“OUR PRESENT QUARREL is exclusively with theology. The Church enforces belief in a personal god and a personal devil, while Occultism shows the fallacy of such a belief. And though for the Pantheists and Occultists, as much as for the Pessimists, Nature is no better than “a comely mother, but stone cold” — this is true only so far as regards external physical nature. They both agree that, to the superficial observer, she is no better than an immense slaughter-house wherein butchers become victims, and victims executioners in their turn. It is quite natural that the pessimistically inclined profane, once convinced of Nature’s numerous shortcomings and failures, and especially of her autophagous propensities, should imagine this to be the best evidence that there is no deity in abscondito within Nature, nor anything divine in her. Nor is it less natural that the materialist and the physicist should imagine that everything is due to blind force and chance, and to the survival of the strongest, even more often than of the fittest. But the Occultists, who regard physical nature as a bundle of most varied illusions on the plane of deceptive perceptions; who recognise in every pain and suffering but the necessary pangs of incessant procreation: a series of stages toward an ever-growing perfectibility, which is visible in the silent influence of never-erring Karma, or abstract nature — the Occultists, we say, view the great Mother otherwise.

Woe to those who live without suffering. Stagnation and death is the future of all that vegetates without a change. And how can there be any change for the better without proportionate suffering during the preceding stage? Is it not those only who have learnt the deceptive value of earthly hopes and the illusive allurements of external nature who are destined to solve the great problems of life, pain, and death?If our modern philosophers — preceded by the medieval scholars — have helped themselves to more than one fundamental idea of antiquity, theologians have built their God and his Archangels, their Satan and his Angels, along with the Logos and his staff, entirely out of the dramatis personae of the old heathen Pantheons. They would have been welcome to these, had they not cunningly distorted the original characters, perverted the philosophical meaning, and taking advantage of the ignorance of Christendom — the result of long ages of mental sleep, during which humanity was permitted to think only by proxy — tossed every symbol into the most inextricable confusion. One of their most sinful achievements in this direction, was the transformation of the divine alter ego into the grotesque Satan of their theology.” (Helena P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2., pp. 475-6)

SATAN’S ORIGIN: CHRISTIANS REDEFINED REAL MEANING OF DRAGONS AND SERPENTS

“Let us then fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper, and find its prototype with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic myth is easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi-savage regions. It took rise in the whisperings about secret initiations among the profane, and was established universally through the once universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts of the world were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and the Buddhist countries, “Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his God“ (“Archaeology,“ Vol. xxv., p. 220, London). In the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its Western origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, and heliolatrous worship crossed over with its Sun-gods into the land of the Pharaohs from India. In the gods of Stonehenge we recognise the divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the devas of the Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and Kaliya, Osiris and Typhon are all one under many names— the latest of which are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As Michael is “one as God,” or his “Double,” for terrestrial purposes, and is one of the Elohim, the fighting angel, he is thus simply a permutation of Jehovah. Whatever the Cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to the allegory of the “War of Heaven,” its earthly origin has to be sought in the temples of Initiation and archaic crypts.” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, pg. 378-379)

DANTE CONSTRUCTS THE INFERNO — PAN AND SATAN — HELL NOT IN THE BIBLE

JAMES TABOR CONFIRMS H.P.B. ON THE SHEDIM ON ANGELS AND DEMONS

“(…) For it is only owing to deliberate mistranslation that the Hebrew word asdt has been translated “angels” from the Septuagint, when it means Emanations, Æons, precisely as with the Gnostics. Indeed, in Deuteronomy (xxxiii., 2) the word asdt or ashdt is translated as “fiery law”, while the correct rendering of the passage should be “from his right hand went [not a fiery law, but] a fire according to law”; viz., that the fire of one flame is imparted to, and caught up by another like as in a trail of inflammable substance. This is precisely emanation. As shown in Isis Unveiled: “In Evolution, as it is now beginning to be understood, there is supposed to be in all matter an impulse to take on a higher form–a supposition clearly expressed by Manu and other Hindu philosophers of the highest antiquity. The philosopher’s tree illustrates it in the case of the zinc solution. The controversy between the followers of this school and the Emanationists may be briefly stated thus: The Evolutionist stops all inquiry at the borders of ‘the Unknowable’; the Emanationist believes that nothing can be evolved—or, as the word means, unwombed or born–except it has first been involved, thus indicating that life is from a spiritual potency above the whole”.” (Helena P. Blavatsky, The Theosophical Glossary, TPH, 1973, 113-114)

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE SUN-GODS INTO SATAN

“…the God of the Israelites was such a tribal God, and no more, even though the Christian Church, following the lead of the “chosen” people, is pleased to enforce the worship of that one particular deity.” H.P. BLAVATSKY

This is from a chapter of The Secret Doctrine (1888) titled, “IS PLEROMA SATAN’S LAIR?” and within that section is a sub-section titled, “Jehovah, the Personating Spirit.” The whole section inquires and traces the consequence and origin of the most treasured dogmas of Christian theology, especially concerning the “God of the Israelites,” and Satan. It puts forth, for some of us, the uncomfortable question: Is Jehovah a Personating Spirit, using the same tactics Christianity has done to all past religions and mythologies by turning every old god to a devil.

“Thus, esoteric philosophy shows that man is truly the manifested deity in both its aspects — good and evil, but theology cannot admit this philosophical truth. Teaching the dogma of the Fallen Angels in its dead-letter meaning, and having made of Satan the corner-stone and pillar of the dogma of redemption — to do so would be suicidal. Having once shown the rebellious angels distinct from God and the Logos in their personalities, the admission that the downfall of the disobedient Spirits meant simply their fall into generation and matter, would be equivalent to saying that God and Satan were identical. For since the Logos (or God) is the aggregate of that once divine Host accused of having fallen, it would follow that the Logos and Satan are one. Yet such was the real philosophical view of the now disfigured tenet in antiquity.” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2., pg. 515)

“But Eliphas Levi was yet too subservient to his Roman Catholic authorities; one may add, too jesuitical, to confess that this devil was mankind, and never had any existence on earth outside of that mankind.

In this, Christian theology, although following slavishly in the steps of Paganism, was only true to its own time-honoured policy. It had to isolate itself, and to assert its authority. Hence it could not do better than turn every pagan deity into a devil. Every bright sun-god of antiquity — a glorious deity by day, and its own opponent and adversary by night, named the Dragon of Wisdom, because it was supposed to contain the germs of night and day — has now been turned into the antithetical shadow of God, and has become Satan on the sole and unsupported authority of despotic human dogma. After which all these producers of light and shadow, all the Sun and the Moon Gods, were cursed, and thus the one God chosen out of the many, and Satan, were both anthropomorphised.

But theology seems to have lost sight of the human capacity for discriminating and finally analysing all that is artificially forced upon its reverence. History shows in every race and even tribe, especially in the Semitic nations, the natural impulse to exalt its own tribal deity above all others to the hegemony of the gods; and proves that the God of the Israelites was such a tribal God, and no more, even though the Christian Church, following the lead of the “chosen” people, is pleased to enforce the worship of that one particular deity, and to anathematize all the others. Whether originally a conscious or an unconscious blunder, nevertheless, it was one. Jehovah has ever been in antiquity only “a god among other Gods,” (lxxxii. Psalm). The Lord appears to Abraham, and while saying, “I am the Almighty God,” yet adds, “I will establish my covenant to be a God unto thee” (Abraham), and unto his seed after him (Gen. xvii. 7) — not unto Aryan [Indo] Europeans.

But then, there was the grandiose and ideal figure of Jesus of Nazareth to be set off against a dark background, to gain in radiance by the contrast; and a darker one the Church could hardly invent. Lacking the Old Testament symbology, ignorant of the real connotation of the name of Jehovah — the rabbinical secret substitute for the ineffable and unpronounceable name — the Church mistook the cunningly fabricated shadow for the reality, the anthropomorphized generative symbol for the one Secondless Reality, the ever unknowable cause of all. As a logical sequence the Church, for purposes of duality, had to invent an anthropomorphic Devil — created, as taught by her, by God himself. Satan has now turned out to be the monster fabricated by the “Jehovah-Frankenstein,” — his father’s curse and a thorn in the divine side — a monster, than whom no earthly Frankenstein could have fabricated a more ridiculous bogey.

The author of “New Aspects of Life” describes the Jewish God very correctly from the Kabalistic stand-point as “the Spirit of the Earth, which had revealed itself to the Jew as Jehovah” (p. 209). “It was that Spirit again who, after the death of Jesus, assumed his form and personated him as the risen Christ” — the doctrine of Cerinthius and several Gnostic sects with slight variation, as one can see. But the author’s explanations and deductions are remarkable: “None knew . . . better than Moses . . . and so well as he how great was the power of those (gods of Egypt) with whose priests he had contended,” he says . . . “the gods of which Jehovah is claimed to be the God” (by the Jews only). “What were these gods, these Achar of which Jehovah, the Achad, is claimed to be the God . . . by overcoming them?” the author asks; to which our Occultism answers: “those whom the Church now calls the Fallen Angels and collectively Satan, the Dragon, overcome, if we have to accept her dictum, by Michael and the Host, that Michael being simply Jehovah himself, one of the subordinate Spirits at best.”

Therefore, the author is again right in saying: “The Greeks believed in the existence of . . . daimons. But . . . they were anticipated by the Hebrews, who held that there was a class of personating spirits which they designated demons, ‘personators.’ Admitting with Jehovah, who expressly asserts it, the existence of other gods, which were personators of the One God, were these other gods simply a higher class of personating spirits, which had acquired and exercised greater powers? And is not personation the Key to the mystery of the Spirit state? But once granting this position, how are we to know that Jehovah was not a personating Spirit, a Spirit which arrogated to itself that it was, and thus became, the personator of the one unknown and unknowable God? Nay, how do we know that the Spirit calling itself Jehovah, in arrogating to itself his attributes did not thus cause its own designation to be imputed to the One who is in reality as nameless as incognizable?” (pp. 144-145.)”

“It is easy to disfigure vague expressions written in dead and long-forgotten languages, and palm them off as truths and revealed facts on the ignorant masses. The identity of thought and meaning is the one thing that strikes the student in all the religions which mention the tradition of the fallen Spirits, and in those great religions there is not one that fails to mention and describe it in one or another form. (…) Typhon the Egyptian, Python, the Titans, the Suras and the Asuras, all belong to the same legend of Spirits peopling the Earth. They are not “demons commissioned to create and organize this visible universe,” but fashioners (the “architects”) of the worlds, and the progenitors of man.” (ibid., pg. 515-517)

See scholars on this subject in the article. The Construction of Monotheism: Dever, Stavrakopoulou, LePage, Blavatsky… Prof. William G. Dever and Francesca Stavrakopoulou on the construction of monotheism. Prof. William G. Dever (Archaeologist, Anthropologist, University of Arizona) says the Torah is a “Minority Report” “To understand Paul, we […]

YAHWEH IS A TEMPTER, FORBIDS CURSING SATAN AND REVILING THE GODS

It would be unthinkable for many of the faithful to believe, the “Lord God” could be itself the tempter, or the “agent provocateur” in the creative story of Bere’shith in the Garden of Eden, and yet we find discrepancies such as:

“And Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel.” CHRON. 21.1.

Then, ‘the anger of the Lord Jehovah was kindled against Israel,’ and he moved David to say: “Go, number Israel.” 2 SAMUEL, 24.1.

“Thou shalt not revile the gods” (Exodus 22), surely because, it was in Satan, or the Angel of Death that the “fear of the Lord” was felt. In an absolutely just and retributive sense, what humans call abstract “evil,” which acts like a Sun in its death, or that old Saturn at the end of the great cycle, devouring its children is yet, all natural LAW. In this sense, we find Satan early on, as but a servant of God. Satan, the appointed judge, from these standards of ancient theology is therefore (defined as) “a god” (daimōn), like Pluto.

The Secret Doctrine explains the mysteries of the Tetragrammaton, and that Jehovah is also the name of mankind — of Epigeios and Eua, or Adam-Eve (Jah-Hovah). It also states, that these different names are but permutations of the name IHVH. Jehovah is identified, e.g., with the moon (Lunus), which was believed to effect a vitalizing power on the sidereal realm and earth. The Hebrews used the moon to derive their lunar calculations, and thus for agriculture. The observance of the seventh day (Jehovah-Sabbath) is the day of the new moon (Jehovah), as in 2 Kings 4, 23.

“Reject the explanation of the Secret Doctrine and the whole Pentateuch becomes the abomination of abominations. Therefore, do we find Jehovah, the anthropomorphic God, everywhere in the Bible, but of AIN SUPH [Ein Sof, the numberless and inconceivable] not one word is said. (…) So true is this, indeed, that the authors of the New Testament who had to blend their system with both the Jewish and the Pagan, had to borrow their most metaphysical symbols not from the Pentateuch, or even the Kabala, but from the Âryan astro-symbology.” (Helena P. Blavatsky, Kabalah and the Kabalists, Lucifer, May, 1892)

“The reading of the Chaldeo-Assyrian tiles has now demonstrated it beyond a shadow of doubt. We find the same idea in the Zohar. Satan was a Son, and an Angel of God. With all the Semitic nations, the Spirit of the Earth was as much the Creator in his own realm as the Spirit of the Heavens. They were twin brothers and interchangeable in their functions, when not two in one. Nothing of that which we find in Genesis is absent from the Chaldeo-Assyrian religious beliefs, even in the little that has hitherto been deciphered. The great “Face of the Deep” of Genesis is traced in the Tohu-bohu, “Deep,” “Primeval Space,” or Chaos of the Babylonians. Wisdom (the Great Unseen God) — called in Genesis chap. i. the “Spirit of God” — lived, for the older Babylonians as for the Akkadians, in the Sea of Space. Toward the days described by Berosus, this sea became the visible waters on the face of the Earth — the crystalline abode of the great mother, the mother of Ea and all the gods, which became, still later, the great Dragon Tiamat, the Sea Serpent. Its last stage of development was the great struggle of Bel with the Dragon — the Devil!

Whence the Christian idea that God cursed the Devil? The God of the Jews, whomsoever he was, forbids cursing Satan. Philo Judaeus and Josephus both state that the Law (the Pentateuch and the Talmud) undeviatingly forbid one to curse the adversary, as also the gods of the gentiles. “Thou shalt not revile the gods,” quoth the god of Moses (Exodus xxii. 28), for it is God who “hath divided (them) unto all nations” (Deut. iv. 19); and those who speak evil of “Dignities” (gods) are called “filthy dreamers” by Jude (8). For even Michael the Archangel durst not bring against him (the devil) a railing accusation, but said: “The Lord rebuke thee” (ibid 9). Finally the same is repeated in the Talmud.* “Satan appeared one day to a man who used to curse him daily, and said to him: ‘Why dost thou this?’ Consider that God himself would not curse me, but merely said: ‘The Lord rebuke thee, Satan’ (see Talmudic Studies in the Kiddushin Tract 81b§).” (see The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2., pg. 477-78)

SCHOLARSHIP ON THE ORIGIN OF SATAN CONFIRMS BLAVATSKY

“Another example of Satan not being the Prince of Evil is found in the book of Job. Here Satan takes on a dissenting role, but still is an angel of God. He is a special kind of reconnaissance angel, keeping tabs on who remains faithful to God and who becomes unfaithful. God boasts that Job is a righteous and faithful servant. Satan takes on an adversarial role; reminding God that Job was truly faithful; but, Job persevered in his faith when tested, and Satan was forced to retreat. Though Satan takes on the role of an opponent and brings hardship on Job, Satan remains an angel of God. Many wonder where the first occurrence of the singular Satan occurred and many believe it was with the Essenes of the Jewish community. The Essenes were a monastic group of Jews who believed the vast majority of Jews had lost their original faith. For this reason, Essenes isolated themselves from the rest of the Jewish community. The Essenes went so far as to stop attacking the pagans as evil-doers, but focused most of their criticism on their fellow Jews. Since the majority of Jews were God’s favor, but fell from grace, they wanted a figure that personified this. The ideal figure for this was Satan: one of God’s angels who fell from grace, and now is overwhelmed with evil. Christians would incorporate and expand the Essenes’ tradition of demonizing their opponents.” Quentin Spannagel, Review of: The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics by Elaine Pagels)

STUDYING THE MYTH OF PLUTO MADE THIS EXTREMELY SIMPLE TO UNDERSTAND

People make a dummy of their god. People curse Satan, and scapegoat Satan, then go and pray before their GOD. For all the times the religious, or the “faithful” speak of the ills of Satan, whether at the ramī al-jamarāt throwing stones at the three pillars and cursing Satan, or blaming natural disasters on the absence of God (the anger of God) — it never seems to bring any good. From the standpoint of the HELLENISTIC MYSTERIES and Literature, they explain the role and nature of Pluto, god of Hades in Greek Mythology, or Sat’an. SATAN is the name humans have given to personify abstract evil, or the general centrifugal force in Nature, in however through vaguely anthropomorphic forms attached to emotional fear. Satan is seen as Darkness and the cause of Evil, but Darkness is an aspect of Nature, of Wisdom, the JUST ONE (the one law). What people attribute to Nature (Pan) as evil is a necessity, for it balances out things, allowing for new growth. The SUN, e.g., brings life, but also destroys it. It is absolute Just Law. The propensity towards evil (centrifugal. “away from the centre”) exists in the mind or thought, and in action. Lucifer is our mind, or in it, H.P. Blavatsky says. Certain spiritual disciplines turn unconscious action into spiritualized will, in an effort to win against and subdue the lower nature, which results in one’s closer proximity “toward the centre.” It is the only way.

Occult Philosophy explains, this centre is the point of equilibrium between matter and spirit, where the polar differentiation between conventional phenomena ceases.

CONCLUDING POINTS ON GREEK ESOTERICISM AND MODERN THEOSOPHY IN REGARDS TO ANNA KINGSFORD’S INTERPRETATION

Here are some key points on Mythology and Occult Philosophy in Theosophy summing up Views on Satan:

“The mystery of SATAN or Hades hides the key to the spiritual (or divine) origin, and the successive conquering of our fears, the unknown, and limitations are vital for any student, of either side of practice (grimoires or not);

or Hades hides the key to the spiritual (or divine) origin, and the successive conquering of our fears, the unknown, and limitations are vital for any student, of either side of practice (grimoires or not); In nearly every great classic mythology, the candidates for Initiation in the story all go to the depths of the Nether world and retrieve their maidens (the Soul);

Every Man who entered HADES and out the other-side was crowned a Hero — an Initiate of the Mysteries (even the New Testament character Jesus does it);

If the candidate conquers the trials, they become a s ō ter or s ō teria (no superstitious fool could earn such a victory). Such conditions had to be earned. They are never simply given.

ter or s teria (no superstitious fool could earn such a victory). Such conditions had to be earned. They are never simply given. Kundalini has been equated with Satan and Lucifer by Christians in the past in attempts to demonize Indian culture and religion. This concept exists in the Greek knowledge. One example, the Parakletōs translated in the English as comforter in the New Testament is actually a fire-god, a psychic, or rather psycho-somatic principle in ancient Greek conception; and has a vital role in the psychology of Initiation, or the purificatory rites.

Recommended Reading

• Matos, Morgan A., “The Satanic Phenomenon: Medieval Representations of Satan” (2011). Master of Liberal Studies Theses. 28. http://scholarship.rollins.edu/mls/28