Thursday, January 17, 2008

The Adversary part 1 - The Mythology Cafe


Who is the adversary? Even more importantly, why is there an adversary? Although I went to the Mythology Group that meets the third Wednesday every month to talk about different myths, I found myself thinking more about the discussion long after everyone left the Le Figaro CafĂ©. The speaker named Cory started with a character named Nurgil in 3000 BC who originally was a solar deity who ruled the noonday sun in the Summer Equinox – the hottest day of the year. He became the god of deserts, chaos etc.

Whereas there is probably some type of ultimate evil entity, I find that the social development of the concept fascinating. Apparently, the reasons for the need of an adversary vary from culture to culture. Many of the polytheistic cultures say “well if we have a god of the light and order, we GOTTA have a god of darkness, a god of chaos, a god of storms, etc!” To complicate matters, the lord of the underworld was not necessarily evil i.e Osiris of the Egyptian pantheon. Some beings such as Set who I have heard is a type of Satan in our culture (Set – Satan… you get the picture), didn’t start out as evil, but since the unification of Lower and Upper Egypt, the ambition followers of the Horus Cult didn’t want Horus to be ‘diluted’ so to speak, so they propagated the story of Set being evil and eventually it took hold. At some point Set was supposed to be the god of foreigners and such was considered evil because the powers that be at the time didn’t accept foreigners! With the advent of Zoroastrianism, came the development of duality, where there was one being who represented ultimate good (Ahura Mazda ) and one being which represented ultimate evil (Angra Mainyu). Judaism and Christianity was influenced by them in their dualistic philosophy of evil.

In the Old Testament, Satan was only mentioned once by name and was the one who accused Job before God as being faithful because He blessed Job, and so God took away everything form Job to test him. Cory explained that the philosophical argument of the need for Satan was necessary because without someone tempting you, there can be no proof of free will. How can you know if you have free will if you never have to choose anything? Or how can you know what good is if there was no evil? However this opens up a huge existential problem which has been debated way more effectively other places, which is, if God who knows everything and is a being of infinite love and compassion who knows you will choose evil and will ultimately send you to hell, then why did he create Hell in the first place or even allow you to be created in the first place since you didn’t choose to be born(I am talking about the Judeo-Christian belief system which doesn’t account for your soul choosing to incarnate on this plane of existence)?

One of the things that stood out to me was the being called Samael who is supposed to be the accuser, the adversary, the angel of Death in the Book of Enoch and in the Talmud. In the Bible/Old Testament he is supposed to be the one who Jacob wrestled with all night to get his blessing to be the chosen ones. He was also the angel who held Abraham’s hand back so as not to sacrifice his son. He was also supposed to be the one who impregnated Lilith and helped Lilith plan to overthrow the Most High. It’s not a big deal, but in Christianity, it was supposed to be God who wrestled with Jacob and not the Angel of Death, which implies that God is both good and evil which is a heretical concept in Christianity. Even in that interpretation there are several problems. For instance, why would one of the fathers of Judaism wrestle the accuser, the angel of Death for his birthright?

You may ‘So What? What is the big deal?’ The reason why this is important because there are millions of people who believe the Bible as the infallible Word of God, and are told the story of Jacob as a model of persistence, the importance of desiring spiritual things above everything else, and as a tool of wrestling in prayer to get what you want. Millions of people are saying to God in prayer “I won’t let you go till you bless me!” when in reality they are quoting someone who is talking to who would eventually become the Prince of Darkness. Its easier to accept it if I look at God as containing both good and evil, both being two sides of a very important coin, much like Shiva and Kali( or Shakti) who are important as gods of creation and destruction. However, Christianity not only presupposes and directly states that God is good all the time and that all evil is there because of mankind or because of Satan!

I am starting to wonder whether fundamental Christianity is really a function of social conditioning and to a certain extent spiritual and intellectual laziness. It sounds a bit extreme but to really get an accurate grasp(or as they say to pray with understanding, you need not only to read the New Testament, but the Book of Enoch, Thomas, some of the other lost gospels, and some of the Talmud and the Torah since Christianity was derived to an extant from Judaism. If you wanted to do some extra credit work, read some history, geography and some Joseph Campbell as well. Of course you don’t have to – going to your local church will suffice, but you may not know the whole truth. And even with all of that the real truth is suspect.

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