 |
|
|
|
(c) fra Nefastos 2006
The occult world-view is based on the idea of the absoluteness of existence. Therefore, because everything is One, all dualism is eventually illusory. It is by no means possible that God could be both all-powerful and all-knowing; both personal and good – the last mentioned are attributes of a divided being; they can be IN God, but God himself can not be restricted to some personality or some mode of action in his own cosmos. All-powerful and all-knowing essence can not be a pool of dualism; there can be no charge against him that does not belong to him. If God is “good,” then everything is “good,” because God can not cease to exist in some particle of world he has brought to existence; and if there is “evil” in the world, it must be permitted by God. And if God would be personal, he could not be all-powerful nor all-knowing, because personality necessarily means restrictions of form.
Hereby follows logically that we have at least two different concepts of God:
1) The Absolute God that is all-poweful and all-knowing, The One and Only. About this Absolute we can say that it is in a certain meaning good, but in this goodness there is nothing petty: Indeed, God lets the sun shine to both good and bad, and judges no man.
2) Personal god, who may actually be many and in many ranks, forming several presentations of the Absolute. Christians adore this kind of god with personality, who can and do make commandments and denials; for unto whom dogmas can be joined, and who may have a counterpart, “the Adversary” – Satan.
And now we can advance to the actual question. If we choose the first concept’s approach, we can say that there is nothing that is evil in itself in nature or outside it, but all evil is made of bad use of things fundamentally beautiful and good. A murderer is “evil” because he hasn't understood the true essence of hate (or some else motivation he has had for his deed), but instead has fallen to regressive action; a rapist is “evil” because he has not understand the true essence of sexual desire, &c.
It is very unphilosophical to think that there could be an almost infinitely powerful spiritual being, whose intention would be to make things wrong. These kind of spirits of error can indeed live in the so-called astral world that surrounds our world and is made up by our imagination and pregnated by our deeds, but they are not infinitely powerful, nor are they gods, nor angels, but “evil spirits.” As a man who has erred and thinks things wrongly can effect other people’s thoughts and emotions in a bad way, drawing others to the same error he has made, these spirits do the same. But these creatures are mortal, that is, restricted to time and space. Archetypal “god of evil” (or, the ex-angel of evil, as Christians see it) can not exist. This we can understand both with the coherence of metaphysical thinking and with the incorruptible conviction of the heart. (Which are the workings of theosophical Manas and Buddhi, the two main aspects of man’s spiritual soul.)
Then why do we speak of Satan?
Simply because by Satan has not been originally meant – and is still not being meant in many systems – “the Devil.” Satan is the name that can be understood in many ways, but not any of these do correlate one to one with the Christian view of the Devil, whose only aim is to lead astray and make harm.
Etymologically “Satan” means, as we remember, “the Adversary.” However, this opposition is not total nor final: rather, it is ritualistic. The world – everything in the world – acts in a way that things must first be tested so that their true essence could be revealed and harnessed. In this way acts evolution, in this way acts man’s psychological development, in this way are things made even in our human schools, where students are put into exams in order to test their knowledge and understanding. Satan is a being who presents the problems of existence to the soul.
This makes all progress possible. Without a trial there could be no victory, and life would be without consciousness, self, true power. The trial is not arbitrary, but we do summon it for ourselves subconsciously. Our psyche asks of nature to meet us with some issue – what exactly, depends on our place in our own arc of development and our own past doings, thoughts, emotions. Satan comes to us as an initiator, he brings to us the bitter chalice, and we have a possibility either to pass the test or fall – and if we fall, that is, if our personality has not been able to find a living key to some hidden, problematic lock in our own psychology, then we can not advance in that particular thing; but life will eventually bring to us the same problem in a varied form, and again we have a situation in which to make another answer.
We must not think that suffering would be inevitable. Trials we must face, but if they are painful or no, depends on our own attitude towards the world and how we have lived. If people would be able to love – not sentimentally, but truly, by soul – the working methods of Satan would change to be as wonderful as is his own inner nature. But as men we are still too calculating, we can trust to life too little, and therefore Satan must approach us with the mask of terror, violence, torment in his face – the black mask that is reflected straight from men’s own inner strictness, harshness in their souls. It is a great tragedy, but we can’t truly blame Satan of that tragedy.
Satan means other things besides, for there are many sides which belong to the above mentioned work. First, he is the Destructor; he is Death. Why? Because in a trial are separated cinder and gold, changing and permanent, profane and sacred, error and truth. The first mentioned halves are inevitably destroyed, that is, changed, and only the latter will stay changeless and remain as they are in the Great Work of the soul.
When speaking of lofty, archetypal powers, it is vital to remember three things – the appliance of the threefold Key again. First, that these kind of divinities are in their completeness, power and omnipresence impossible to be fully grasped by man’s conceptual thinking. Second, that intellect must still be our main instrument even in research of these great powers, or we might slip to erraneous forms of adoration, which lead us to act regressively and irresponsibly, because – and this is the third point – for every occult philosopher it is a priori clear, that every truly awakened and enlightened power in the cosmos must unavoidably have in it the recognized thought of unity, and thus it presents love – or if we would like to express it so, “goodness”.
Thus our philosophy can not accept the name of Satan to any such an entity that would lead people to evil, or whose true essence or aspect would be evil and wrong deeds. According to our view these kind of things belong to the fragmented and illusory world, not archetypal; and only archetypal beings are wholly real and worth of deep respect. The spirits which work in a divided world are distorted reflections of the original, pure thoughts, and these spirits who live in a distorted reality often have as much or even more possibilities of error than is found in man.
