"Satan" and "Devil"

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Surprisingly to most, the "satan" (originally a common noun, not a name) is mentioned only three times in the totality of the Hebrew Scriptures, and is not a major component of the Greek Christian Scriptures either. "Lucifer" is not mentioned at all-- not a single time-- in all the Christian Scriptures.

Jesus and all other mystics recognized that the "devil" is fear. The principle of the antipolarity of Love (God) and fear (devil) is stated clearly in First John 4:18: "Love and fear cannot coexist. Where Love is complete, fear is cast outside."

It follows logically that the conceptual "opposite" of God (God has no real opposite) is the "devil," and so, it is the opposite of Love-- fear.

The "satan" has played a part in Christianity after its primitive period (the first century) because people are more easily entrained in the fearself than in the Love-Self. All this interest in the "satan" arose because the official Church became negative instead of positive. Superstitions arising from belief in a "satan" led to the terrible nightmarish tortures of the Inquisition and the "witch-hunts," which were a shame to any half-civilized person.

Descriptions of them are so horrendous that I will spare your sensitive soul by not describing the ghastly tortures, but they were inhuman and beastly. All these gratuitous acts of sickening violence were the result of a superstitious belief in a personal "devil."

Since we follow the principle, "By their fruits you shall know them,"and since the fruits of a belief in this personal devil have been unadulteratedly abysmal and "demonic," we mystics refuse to buy into the ignorant superstition that there is a real "person" who is the real opposite of God.

Every being, even the worst, has some "God" or "Love" deep within, waiting to be awakened and "fanned" from an ember into a warm flame. Still, somewhere in the cosmos is the very worst, most ignorant, being ever. If you want to call it "the devil," or "satan," that is fine.

Mystics are realists, and we realize that this is a fact. But we do not believe in the fairy-tale that some "angel" rebelled against God, out of pride, and became the "satan." This is a very old Jewish fable, but is not Biblical. This is a good parable, warning against pride, but we do not believe that it represents historical fact.
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