Satan is an ancient Hebraic word meaning the opponent or the adversary. And this is as good a place as any to begin with a profile of the Devil, since it marks his grandious entrance in the great, theological saga. So it was in 7th century B.C. Persia with Zoroastrianism. The prophet named Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) preached of a god of light named Ahura Mazda, who was locked in eternal battle with a shadow god called Ahriman. Both gods were equally defined, and generally demanded equal respect. Here, in the character of Ahriman, was a divine being whose explicit reason for being was to balance the scale of circumstance- to make the "creater god" more rightious in his glory, and relieve him of the unsavory task of torturing humanity. Zoroastrianism would not last long (a few, remote sects still exist in India and Iran) but the idea of dualism- divine good versus divine evil, two sides of the same, spinning coin - would later surface in Western religions, and find it's own niches in the Christian church..

Prior to Zoroaster most cultures either worshipped a pantheon of "natural" gods- each god embodying a different aspect of the natural world-or, like in Judeism, worshipped a faceless, all-powerfull, often-tyrranical creator who had his hand in every aspect of nature- good and bad, ergo monism. The land of Canaan, which had been promised to the children of Abraham by God, was always being seiged by one civilization or another, and the Jews were frequently enslaved and massacred by these pagan invaders, eventually being driven out of Jerusalem altogether. And where was the loving, all-powerfull god who would subject his chosen people to these indignities? All part of God's strange and wonderous ways? There had to be a catch...

In the Book of Job, where the God's adversary first makes an appearance, the scriptures begin to shift the blame for man's dire misfortunes. In the story, a pious groveler named Job becomes the dice in a sort of craps game between God and an angel reffered to as Satan. Satan, it seems, doubts Job's genuine devotion to God. God takes Satan up on the bet, visiting catastrophic misfortune upon His hapless follower Job, killing his children, his sheep, and putting a pox on him. Job endures this curious test of faith with a minimum of whining. God rewards him for his devotion, and apparantly wins the wager. Satan goes off to sulk, but his illustrious career has only begun.

Satan pops up in the Old Testament a couple more times, always tipping the against mankind, but only the ultimate upstart religion Christianity would embrace the mythology of the Adversary, and give him an essential role in the spread of Christianity to every corner of the world. Christ's disciple Paul and later Roman-Christians actively endeavored to convert all people to their bugeoning religion. To give the Old Testement God more mass-appeal to diverse cultures, the New Testement authors promised life after death in Heavan for the faithfull, and an eternity in Hell for those that strayed from the flock. The devil could fullfill the need for a common foe- the bastard of God's kingdom, plotting for it's fall. It's the all part of the never-ending war over the fate of mankind that rages in heavan- and in which mankind must do it's own part. Or is it all just a game of "good-cop, bad-cop" that's gotten out of hand?

Ominous and impressive landmarks are frequently given names like The Devil's Tower, and the Devil's Rapids and many amusement rides are assosiated with the Devil to emphasize the thrill that will be experienced on them- like the Devil's Corkscrew. The popularity of the drug marijauna has only soared since being branded the "Demon Weed". Why eat angel-food cake when devil's food cake is so much more dangerous? Women seem to prefer the easy-going, devil-may-care type, and the sly-devils don't do so bad themselves. People used to think the whole world was going to The Devil, but he's pretty much had it in the bag since the 6-6-60's after Anton Lavey declared 1966 Anno Satanis, kicking off The Church of Satan.

The Fallen Angel

Like Satan, we have all fallen. Everyone has heard of the fall of Adam and Eve, but that story is widely held to be metaphor. We have all fallen as individuals. Most of us have fallen many, many times in our lives. We've been fired from a job, or failed an exam, or gotten in trouble with the law, or been dumped by a lover, and so on. And in the end we die...

So isn't it somehow reassuring to know that even an angel- one of the "Sons of God" described in Genesis- can face as great of a peril? A glorious, haloed demigod stuck down to a level below our own? I would be satisfied just to see one get a pie in the face, or a painful hot-foot...

But alas, stories of fallen angels are dubious even by lenient interpretations. The alleged phenomenon first appeared in Revelation 12, where the Grand Puba of fallen angels- Satan himself- is described as "a great, red dragon" who "sweeps a third of the stars from the sky" with his great tail. Implicitly, the stars felled by Satan's violent attack represent his gang of rebel-angels who join his descent into Hell. Most of the accepted lore about Satan comes from this chapter of Revelations, including his coloration, his penchant for shape-shifting, and his well known enumeration- 666. But as to what effected this cosmic family-feud, no mention is given, nor is explained Satan's strange metamorphosis from God's right-hand man, and most beautiful of all angels, to a snarling, loathsome, polymorphic beast of the Abyss. Apparently that is none of mankind's business.

In the book of Isaiah it is written that Lucifer fell to Earth after striving to "set his throne above the stars of God". But most scholars feel that "Lucifer", in this case, referred to a tyrannical ruler of the times who, in his vanity, was compared to a shining-star- thus the Latin lucifer.

One has to turn to the apocryphal Book of Enoch (apocryphal meaning " of questionable origin"), for a definitive scenario involving actual angels falling from Heaven. In Enoch the "Sons of God" of Genesis fame are demoted to mere angels, and descend to Earth to pick on their kid-siblings, humankind. The disgruntled leader of these disgraced angels- named Samiaza- leads an army of his fellow outcasts further astray by fixing them all up with earth-babes, and otherwise encouraging them to interfere in man's affairs in violation of the will of God. God's response is to send his Archangels down to put the smack down on the renegade "watcher" angels- and their giant, half-human offspring, the nephilim- and chuck them all into the recesses of the Earth to endure hellish torment until the final judgment (when things will get really medieval).

So are the evil, Watcher Angels still lurking in their shadowy hideouts in the lakes and crevasses of our own planet? Are they still meddling in man's affairs- waging wars, corrupting society, and setting the stage for humanities own, final downfall? A sensational idea for a movie, but the Book of Enoch, along with all of the other apocryphal sources from which the Watcher Angels are drawn, were believed to have been written during the exile of the Israelites when apocalyptic folklore was all the rage. Enoch may even have been a forgery written as late as the Middle Ages. The possible influence of Greek mythology- particularly the stories of Icarus and the fall of the Titans- also can't be denied. And at any rate, the Book of Enoch is excluded scripture, leaving the tale of the fallen angel as little more than a hoary, campfire-story in modern, Christian theology- one that has grown more outlandish with each retelling.

The Imp

It's the little demons that plague the common man (and woman) the most- toothaches, nightmares, addictions, b.o., and the like- things attributed to sprites and spirits, once upon a time. Most everyone gets their daily allowance of evil one pill at a time. You can't blame every stubbed-toe on the great Satan, who would have to be like Santa Claus in order to tempt and poison folks around the globe each day. In order to be everywhere at once, he would have to be, well, god-like. And so Imps are needed to serve as sort of the equivalent of Satan's "elves"- wandering the globe, dutifully delivering unto the cursed offspring of Adam and Eve everyday maladies and malfeasance. Martin Luther himself blamed some of these diminutive devils for his chronic constipation.

Another kind of Imp is the household "familiar". Witches and necromancers were typically bestowed with animal familiars to help the practitioner with their magical workings, and ensure that they didn't Welsh on their bargain with the Devil. The famous magicians Faust and Agrippa were both reputed to have hell-hounds as familiars, while witches traditionally had the all-too-familiar familiars- black cats.

But the Imp is also a good allegory to the shrinking role of the Devil in the Judeo-Christian religion. From Nemesis to nuisance, Satan has been downgraded drastically over the last two-thousand years. Since the idea of a centralized symbol of evil is so troublesome to the concept of monism- the universe under one, all-powerful god- the Devil would be gradually kicked downstairs from mighty Imperator to indignant Imp. Thus was the trend in Medieval "morality plays" that evolved out of the Church organized "mystery plays" whose monist message had begun to unravel with the growing romanticization of the characters of Satan and the Fallen Angels. Morality plays took more of a turn toward satire and personified abstractions, casting Satan as a comic-foil always destined for humiliating defeat in the end, to the delight of audiences. The Church had lost control of their own prize Imp- Satan- to popular inclination. The trend has continued to today, and no one seems to take the Devil seriously, anymore...