“And now that we have shown this identity between Michael and Satan, and the Saviours and Dragons of other people, what can be more clear than that all these philosophical fables originated in India, that universal hot bed of metaphysical mysticism? “The world”, says Ramatsariar, in his comments upon the Vedas, “commenced with a contest between the Spirit of Good and the Spirit of Evil, and so must end. After the destruction of matter, evil can no longer exist, it must return to naught.”
In the Apologia, Tertullian falsifies most palpably every doctrine and belief of the Pagans as to the oracles and gods. He calls them, indifferently, demons and devils, accusing the latter of taking possession of even the birds of the air! What Christian would now dare doubt such an authority? Did not the Psalmist exclaim: “All the gods of the nations are idols”; and the Angel of the School, Thomas Aquinas, explains, on his own kabalistic authority, the word idols by devils? “They come to men”, he says, “and offer themselves to their adoration by operating certain things which seem miraculous.”
The Fathers were prudent as they were wise, in their inventions. To be impartial, after having created a Devil, they set to creating apocryphal saints. We have named several in preceding chapters; but we must not forget Baronius, who having read in a work of Chrysostom about the holy Xenoris, the word meaning a pair, a couple, mistook it for the name of a saint, and proceeded forthwith to create of it a martyr of Antioch, and went on to give a most detailed and authentic biography of the “blessed martyr”. Other theologians made of Apollyon, or rather Apolouon, the anti-Christ. Apolouon is Plato’s “washer”, the god who purifies, who washes off, and releases us from sin, but he was thus transformed into him, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon”, Devil!
Max Muller says that the serpent in Paradise is a conception which might have sprung up among the Jews, and “seems hardly to invite comparison with the much grander conceptions of the terrible power of Vritra and Ahriman in the Veda and Avesta.” With the kabalists the Devil was always a myth, God or good reversed. That modern Magus, Eliphas Levi, calls the Devil L’ivresse astrale. It is a blind force like electricity, he says; and, speaking allegorically, as he always did, Jesus remarked that he, “beheld Satan like lightning fall from Heaven.”
The clergy insist that God has sent the Devil to tempt mankind, which would be rather a singular way of showing his boundless love to humanity! If the Supreme One is really guilty of such unfatherly treachery, he is worthy, certainly, of the adoration only of a Church capable of singing the Te Deum over a massacre of St. Bartholomew, and of blessing Mussulman swords drawn to slaughter Greek Christians! This is at once sound logic and good sound law, for is it not a maxim of jurisprudence, “Qui facit per alium, facit per se”?” (“He who works through another, works through himself?”)
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 