The very word "Satan" is more interrogative than affirmative. The situation with "Satanism" is even more complicated. This term appeared only in the 18th century. The implication is that Satanism is the conscious worship of Satan. But which Satan?
Etymology
A small etymological digression. The Hebrew word Satan means "obstacle." Devil (diabolon) - a word of Greek origin, means "separating". There is another interesting word associated with the figure of Satan - demon (daimon). It is also Greek, the Russian word spirit is closest to it in meaning. The ancient Greeks believed that there are cacademons - evil spirits and agathademons - good spirits.
The demon is that intermediate subject-object reality that sits between the strict individualized figure (characteristic of religion) and a natural phenomenon. Initially, demons were called this intermediate layer, which permeates all reality, giving it a vital, forceful, energetic impulse.
With the advent of Christianity, all demons were written down as negative, since the beliefs of the ancient Greeks just preceded the Christian tradition. The Greeks themselves treated the ancient pre-Ahean chthonic gods in a similar way, sending them into underground spaces, depriving them of light and royal dignity.
I wonder how this issue was resolved in the Slavic language. Here the word angel is almost identical in meaning to the Greek word demon. Only angels (with the preservation of the nasal n) are positive, and the aggels (without n) are fallen, bad, i.e. devils. The Greek word is written with two scales, and, according to the laws of Greek grammar, the nasal n is always added to it.
If an ignoramus read this word, not knowing that two scales would necessarily be nasalized, then it would have turned out "aggel". Dark spirits are light spirits read by a blockhead. This conclusion suggests itself from our brief linguistic excursion.
Promotional video:
Another name associated with Satan is the day. It simply means "morning star" (in Latin, Lucifer, Lucifer - "luminiferous"). Perhaps Satan was likened to a stallion because he fell, or because the morning star (Venus) has a dual character - it appears both in the evening and in the afternoon.
In the holistic ensemble, the spirit of the morning star was seen as a neutral character. Within the framework of religion (say, in Christianity), a positive attitude towards the morning star is also possible. For example, the Apocalypse says: "To him who overcomes I will give the morning star."
The Russian words devil and devil are also not as simple as they seem. It is interesting that the popular belief distinguishes between foreign and self-righteousness. Outlandishness is not just the presence of demons, it is the presence of demons from a different cultural space.
It is quite another thing to be self-infuriated (when harassed by their own internal enemies). One priest told me that it used to be customary to embroider a little devil on a shirt in order to tame his own devil and, with his help, more dexterously cope with other people's demons.
The precedence problem
Satan is often called "the first of creation." In Judaism, Satan is an angel who was created before all other incorporeal beings. Therefore, by the way, Dante has hell - the most ancient of creations.
It can be assumed that Satan was the first (long before Isaac Luria) to guess about the drama, catastrophic nature of creation and, apparently, somehow inadequately reacted to this. He was probably the first to recognize the whole abyss of risk and ambiguity in the very act of creation, and therefore he is, as it were, a paradigm of all negative elements, from a religious point of view.
Later, it is the question of the dual choice that the Edenic serpent poses before Adam and Eve. Satan precedes all other figures in sacred history. In the Kabbalah, by the way, it is said that Satan was once Hecatriel, "the angel of the Crown", the highest of the 10 Sephiroth.
Islam also emphasizes the precedence of Satan (Iblis): he was created first and on this basis refused to worship Adam. He said proudly: “I am of fire, and this man, Adam, is of clay; I am the first, and this one was created much later. This refusal of the previous to reconcile with the subsequent and served as the reason for the fall of Iblis.
The brightest figure in the Hindu tradition, most of all reminiscent of Satan, is Shiva. This is a classic destructive god, a god who patronizes swamps, cemeteries, crows, corpses, orgies, drunkenness, violation of all sorts of prohibitions, devouring some disgusting substances, spending the night in forbidden places. If such a character appeared within the framework of religion, he would certainly be branded a monstrous shame. It would not seem enough.
Ultimately, Shiva is a much more violent and fearsome creature than our "weak" Satan. Shiva doesn't just harm. He appears in Hinduism as one of the very high principles, one of the faces of the Absolute.
Consonance of s and t
Guénon has a mysterious passage where he claims that Satan and Lucifer are not the same, however, he does not explain in more detail what he means. I do not undertake to complete this work for him (I tried to state something about this in the "Metaphysics of the Good News").
Elsewhere, Guénon writes about the original combination of the sounds s and t. In the word Satan, both of these sounds meet. Guénon writes that the root st is an expression of the highest being, good, beginning, light. Hence the Russian is also the Hindu sat - being. At the same time, Guenon notes that the Egyptian god of darkness Set (analogue of "our" Satan) has the same root. This is a vivid illustration of the interpenetration of positive and negative elements in the area of higher principles.
Every sacred structure has a shadow side. Guenon speaks of the demon of the sun (Sorat) with the number 666 (according to Gematria, the name Hecatriel has the same number). In another text specifically devoted to the root set, Guénon argues that set (that is, Satan) is the shadow side of the higher Principle. Therefore, it precedes everything else. That is why he is such a serious and controversial figure. This is not some trivial deviation, its source and its being belongs to the highest ontological instances.
Another interesting point: the root sat has a distinctly "sunset" character, but sunset implies the previous standing of the sun at its zenith, and even earlier sunrise. Let's pay attention to the Greek word soter - savior. The same combination of s and t as Satan, however, the semantic load is absolutely positive. Soter the Savior descends from heaven to earth in order to give revelation, to give sunshine to Tradition, to save the lower.
Gnosticism deserves a separate discussion, which occupies an intermediate position between the language of Tradition and the language of religion (closer to religion, since the gnostic concept affirms the dualism of the creationist type, although, at the same time, the Gnostic doctrines are more ontological, closer to the tradition of the holistic type).
First appearing in Iran (where Mazdaism, a tradition of a pronounced dualistic type) was widespread, Gnostic doctrines had a serious impact on the entire Abrahamic tradition. Later, radical Gnostic sects appeared: Manicheans, Albigensians, Bogomils and many others. Among the Gnostics we meet a rather specific Satan - Satan-demiurge of the lower world. Gnostics regard the entire lower world as the domain of Satan, opposed to the upper world. Between them is an irreconcilable enmity. This is more ontological than Satan's religious concept.
The Gnostic (in a Christian context) etymology of the word Satan is interesting: according to the Gnostics, Sataniel once existed, that is, "Satan of God." The word il- means "God", hence Michael - "like God", Raphael - "Healer of God", etc. So, the first angel Sataniel did a bad deed: he decided to usurp power, humiliated Adam, etc. As a result of these "outrages", he lost a particle of sludge and ceased to be "God's".
There is a division: the holistic Satan is moving towards the religious Satan. This, of course, is not yet a religious Satan, but it is no longer holistic either. Thus, we get the third, Gnostic, Satan-demiurge. West Now a few words about "Satanism" and the inadequacy of this concept. The term Satanism is complex and vague. The very word satan (as we just found out) is more interrogative than affirmative. The situation with "Satanism" is even more complicated.
This term arose only in the 18th century (that is, very late), in the West, for the encyclopedic codification of everything that did not correspond to the official Catholic religious model. The implication is that Satanism is the conscious worship of Satan. But which Satan?
The religious concept of Satan expands the scope of this concept so significantly that, in fact, anyone who does not profess strict Catholicism (Protestantism) could be called a Satanist: atheists, pagans, mystics, representatives of other Christian denominations, gentiles, and ultimately, any suspicious person …
Thus, the idea of Satanism that has formed in the West is a very crude approximation created by Catholic and Protestant clerical leaders in order to justify their socio-cultural failures, to blame the responsibility for them on some "virtual conspiracy of Satanists." As the tendencies towards secularization intensified, Catholics had to find a formula corresponding to their way of thinking to explain the whole process. In the role of the scapegoat were "virtual Satanists".
These "virtual Satanists" supposedly dashingly dance at Sabbaths, conjure, indulge in perversions - in general, they strive in every way to harm the Vatican or Protestant religious and commercial enterprises. Sometimes the game was picked up by nonconformists and embodied with their defiant behavior panic phobias of Catholics and Protestants, who are rapidly losing social functions.
Europe
The Orthodox tradition did not use the term Satanism either in the normal period (before the split) or later. This concept has no (even the most approximate) analogue here. People who pronounce the word "Satanism" in an Orthodox context are no more than imitators of the late Western European Catholic-Protestant views.
And appeals to Barruel, Shmakov or Regimbal to expose Satanism (for example, in modern rock music) are a sign of simple mental laziness. Satanists in the European context are a collection of shocking trends (spiritual, aesthetic, etc.) that do not accept puritanical, sanctimonious, profane moral norms of Western society based on the secularization of the Western version of the Christian religion.
We can say that these are nonconformists who refuse to recognize a pseudo-Christian surrogate, from puritanical hypocrisy, from post-Christian soft core of humanism. This is a rather colorful community, capable of some shocking theatrical performances. Protestant pastors and Catholic curés are raising an incredible fuss about them …
Religious context
Satan in a religious context is the personification of pure negation, the "absolute enemy." Anything that is an internal and external enemy in relation to this particular religious scheme is Satan, or at least is under his sign.
Accordingly, other religions in relation to this are under the auspices of Satan, as well as internal deviations from the given rational and ethical rules. If we go further, we will come to a pure convention - the ontology of Satan will gradually simply lose its meaning.
If a consistent Christian calls all Muslims, all Hindus, all Jews “Satan” (or “servants of Satan”), then the concept of Satan is emasculated, and there is no longer any Satan, it becomes an abstraction.
For any reason, you can say: "the devil pulled me" or "the demon beguiled." It is clear that in such a vulgar model such a serious figure dissolves and becomes just an empty sound.
Excerpt from a lecture by the philosopher Alexander Dugin. New University. (1998)
