Blessed Night, Loves 😊

I Pray All Is Well With Everyone…And Your Hearts And Minds Are Full Of Love, Joy, And Compassion…For All God’s Children…And All God’s Creation! And As We Near The End Of Another Year…We Know Not For Certain What The New Year Will Bring! Whatever May Come Though, Let Us Be Certain To Live In And Lead With Sincere Love…In All Of Our Dealings; In Our Individual Lives And In All The World Around Us! And With Constant Acknowledgment And Attention Given To The Presence Of The Living God Within Us – Our “Mighty I AM Presence” – We Will Find Quickly That Living In And Leading With Love – Sincere Love Being Our Divine Nature – Is Effortless Action; And The Most Powerful Weapon – God Given! Yes, Love Is Our Victory Over Hate, War, And Destruction…Or Whatever May Come In This World; Still, Though, It Will Require More Love Radiation Emanating From The Hearts And Minds Of Mankind…To Defeat The Present Darkness That Surrounds Us! Amen…

Give Thanks And Praises For Love And Life…

And Y’all Be Love…

“The question as to the nature of evil is by far the most important problem for philosophical, religious, and moral consideration. The intrinsic presence of suffering is the most obvious feature that determines the character of existence throughout but gives at the same time origin to the most important blessings that make life worth living. It is pain that sets thoughts to thinking; a state of undisturbed happiness would make reflection, inquiry, and invention redundant. It is death which begets the aspiration of preserving oneself beyond the grave. Without death there would be no religion. And it is sin that imparts worth to virtue. If there were no going astray, there would be no seeking for the right path; there would be no merit in goodness. Blame and praise would have no meaning. In this absence of want, imperfection, and all kinds of ill, there would be no ideals, no progress, no evolution to higher goals.

Mythology being always a popular metaphysics, it is a matter of course that the idea of evil has been personified among all nations. There is no religion in the world but has its demons or evil monsters who represent pain, misery, and destruction. In Egypt the powers of darkness were feared and worshipped under various names as Set or Seth, Bess, Typhon, etc. Though the ancient Gods of Brahmanism are not fully differentiated into evil and good deities, we have yet the victory of Mahâmâya, the great goddess, over Mahisha, the king of the giants. Buddhists call the personification of evil Mâra, the tempter, the father of lust and sin, and the bringer of death. Chaldean sages personify the chaos that was in the beginning, in Tiamat, the monster of the deep. The Persians call him Angra Mainyu or Ahriman, the demon of darkness and of mischief, the Jews call him Satan the fiend, the early Christians, Devil (διάβολος), i. e., slanderer, because, as in the story of Job, he accuses man, and his accusations are false. The old Teutons and Norsemen called him Loki. The Middle Ages are full of devils, and demonologies of the Japanese and Chinese are perhaps more extensive than our own.

The evolution of the idea of evil as a personification is one of the most fascinating chapters in history, and the changes which characterize the successive phases are instructive. While the old Pagan views survive in both Hebrew and Christian demonologies, we are constantly confronted with accretions and new interpretations. Franz Xaver Kraus, in his History of Christian Art concedes that our present conception of the demons of evil is radically different from that of the early Christians.

He says: “The popular conceptions of the early Christians concerning devils are essentially different from those of the present time. The serpent or the dragon as a picture of the Devil appears not only in the Old Testament, Genesis 3:1, but also in Babylonian literature, in the Revelation of St. John 12:9, and in the Acts of the Martyrs. We read in the Vision of Perpetua: “Under the scales themselves, i.e., for weighing the souls, the dragon lies, of wonderful magnitude.'”

The intellectual life of mankind develops by gradual growth. The old views are, as a rule, preserved but transformed. There is nowhere an absolutely new start. Either the main idea is preserved, and details are changed, or vice versa, the main idea is objected to while the details remain the same. Gunkel has proved that the splendid description of Leviathan, in Job xli, as a monster of the deep protected by scales is a reproduction of Chaldean mythology, and God’s fight with the monsters of the deep is a repetition of Bel Merodach’s conquest of Tiamat. Changes of a radical nature take place in the religious conceptions of mankind, yet the historical connection is preserved.

The conception of evil in its successive personifications would be humorous if most of its pages, especially those on witch-prosecution, were not at the same time very sad. But for that reason, we must recognize the prestige of the Devil. The pedigree of the Evil One is older than the oldest European aristocracy and royal families; it antedates the Bible and is more ancient than the Pyramids.”

History of the Devil, by Paul Carus, 1900

The First Noel – Quincas Moreira