Blessed Night, Loves 😊

I Pray All Is Well With Everyone…And Your Hearts And Minds Are Full Of Love, Joy, And Compassion…For All Your Brothers And Sisters In Spirit. And Wherever There Is Sincere Love In Action…There Is The Absence Of Hate; And Of Course…Wherever There Is Hate in Action…There Too, Is The Absence Of Sincere Love! But Since We All Emanate From Love And Light…The Origin And Essence Of Our Being – And That’s REAL; It Doesn’t Take Much For Any Of Us – To Radiate And Be – The Sincere Love Necessary…No Matter The Circumstances Or Conditions; When We Stay Connected To And Harmonized With The Presence Of Living Love Existing Within Us; The Spirit Of The One Living God; Our Very Own…”Mighty I AM Presence”! Amen…

Give Thanks And Praises For Love And Life…

And Y’all Be Love…

Always Do Your Own Research…

“The evolution of the conception of evil is by no means an unimportant chapter in the history of religion, for the idea a man has of Satan is characteristic of his mental and moral nature. While the Bible declares that man is made in the image of God, anthropologists say that men make their gods after their own image; and the truth is that every God-conception is characteristic of the man who holds it. It has been said: I will tell you who you are when you tell me what your conception of God is. But the same observation holds good as to the conception of the Devil, and we might as well say, “I will tell you who you are when you tell me what your conception of the Devil is.”

There is a similarity between our conceptions of good and evil which cannot be accidental, for it is natural that all our thoughts should possess a certain family likeness. Your idea of the Devil is your best interpretation of your idea of God. It will be interesting to compare one of the most famous representations of God, holding the universe in his hands with the pictures of Mara, the Buddhist Satan with the world-wheel in his clutches. This similarity can be proved from history.

The Trinity conception of Satan is as old as the Trinity conception of God. As we have Trinities among the Pagan deities, for instance among the Greeks, the three-headed Hecuba; so we have three-headed monsters as for instance, the three-headed Cerberus; and in the history of Christian art a similar parallelism obtains between God-representations arid Devil-representations. The idea of representing the divine trinity as a person having three faces may have originated in a modification of the two-headed Janus. Professor Kraus says, concerning the trinitarian demons of Christianity:

“The diabolical dragon is described as a three-headed monster (probably in recollection of Cerberus) in the Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, and in the Good Friday Sermon of Eusebius of Alexandria, who addresses the Devil ‘Three-headed Beelzebul’. The idea of the Demon as a serpent with the head of a woman appears not earlier than the Middle Ages, in Bede, from whom it is quoted by Vincent de Beauvais.”  …As according to Christian doctrine, God is actualized in the Godman, so Satan in his turn is represented as the Antichrist and is pictured as a human caricature, full of ugliness and wickedness.

…Evil personified appears at first sight repulsive. But the more we study the personality of the Devil, the more fascinating it becomes. In the beginning of existence, the Evil One is the embodiment of everything unpleasant, then of everything bad, evil, and immoral. He is hatred, destruction, and annihilation incarnate, and as such he is the adversary of existence, of the Creator, of God. The Devil is the rebel of the cosmos, the independent in the empire of a tyrant, the opposition to uniformity, the dissonance in universal harmony, the exception to the rule, the particular in the universal, the unforeseen chance that breaks the law; he is the individualizing tendency, the craving for originality, which bodily upsets the ordinances of God that enforce a definite kind of conduct; he overturns the monotony that would permeate the cosmic spheres if every atom in unconscious righteousness and with pious obedience slavishly followed a generally prescribed course.

The ingenuous question, “Why does not God kill the Devil?”, is comical enough, because we feel instinctively that it is impossible. I know of a good old lady who prayed daily with great fervor and piety that God might have mercy on the Devil and save him. Think of it closely, and this attitude is touching! How many great theologians have seriously discussed the problem whether the Devil could be saved. Like that good old lady, they were so engrossed in the literal belief of their mythology that they did not see that the problem implied a contradiction. For God and Devil are relative terms, and God would cease to be God if there were no Devil.

The universe is such that the evolution of a higher life is possible only through great strain. The evolution of the warm glow of a soul out of the cold clay of the earth, of moral aspirations out of the fierce hatred that animates the struggle for existence, of intelligence, thought and foresight out of the brute indifference of that unthinking something which we call matter in motion, is due to extraordinary exertions; it is the product of work performed by the expenditure of enormous energy, and constant efforts are required merely to preserve the treasures already won. Difficulties to be overcome are called in the terminology of mechanics “the power of resistance”, and this power of resistance is, closely considered, an essential and even a beneficial factor in the constitution of the universe.

If there were no power of resistance, if no efforts were needed to reach any end desired, if the world were pleasure and goodness throughout, we should have no evolution, no progress, no ideals; for all spheres of existence would float in one universal ocean of bliss, and all things would be intoxicated with heavenly delight. …There would be no need of making any effort, no need of struggling against evils, no need of virtue, no need of working out our salvation. There would be no badness, but there would be no goodness, either. All existence would be soaked with moral indifference. Good is good only because there is evil, and God is God because there is a Devil.

Now, let us look at the mythical figure of Satan as represented in theology, folklore, and poetry. Is he not really a most interesting man? Indeed, in spite of being a representative of all kinds of crimes, he possesses many redeeming features so as to be great and noble. According to the account in the second chapter of Genesis, Satan is the father of science, for he induced Eve to make Adam taste of the fruit of knowledge, and the Ophites, a gnostic sect, worshipped the serpent for that reason. Satan produces the unrest in society, which, in spite of many inconveniences, makes the world move onward and forward; he is the patron of progress, investigation, and invention.

Giordano Bruno, Galileo, and other men of science were regarded as his offspring and persecuted on his account by the Church. And when we glance over the records of the Devil-contracts, we learn to have respect for the old gentleman. Milton’s Satan is a grand character, a noble-souled rebel, who would rather undergo an eternity of torture than suffer humiliation.

Consider but the fact that, taking the statement of his adversaries alone, the Devil is the most trustworthy person in existence. He has been cheated by innumerable sinners, saints, angels, and (according to various old Church legends) even by the good Lord himself; and yet he has never been found wanting in the literal and punctilious fulfilment of all his promises; and all the bad experiences he has had in the course of millenniums have not in the least lowered his character. His mere word is honored as the holiest oath, or as the best signature verified with seals and legal witnesses. The instances are rare in which it is known that persons with whom he has had business transactions have requested him to sign a contract, to give a pledge, or to show any proof that he would honestly abide by his word; his honesty was never doubted by anybody. And mind you, it is not the Devil who boasts of his integrity, but this is the conclusion at which we arrive from the evidences adduced by his enemies.

Our sympathy for this martyr of honest conduct, the dupe of God and man, grows when we consider our own nature and relation to his Satanic majesty. With our hands upon our hearts, must we not confess that every one of us, in spite of man’s boastful claim of a likeness to God, has some trait or other that makes him kin to the Devil? I do not mean here to make reference to actual sin or grievous transgressions, but to things of which we scarcely think of repenting. Did we never in an hour of humor laugh at our neighbor? Did we never joke at the cost of somebody else? Did we never bulldoze, tease, or tantalize our very best friends? Did we never enjoy the awkward situation in which some poor innocent had been caught? And why should we not? If we took away from life its satire, jokes, and other “deviltries”, it would lose part of its most fragrant zest, and if we constructed a man consisting of virtues only, would not that fellow be the most unbearable bore in the world, wearisome beyond description? For it is a sprinkling of petty vices that makes even a great man human. A mere ethical machine would neither be attractive nor arouse our sympathies.

The Devil is the father of all misunderstood geniuses. It is he who induces us to try new paths; he begets originality of thought and deed. He tempts us to venture out boldly into unknown seas for the discovery of new ways to the wealth of distant Indias. He makes us dream of, and hope for, more prosperity and greater happiness. He is the spirit of discontent that embitters our hearts, but in the end often leads to a better arrangement of affairs. In truth, he is a very useful servant of the Almighty, and all the heinous features of his character disappear when we consider the fact that he is necessary in the economy of nature, as a wholesome stimulant to action and as the power of resistance that evokes the noblest efforts of living beings.

God, being the All in All, regarded as the ultimate authority for conduct, is neither evil itself nor goodness itself; but, nevertheless, he is in the good, and he is in the evil. He encompasses good and evil. God is in the growth and in the decay; he reveals himself in life, and he reveals himself in death. He will be found in the storm; he will be found in the calm. He lives in good aspirations and in the bliss resting upon moral endeavors; but he lives also in the visitations that follow evil actions. It is his voice that speaks in the guilty conscience, and he, too, is in the curse of sin, and in this sense, he is present even in the evil itself. Even evil, temptation, and sin elicit the good, they teach man.

He who has eyes to see, ears to hear, and a mind to perceive, will read a lesson out of the very existence of evil, a lesson which, in spite of the terrors it inspires, is certainly not less impressive, nor less divine, than the sublimity of a holy life; and thus it becomes apparent that the existence of Satan is part and parcel of the divine dispensation. Indeed, we must grant that the Devil is the most indispensable and faithful helpmate of God. To speak mystically, even the existence of the Devil, is filled with the presence of God.”

History of the Devil, by Paul Carus, 1900

Walking in the Sky – Nico Staf