THE DEVIL

Anthony North

The Devil may seem an archaic symbol of evil, but he is supposed to be alive in the world to this day with his Satanic conspiracies. From the 1960s onwards, one expression of him was the Church of Satan, set up in San Francisco by occultist, Anton La Vey.

Said to have perverted many a star, his ceremonies involved a naked woman as an altar and his philosophy was based on unbridled hedonism. The death of Jane Mansfield was even put down, by some, to their rituals.

WHO IS HE?

The name, the Devil comes from the Greek ‘diabolos’, meaning slanderer. A fallen angel, in the 1970s we had his image of evil implanted with the film, The Exorcist. By the 1980s we were more sceptical and he appeared humourously in the Witches of Eastwick

He is first mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls as one of the sons of darkness, but in the Bible he is simply seen as temptation, his home - the future Hell - just a place of sleep.

This was no good for frightening superstitious people into obedience, so the image of the Devil became a conspiratorial perversion of the ancient Greek god, Pan, a nature deity. With the Roman poet Virgil devising Purgatory - a place where the dead lingered - and Dante’s Medieval vision of Hell as a place of eternal torment in the Divine Comedy, the Devil was becoming imprinted on our mind.

Yet as with the future ‘devil-like’ Pan, our notion of Hell is more akin to the Greek Hades, an underworld for bad Titans such as Sisyphus and Tantalus, the former condemned to roll a rock up a hill forever, the latter never quite reaching the water and food in front of him.

SATANISM

The Devil is thought to gain influence in the Black Mass, a perversion of Christian ceremony. But in reality, the mass was a creation of Catholic priests, attempting to use dark powers to better their life. In the 7th century, priests from Toledo used the Black Mass to name people they wanted dead.
In the 16th century, priests in Cambrai used it to try to kill their bishop. In the mass of Saint Secaire, Christian objects were baptised in order to produce a curse. But perhaps the French Church of Carmel, set up in 1839 by Eugene Vintras, can offer insights into these practices.
Vintras wore an inverted crucifix, used consecrated bread soaked in blood, and a fat pigeon to represent the Holy Spirit. Using nudity and masturbation, he had a ceremony known as the sacrifice of Mary.

Such practices tell us that Satanism can be a simple excuse for debauchery and crime. Indeed, in England, the Medmenham Monks and Hellfire Club set up by Sir Francis Dashwood in the 18th century, used mock occult ritual as a starter to debauched orgies.

Satanism thus appears to be a dark side of human nature, rather than supernatural influence although many Satanists today proclaim none of this. Indeed, they argue Satanism is a valid religion, if grounded in individualism.

But to conspiriologists, a real Satan was at work in the 20th century, his main agent being one Adolf Hitler. And to them, the evidence is appealing.

ADOLF HITLER

In 1909, Hitler was influenced by eccentric ex-monk, Jorg Lanz von Leibenfels, who mixed the occult with the race mysticism of the Teutonic Knights at his castle on the Danube. Later, he joined Dietrich Eckhardt’s Thule Society, which believed the Aryan race was supreme and came from an Atlantis-style mystical land.

As Nazism got underway, Heinrich Himmler’s SS headquarters was in a castle in Westphalia, filled with occult imagery. The swastika itself is an ancient mystical symbol found throughout the world. It is actually a sign of peace, emanating the sun - a good symbol perverted forever by Hitler.

Rumours that Hitler had only one testicle are believed to go back to an occult initiation ceremony that went wrong, and his love of mystical objects caused archaeological teams to scour the world for them so Hitler could enhance their power.

Typical was the Holy Lance, supposedly used to pierce Christ’s side on the Cross. Charlemange was said to carry it in battle, and later, Frederick Barbarossa brought it to the Hapsburg dynasty. Kept in Vienna, Hitler placed it in a Nuremberg vault. On 30 April 1945, US Lt Wllliam Horn entered the vault and grabbed the Lance. Hitler committed suicide the same day.

SATANIC CHILD ABUSE

Satanic conspiracies arose again in the 1980s in the Satanic Child Abuse fiasco, where social workers infected by Christian fundamentalists snatched children from their families, based on spurious accusations of ritualised abuse.

Clearly, some paedophile rings use occult imagery to gain obedience from children, but these are paedophiles, not occultists. As to the evidence of real abuse in these cases, one child was forced to eat cats and dogs. They were pasta shapes in tomato sauce.

Devil music was played to one child. The latest single by Kylie Minogue. Demons who manifested in cloaks to another child turned out to be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. As for the child who told of being forced to drink blood, his mother was old fashioned and used the blood from the Sunday joint to flavour gravy.

SATAN ROCKS

Conspiriologists - particularly Christian Fundamentalists - continue to invoke the Devil whenever they can in order to frighten people back to the pews. Rock music perverts the young towards sex and drugs. From Elvis Presley to Black Sabbath, the Devil is alive and well, often with Satanic messages on records if played backwards.

Thus, Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven reveals the message, ‘I worship Satan.’ Such devil-mongering reached new heights in the UPC barcode, who’s section barriers are similar to the line for ‘6’. There are three in each barcode. Hence, capitalist merchandise contains the number ‘666’, the biblical sign of the Beast.

Thus we have the conspiracies of the Devil, forever with us, forever attempting to pervert us to Darth Vader’s dark side. And indeed, a conspiracy no doubt is going on. But it is a conspiracy of plain old self-interest, tinged with more than a small dose of human gullibility.