“The great dissimilarity which exists between the various conceptions of the Devil is really often ludicrous. While bigots will invariably endow him with horns, tail, and every conceivable repulsive feature, even including an offensive human smell, Milton, Byron, Goethe, Lermontoff, and a host of French novelists have sung his praise in flowing verse and thrilling prose. Milton’s Satan, and even Goethe’s Mephistopheles, are certainly far more commanding figures than some of the angels, as represented in the prose of ecstatic bigots. We have but to compare two descriptions.
Let us first award the floor to the incomparably sensational des Mousseaux. He gives us a thrilling account of an incubus, in the words of the penitent herself: “Once”, she tells us, “During the space of a whole half-hour, she saw distinctly near her an individual with a black, dreadful, horrid body, and whose hands, of an enormous size, exhibited clawed fingers strangely hooked. The senses of sight, feeling, and smell were confirmed by that of hearing!!” And yet, for the space of several years, the damsel suffered herself to be led astray by such a hero. How far above this odoriferous gallant is the majestic figure of the Miltonic Satan!
Let the reader then fancy, if he can, this superb chimera, this ideal of the rebellious angel become incarnate Pride, crawling into the skin of the most disgusting of all animals! Notwithstanding that the Christian catechism teaches us that Satan in propria persona tempted our first mother, Eve, in a real paradise, and that in the shape of a serpent, which of all animals was the most insinuating and fascinating! God orders him, as a punishment, to crawl eternally on his belly, and bite the dust. “A sentence”, remarks Levi, “which resembles in nothing the traditional flames of hell.”
The more so, that the real zoological serpent, which was created before Adam and Eve, crawled on his belly, and bit the dust likewise, before there was any original sin. Apart from this, was not Ophion the Daimon, or Devil, like God called Dominus? The word God (deity) is derived from the Sanscrit word Deva, and Devil from the Persian daeva, which words are substantially alike. Hercules, son of Jove and Alcmena, one of the highest sun-gods and also Logos manifested, is nevertheless represented under a double nature, as all others.
The Agathodaemon, the beneficent daemon, the same which we find later among the Ophites under the appellation of the Logos, or divine wisdom, was represented by a serpent standing erect on a pole, in the Bacchanalian Mysteries. The hawk-headed serpent is among the oldest of the Egyptian emblems, and represents the divine mind, says Deane. Azazel is Moloch and Samael, says Movers, and we find Aaron, the brother of the great law-giver Moses, making equal sacrifices to Jehovah and Azazel. “And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord (Ihoh in the original), and one lot for the scapegoat”, (Azazel).”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 