In the Shadow of Jehovah: Is Religion’s Devil a Reflection of a Limited Concept of God?

As always, this writing does not represent the official views of Universal Co-Masonry, but is simply the reflections of one Co-Mason. 

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The figure of the Devil is among the most prominent and significant religious figures in the world today, particularly in the Abrahamic family of religions that have come to dominate the globe. The contrast between God (or his representative) and the devil is taken to be one of the most fundamental dynamics of many religious worldviews, even to the point that Satan serves as a symbol for those who oppose or criticize religion. Even for the non-religious, it’s impossible to deny the significance of the devil as an archetype in our culture.

This good vs. evil, God vs. Devil idea is actually much older even than Abraham, and has its roots as far back as Zoroastrianism in ancient Babylon, and many scholars even believe that the Abrahamic faiths picked the devil up from the Babylonians during their capture in that civilization. Many interpretations of the devil have been made on a symbolic level, ranging from a representation of our own carnal nature, to a reincarnation of the nature-spirit Pan, to the light bringer known as Lucifer. 

Today, I’d like to take a slightly different approach: Is it possible that the entire concept of the devil emerges directly from a certain limited concept of God?

Our Father, Who Art In Heaven

Inasmuch as the Devil is a shadow figure, perhaps even the quintessential iconoclastic antithesis to all that is regarded as good or holy, it represents the unconscious “dark” elements that are regarded as the opposite of the divine. In other words, the devil becomes the shadow aspect of God, and within us, the shadow of our own divinity. Whether or not a literal, supernatural entity that we might identify as the devil exists, we can see this symbolic truth. We can also surmise that the most essential quality of the devil is rebellion or resistance to the divine will, for the sake of self-gratification, and so represents the temptation each of us feels to indulge in personal pleasure, at the expense of our moral principles or nobler priorities. 

All of this presupposes a divine ruler on high, sitting on a throne in heaven, issuing commands, directing angelic activities, hearing and responding to prayers, even feeling gratified or displeased with earthly events. This is the image of God described in the Abrahamic faiths, often taken quite literally by believers. Even less anthropomorphic concepts of a monotheistic God are generally finite, in this way. God is thought of as a being who is somewhere, perceiving events, doing things, even peering into our very hearts and whispering in our minds, a sort of ultimate person above all lesser people, or as the saying goes, “King of Kings, Lord of Lords.”

Given all of this, it seems inevitable that out of this supreme, uber-person-God’s many created lesser beings, one of them would eventually question his position and rebel, and as it so happens, Lucifer was the first angel created, and the leader of the rebellion not long after. The relatively recent origins of this idea can be picked apart at an academic level, but nevertheless, it is the dominant devil mythology of the dominant religion of our time, Christianity. 

Father and the Rebel

“Return of the Prodigal Son” by Rembrandt

Of course, if God is an authority figure, there has to be an anti-authority rebel. How else could it be? If the devil hadn’t gone rogue, a human surely would have. The real question we should be asking ourselves is: should we take either of these two concepts seriously?

It’s no secret that many intellectuals have been critical, if not outright rejecting of this traditional concept of God and the devil. It seems too obvious how this uber-person was simply created by human minds, attempting to imagine a divine authority based on earthly authorities, or perhaps being imposed upon them by those earthly authorities as a justification for their rule.

If you want your sovereignty supported by your subjects, be sure you have the endorsement of the highest authority. Even regular philosophers have increasingly questioned and rejected this idea, from the time they gained the right to do so without being tortured and killed. 

Likewise, it’s difficult not to see the utility of the penultimate bad boy devil as both a scapegoat for our human failings and a scare tactic to keep the pews filled. That’s not to say that this dynamic duo doesn’t have symbolic value and that these stories aren’t useful in helping to shape human behavior towards a better trajectory. This is especially true for those who have trouble understanding a more rational concept of God. But for the rest of us, how else might we understand God, and is the devil even necessary?

Light Casts No Shadow

If we look to the many religions of the world, there are some for whom the figure of penultimate evil is either nonexistent or has a much lesser emphasis. It’s no coincidence that these also have quite different views on the nature of God, as well. We can easily see in this comparison how it is precisely the authoritarian concept of God which produces our angelic rebel. After all, without heavenly authority, who would he have to rebel against?

In Buddhism, for instance, while some variations may carry over personifications of evil from their polytheistic precursors, in general, the only enemy of mankind is ignorance itself. Likewise in Hinduism, while various Gods and Goddesses represent manifestations of “aspects” of God, even the dark or destructive ones are seen as mere parts in the divine play or dance of creation. In Paganism, Taoism, and occult or esoteric traditions the world over, there is likewise little-to-no concept of an embodiment of all evil, or at least not one that carries the same cosmic significance and literal personification as the Abrahamic devil. 

What else do all of these various non-Abrahamic traditions have in common? You guessed it, a quite different concept of God, or the divine. While there are minor differences, they tend towards a view of God as a universal mind, or omnipresent, transcendent cosmic consciousness, like the Hindu Brahman. Even the mystical elements of Abrahamic faiths, such as Christian Mystics, Islamic Sufis, and Jewish Kabbalists have less anthropomorphic, more mystical concepts of God, and emphasize the devil less. 

Many thinkers have proposed that these varying views are merely stages in a linear evolutionary development of our understanding of God, and that each can serve various people, depending on their capability to comprehend. For many, perhaps the simpler stories and images can suffice. In Freemasonry, each Mason is entitled to his or her own religious belief and conception of God, however personal or mystical; only the belief in a higher power is required. 

Behind the Widow’s Son: A Deeper Dive into the Enigmatic Mythology

I recently covered the topic of the Widow’s Son in Freemasonry, and several avenues of interpretation and investigation about this concept, ranging from biblical genealogy to archetypal mythology.

Now, I would like to take you along for a deeper dive into the topic of the Widow’s Son, and the possible source of it in Rosicrucian, Gnostic, and generally esoteric thought. Here again, there is a range of realistic vs mythological interpretations, but the occult significance of either, or both, will be further explored. 

As always, this writing does not represent the official views of Universal Co-Masonry, but is only the reflections of one Co-Mason. 

A Tale of Fire and Water

At the heart and origin of the Widow’s Son concept, according to the Rosicrucian writings of Max Heindel, is an alternative take on the biblical story of Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel, which is itself embedded in an alternative cosmology related to, but quite different from the biblical story of creation. 

In this Rosicrucian take on biblical cosmology, briefly, the spirits or angels of various elements represent different spiritual forces and archetypes unfolding in the early events of creation, and the Angels of Fire play a major role. In this story, the Angels are spirits of various elements, and the Spirits of Fire are those who decided to manifest the latent potential in matter by ignition; in the form of the sun and other stars, this effulgent quality provided a polar contrast with the cold vacuum of space and inert matter.

By burning, they created an engine of manifestation, as the heat evaporated the water, which re-condensed to fall and cool the surface of the planets, eventually creating a habitable crust-zone for biological life. Therefore, the Spirits of Fire, and all who are affiliated with them, are aligned with the archetype of dynamic power, manifestation, and light, and are also somewhat rebellious in nature, hence breaking energy free from the bonds of matter, literally what Fire does.

The Spirits of Water, on the other hand, have exactly the opposite essence and agenda, chiefly to quench the flame of the Spirits of Fire, and to keep energy bound in matter. Thus, the evaporated water condenses and rains down onto the hot molten earth, cooling it, and stabilizing it back into a more structured, albeit less free existence. Thus, the world as we know it, and in fact every individual, is some combination of these two fundamental forces, Fire and Water, dynamism and restraint, power and passivity, entwined together, encased within one another, playing out their polaric dance upon the stage provided by Earth and Air, Solidity and Space.

What does the dynamic of the elements have to do with the Widow’s Son, and the biblical first family? 

Good Old Uncle Samael?

Chapter Two of this Gnostic creation story presents us with the more familiar characters of Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel, with one less familiar guest appearance: an angel by the name of Samael. In this version of the story, Samael is said to be of the hierarchy of the Angels of Fire, and is identical with the serpent who convinced Eve to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. Thus, true to fiery archetypal form, he paved the way for the freeing of the latent potential of the human mind from the blissfully ignorant liquid passivity of the Garden existence.

In this version of the story, though, Samael did a bit more than just some slick apple-salesmanship; he also provided Eve with her first child, Cain. However, before Cain was born, Jehova forced Samael to flee elsewhere, for his crime of corrupting Eve. By the way, Adam hadn’t been created yet, in this version; he was only created after Samael’s banishment. This means that Cain is not only a Fire Angel/Human hybrid, but also the Son of a Widow, although he got a stepfather and half brother in the form of Adam and Abel, respectively. As a child of a Fire-angel, it’s safe to say Cain probably didn’t have much in common with them.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as they say, and while Cain is best known for his murder of his (perhaps half) brother Abel, water-child of Adam, he was also the first who labored to till the soil, indicating his identity as the original innovator of agriculture, the basis of all civilization, while his water-brother Abel went with the flow, and lived a leisurely life of animal husbandry.

Furthermore, after his rejection by Jehova, ostensibly for being a bit too clever and independent for the jealous god’s tastes, and the resulting fratricidal episode of course, Cain went on to found his own civilization, and his descendants are also identified as the inventors of metalworking, writing, and music, essentially the beginnings of all intellectual and technological endeavors. You could say they had, as it were, Fire in their blood, and they used that Fire to forge the foundations of civilization. 

Meanwhile, Cain’s younger brother Seth, and his proceeding generations, like their late brother Abel, were of solely human birth, and therefore had a much more watery disposition, being mostly obedient and, though attuned to spirit and intuition, not all that bright, hard working, or innovative.

According to the myth, these two kinds of people continue to exist from ancient history to the modern day. The idea is that people are usually of one or the other disposition, either fiery, rebellious, intellectual, and valuing works over faith, or watery, trusting, faithful and obedient, the good flock who don’t stir up a fuss, and rely on (hopefully) divine guidance, often from religious authority figures. In fact, you could also characterize these two types of people as goats and sheep. 

Liquid Light

What has all this to do with Masonry? As you probably know, the construction of Solomon’s temple is an important biblical myth in Masonic lore.

What many may not have realized from their Bible studies is that Solomon’s need to hire Hiram Abiff, the Master Craftsman, to build his temple wasn’t simply a matter of delegation; Solomon was himself a descendant of Seth, and for all his wisdom and poetic acumen, wasn’t particularly up to the task of designing and overseeing the construction of the Grand Temple. It required a fiery descendant of Cain to get the job done, and Hiram Abiff was not only a descendant of the original Widow’s Son, but was also a Widow’s Son, himself. This makes him both a Widow’s Son, and a Widow’s great great great great great…Grandson. 

This duality within humanity is said by some to continue even now, with the church representing the sons of Seth, quenching the thirst of the weary with their holy water at the entryway to every church, rituals of baptism, and symbolism of the good shepherd and his obedient flock. Meanwhile, the sons of Cain build, advance intellectually and technologically, shun authority, tame the wilds and illuminate the world with their Fire. Perhaps these two sides, that of the goat and the sheep, the fire and the water, the intellect and intuition, are ultimately destined to meet, intertwine, and come to balance.

Whatever the case, it’s hard to deny that Freemasonry leans heavily on the fiery side of this equation, as evidenced by all of the symbolism around being craftsmen, builders, intellectuals, valuing labor for the betterment of man, personal initiative, and of course, the significance of Hiram Abiff, the Widow’s Son and Master builder from the Fire-tinged bloodline of Cain, himself. 

What does it all mean? As with any mythology, one can take it in a variety of ways; perhaps there is some literal truth to it, different populations of people from the ancient past, born of different dispositions, with threads of this dichotomy continuing even today. We could also, however, take it as symbolic of our own inner polarities, with our inner intuitive Solomon, wise and watery son of Seth, needing the intellect and determination of our inner son if Fire, Hiram, to complete the great work of the Temple within us, and vice versa. It’s always possible to form our own theories, but the only way to find out for sure what it means to a Mason, is to ask one.