The Tempter as Initiator, and the nature of Satan/Christ

[Tixerand]

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[Nefastos]

The Grand Initiator is the Satanic/Devil figure.

This is exactly how the philosophy behind the Star of Azazel sees it, as well.

This true initiation was not received because they fell before him in worship, and fell for his tricks.

Personally I wouldn't call them tricks, but a stageplay ("mask" of Satan) assumed because that is what is needed. In propria persona, He (/She/It) is "the highest of angels", actually one with God i.e. absolute God's most precise manifestation because of His necessarily paradoxal nature.

He is the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, and he must be defeated.

Bringing to mind the theosophist teaching about the so-called original sin and the fall of both man & angels being the primitive mankind's sexual union with beasts, creating a real mess of a karmic bond between angel/human/animal kingdoms, tying their destinies together in a most undesireable way.

The mythical Pasiphae desired sexual union with a bull because of a curse put on her family, thus giving offspring of a monster, an animal-headed human being. That child is both the mankind itself and its collective Devil, our collective challenge. Once again it's a great paradox how Satan is both humanity's innermost reality, and at the same time our link both to spirit (angelic beings, the Watchers) & dense matter (animal kingdom, the accumulated atavistic tendencies with their great energy potential). True Self is the trickiest thing to hunt down.

In the rural American South, in blues and folk songs, this figure appears at a crossroads, ready to make a deal with whomever he finds waiting for him there.

Even in the Bible it is said that the Way should be made straight. And yet, this "via mediocritas" or the golden way that seeks not excesses, is not often taught in occultism nor in religions. Rather, from the crossroad people usually turn to the Right Hand Path of servitude or to the Left Hand Path of loneliness, rather than taking the best of the both & continuing the narrow but gratifying path straight onwards.

[Tixerand]

Thank you for reading and responding. I have recently started reading Fosforos (I have finished the first section) and have fallen in love with the text thus far. It is aligned enough to my understandings to bring me joy and a smile, but also it presents enough new thought/angle to bring me thought and growth. Again, I love it.

Getting back to the post, as to the usage of the word 'trick', that, in our English (Lousiana) can also mean sorcery, ie "layin' tricks", as well as a deception. But, yes, mask is perfectly fitting.

I have taught in the past that if all you ever know is the 'forked tongued devil' of the midnight crossroad, you will descend down an entropic spiral that you may not survive. Looking at the folklore of selling souls and such, in the South often times, you get the talent and the fame, but you die on the floor of a honky tonk, shot down by a jealous man. However, in some songs and stories, that devil is defeated, and (as in the Charlie Daniels song) the 'Golden Fiddle' is won. Thus, the true self of the Devil is met, the Golden Horned Goat Angel, not the vulgar, deceitful demon. You have to 'pass the test' as it were.

Speaking of the dual nature of God, and Satan, one of my favorite examples of this is found in the Christian Lord's Prayer. They pray to God to not 'lead them into temptation, but deliver them from evil". It is obvious that God is in the dual business of trickery and redemption.