|
THE |
|
a cache of usenet and other text files pertaining
to occult, mystical, and spiritual subjects. |
|
|
THE |
|
a cache of usenet and other text files pertaining
to occult, mystical, and spiritual subjects. |
[from http://www.satanism.net/iss/tos/literary.html ]
Subject: A Brief Essay on Literary Satanism
by Don Webb
"I knew him .. His great heart was big with all the virtues
born of pride; frankness, courage, constancy in trial,
indomitable hope. Long, long ago ere time was, in the boreal
sky where gleam the seven magnetic stars, he dwelt in a place
of diamond and gold . . . ."
Anatole France from The Revolt of the Angels
Satan has always had a great literary following. From Twain to
Nabokov, Bierce to Milton he casts a titanic shadow as the
archetype the rebel against cosmic injustice. Satan came into his
own with the coming of the Renaissance. Thomas Nashe, the
inventor of the English novel, was the first to pay sympathy to
the devil in his Pierce Penilesse his supplication to the divell
(1592), but the English speaking world came to really know the
devil in Milton's Paradise Lost (1667). Milton, although a devout
Christian was unable to keep Satan's struggle against infinite
odds form being other than an heroic one. His picture of Satan
who will not submit to God in the face of the tortures of Hell
still stirs modern Satanists who understand god as a
personification of the massed wills of others. Blake once said of
Milton that he "was of the Devil's party without knowing it,"
because he wrote of freedom when he wrote of the devil and of
limitations when he wrote of god."
Goethe's Faust (1808) provides us with the model of the modern
hero doomed to freedom and the quest for knowledge and power.
Faust sells his soul for knowledge and gold. If you ask the
typical college student his or her motivations for attending
college, you will find that Faust has many friends seeking
knowledge and a good paying job. Faust's devil Mephistopheles (No
Lover of Light) is the personification of the negativity that is
required as part of the dynamic nature of self-becoming.
Mephistopheles describes himself as "I am the portion of that
power that always wants evil, and always causes good. I am the
spirit which always negates."
In contrast to the heroic and classical devils above, we have
Satan of Charles Baudelaire who took Poe's American darkness and
transformed it as an idealized form of angst. Baudelaire's
Flowers of Evil (1857) later opened the doors of darkness for
such artists as Clark Ashton Smith, Kurt Seligman and Diamanda
Galas. Much of today's "Goth" culture owes a great debt to
Baudelaire's Satan.
One of the best modern masters was Anatole France, whose The
Revolt of the Angeles 1914 is full of metaphysical mockery on the
one hand and a portrayal of Satan as seeker of mysteries on the
other. The image of Satan and his devils as seeking after the
mysteries and and becoming the advisers of mankind is a crucial
one for the Satanist of the late twentieth century. The use of
Satan as way to lampoon organized religion is a major Satanic
activity among LHPers today.
Obviously the rich tradtion of literary Satanism can scarcely be
touched in so short an essay. For further reading see The Devil's
Mischief By Ed Marquand 1996, The Devil in Legend and Literature
by Maximilian Rudwin (latest reprint 1989 Open Court), Literature
and Evil by Georges Bataille 1957, and The Devil's Race-Track:
Mark Twain's Great Dark Writings 1966. The greatest quick
introduction to Satanism remains Huck Finn's "Alright then, I'll
go to hell" speech when he decides to protect Jim from the law.
Look it up, it's good (?) for you.
_________________________________________________________________
EOF
|
The Arcane Archive is copyright by the authors cited.
Send comments to the Arcane Archivist: tyaginator@arcane-archive.org. |
|
Did you like what you read here? Find it useful?
Then please click on the Paypal Secure Server logo and make a small donation to the site maintainer for the creation and upkeep of this site. |
|
|
The ARCANE ARCHIVE is a large domain,
organized into a number of sub-directories, each dealing with a different branch of religion, mysticism, occultism, or esoteric knowledge. Here are the major ARCANE ARCHIVE directories you can visit: |
|
interdisciplinary:
geometry, natural proportion, ratio, archaeoastronomy
mysticism: enlightenment, self-realization, trance, meditation, consciousness occultism: divination, hermeticism, amulets, sigils, magick, witchcraft, spells religion: buddhism, christianity, hinduism, islam, judaism, taoism, wicca, voodoo societies and fraternal orders: freemasonry, golden dawn, rosicrucians, etc. |
SEARCH THE ARCANE ARCHIVE
There are thousands of web pages at the ARCANE ARCHIVE. You can use ATOMZ.COM
to search for a single word (like witchcraft, hoodoo, pagan, or magic) or an
exact phrase (like Kwan Yin, golden ratio, or book of shadows):
|
OTHER ESOTERIC AND OCCULT SITES OF INTEREST
Southern
Spirits: 19th and 20th century accounts of hoodoo,
including slave narratives & interviews
|