A Short History of the Devil

               by Priest Neil Mohammed, First Church of Satan

Horned gods were worshipped in Europe and the rest of the world from the
dawn of humanity. They were always part of a pagan belief system, a
polytheistic belief system, which accepted many gods. Tribal pagan belief
systems still in existence share this characteristic: the tribes worship
their tribal gods, and other gods mentioned by strangers are not evil, or
non-existant, they are simply not their gods.

There were many ancient monotheistic religions such as Judaism, but again
these were tribal religions, which had no urge to prosyletise, to "spread
the word". Jehova was the god of the Jews, and they felt no need to
persuade other tribes to worship him as well. Christianity changed all
that. It felt an overpowering need to make their one god the god of
everybody else within range, and so they invented the missionary. But to do
this it was necessary to discredit the old pagan gods, and in particular
the goddess and the horned god.

Pagan pantheons never include gods of evil. Pagan gods are aspects of
Nature, and in Nature there can be no evil; it exists only in the human
imagination. They frequently include trickster gods, such as Loki, and gods
can have a reputation for being unwise to be involved with, but not actual
evil. Monotheistic religions, on the other hand, require a god of evil as
an adversary of their god of good. Otherwise, why would you need Him? An
obvious way to discredit the horned god and justify punishment of his
worshippers is to say that he is, in fact, the god of evil in the new
religion. And has been all along.

This did not happen all at once. For centuries Christianity existed
alongside much older pagan beliefs all across Europe, and adapted to the
people there and accomodated their beliefs as far as possible. The Celtic
Christian Church in Dark Age Ireland is a typical example. Then in AD 1248
Pope Innocent IV decided that it was time to suppress all heresy and for
that purpose he founded The Holy Office, or as it later became better
known, The Inquisition. It really took off in the fifteenth century
(especially in Spain), and began rooting out all and any lingering traces
of pagan belief.

Being an organization run entirely by men it took an instant dislike to the
old wise women living around every country village, passing on ancient
pagan folklore to the new generation and selling folk medicine and magic
charms. The priests declared that these women were worshippers of the
devil, and must be burned. During the process of extracting imaginative
confessions from their bewildered captives a brand new folk myth was
gradually born, as the inquisitors continually outdid one another in
imagining new horrors of depravity in the worship of Lucifer, and under
torture their prisoners confessed to it all. Christianity created its own
reflection, and called it Satanism.

In order to improve the consistency of the confessions, and thereby create
the evidence for this imaginary foul creed, a special manual was required,
detailing the exact acts of which the "witches" stood accused, and would
therefore confess to. It also described in excruciating detail exactly how
to extract such confessions. This "Witch Hunting: How To Do It" guide was
published in 1486, written by two monks, Heinrich Kramer and James
Sprenger. It was called The Malleus Maleficarum, or "Hammer of the
Witches".

This was the origin of Satanism, as most people understand it. Before this
there had been only the Luciferians (a real heresy), who practised
Christianity in most important respects but with one exception: having read
the fine print in the early Coptic texts from which the common Christian
bible is derived. They had noticed that the actual creation of this world
was credited to Lucifer, an angel working for Jehova. So they offered up
their prayers to Lucifer as "the real master of this world". They did not
sacrifice babies, callup demons or do anything else distasteful. They just
saw a different name on the title deeds. Satanism had never existed before
The Malleus Maleficarum, but now anyone with an urge to kick against the
heels of the ultimate father figure had the definitive guide to work from.
Two devout Christian monks created Satanism.

Demons

It is apparent that horny forest spirits were a part of countryside
folklore as late as the 18th century and only a hundred years after the
heyday of The Inquisition. Shakespeare was writing about them in his plays.
These Pan-like creatures, known as Pucks or Robin Goodfellow, had the
appearance of satyrs and the habit of copulating with human women. In an
early confession these harmless creatures must have been mentioned and the
inquisitors seized upon it, and then used it again and again. Until now the
villagers worshipping in church on Sunday and practising simple folk magic
the rest of the week had thought nothing of it, but now Robin Goodfellow
was given a new name: The Devil, and became irredeemably evil. Before this
the devil had no clear shape: after the fifteenth century he had cloven
hooves, goat legs, a tail, horns and a sex-drive. Wings were added because
he was supposed to be a fallen angel. None of this is to be found anywhere
in the scriptures.