A Demons' View of God

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obnoxion
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A Demons' View of God

Post by obnoxion »

This year I have found two examples of a demon's view of God, that might open up new vistas intto the demonic state of mind - or, if you will, the state of being.

First, Paradise Lost has been criticized of making Satan more admirable and deep character than God. But Victoria Silver in her article "Problem of God" (from The Cambridge Companion to Paradise Lost) writes that the shallow image of god is supposed to represent Satan's misconception of God. So the War in Heaven is an outer war against an inner misconception.

And here is one from the East. In a fragmentet story called The Emperor of the Sorcerers (published in two bilingual volumes by Clay Sanskrit Library), there is a story inside a story about the King Ugra-Sena of the kingdom of Mathura. He had a virtuous wife called Mano-rama, who one day was stroving in the palace gardens when a malevolent demon (danava) called Drumila flew by. He took a liking to the queen, and shapeshifting into king Ugra-sena, made love to the queen in the garden.

The queen was soon with child, and had the strangest of pregnancy cravings: "I am thirsting after the blood, flesh and guts of Vishnu".

And image of Vishnu was made of dough and mutton, and the queen feasted on the blood and guts of this effigy in the night. This trick satiated the craving. She had a son called Kamsa, who later fell to prey to the lion of the Yadavas (Krishna).

The original moral of that last tale is, that one should not be embarassed of one's pregnancy craving, but instead speak up, because there are ways to satisfy even the strangest ones.

But I am more interested in, what these stories might tell as of the perspective of demons. I mean, if Satan's concept of God was somewaht shallow in Milton, was it not the same case with the queen carrying the demons child?
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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RaktaZoci
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Re: A Demons' View of God

Post by RaktaZoci »

What an interesting subject! I am a fan of Milton and also Blake, but unfortunately cannot comment further on the examples you have provided here.
Makes one think, though..
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Smaragd
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Re: A Demons' View of God

Post by Smaragd »

obnoxion wrote:I mean, if Satan's concept of God was somewaht shallow in Milton, was it not the same case with the queen carrying the demons child?
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by the latter, but I would like to. Do you mean the demons intentions impregnating the queen was shallow or?


This narrative style of story inside a story is quite descriptive of this idea. In the Devimahatmya there is the first story relating to the day side of consciousness — people coming to meet their destinies in the world we see with our five senses. Then they're told the story of demons battling gods which is the night side, the inner narrative. The book itself contains both of these stories aiming to transcend the duality.

Now does a demonic being realize the sacredness of it's role to enable the dynamic — the dance to go through, and both sides of the story to come together? For a real dynamism to emerge, I don't think so. They seem to be very much dualistic beings and lacking the kind of subconscious/conscious reflection skills as they are a part of subconscious themself. Only way for a demon to rise up and understand god a bit better is by the help of other beings making their own realizations, winning the battles with the demon. From the demons perspective this might be seen as succesful altruism executed according to the beings dharma.

Satan as an archetype or a high being is the laws by which the demon acts and declares the dance as a sacred one. If I understood correctly, Milton's Satan is in the demonic end of this hierarchy. An idea of maya emerges when we think the pyramid hierarchy is constructed of mirrors and the further one gets from the starting point, more and more reflections obscure and divide the view towards god, but the pyramids construct remains and thus the demon acts according to the law.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
obnoxion
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Re: A Demons' View of God

Post by obnoxion »

I am not sure what this would mean exactly. But as the God in the Milton's Paradise Lost seem to be a mask, "divine similitude", and all the rumbling and rioting does not seem to stir much that which is behind the similatude.
Mind you, I am only familiar with PL through summaries, fragments and studies.

At least on one level it seems that the fury of Satan in PL is spent on an effigy, and with tragic consequences to Himself. And in this He is not much different from the demon seed of the asura Drumila, which causes his mother to lust the flesh, guts and blood of a cosmic principle, and is satisfied with dough and mutton. And like Satan becomes trapped into the form of a snake in PL, the son of Drumila is killed by an avatar of Vishnu.

This kind of drama is, of course, a violent affair, as it must tie down the movements of subtle energies into separate characters. This I would compare to how the styles of wisdom of the five Buddha-families residing as energies in the Diamond World beyond thought, turn into jelousy, anger, lust, ignorance and greed when halted by conceptual structures. I suppose we could think of this Diamond World as the counterpert of Pleroma. St. Paul traced Jesus' origin to Pleroma. It must be in Pleroma that Jesus laughed as He was crucified. And it must be in Pleroma where the essence of the one playing the Adversary is ever unblemished. In Pleroma everything must be like a dance.
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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Nefastos
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Re: A Demons' View of God

Post by Nefastos »

obnoxion wrote:But I am more interested in, what these stories might tell as of the perspective of demons. I mean, if Satan's concept of God was somewaht shallow in Milton, was it not the same case with the queen carrying the demons child?


While Silver's interpretation sounds delicious, and might be accurate as well, it must be only a half-truth by itself. While we can choose an apologetical approach & say that Satan (or a mind that Milton's Satan depicts) has a shallow idea of God, in case we accept any kind of Christian theology at all, we are instantly facing the insurmountable problem of the Creator of free will. Which is the epic's theme per se. If an angel (Lucifer) could see God wrongly, how was this a fault of the said created angel, instead of a fault of his creator? Answering "free will" is no answer at all but a joke, since this "free will" must be based on something, and that something (say, ethics or spiritual demands or psychology or inner randomizer mechanics or whatever that that angel was able to grasp in fact, being created in a way he was) were once again created by the One God.

So, a demon's view is, once again, just one view of the One God, and cannot be otherwise. Demon (or a fallen angel) is a created being, a principle or aspect of God.

But since all this is most likely already quite familiar to all those who are interested in reading our forum, let's take this a bit deeper. If and when a demon's view is both divine and faulty, how are these two connected, how are they separable?

In Milton's case, the "One God" of narration is, naturally, the narrator. Thus we cannot blame Lucifer, we must blame either God or Milton (or Milton's contemporary culture or Puritan theology). Even though I like Paradise Lost, it is clear that it really gives either extremely symbolistic or very exoteric view on God. "He" is not sympathic at all. Thus, however we turn the table of interpretation, we cannot come to the conclusion that Lucifer was guilty. In this story he is the butler who recieves all the suspicion of being a murderer only because that's how the story should go. Thus, the God is – quite literally – in the details. We could make a very careful study of how exactly the Milton's God was depicted (perhaps this is what Silver has done, or did she use external sources?), and based on that, where did his Lucifer err. In that way, he could be treated like a mental patient. But such an approach would be extremely pejorative. Thus I like much more the Hindu tale's view. For a Christian demon's view of God is still a God's view of God, even though He chooses to put on His devil goggles.

In the story from the Emperor of Sorcerers, it sounds that the demon is – like they usually are in the Hindu tales – seen more neutrally, as coming from a different species of beings: a species whose characteristical traits just happen to include a fervent wish to kill God and eat his intestines. Such a thing is not evil in a similar way than Christian demons are evil. The watershid difference between the theologies is in the doctrine of reincarnation: a demon can be seen as pardonable, even sympathic, if such a state is just one possibility in the almost endless chain of spiritually evolving lives, instead of one's absolute final state of being, in eternal damnation impended upon such by personal God. If I live in a certain unbalanced way, I may be born as a demon; if a demon acts in a certain more balanced way, he may be born as a human being, facing the bad karma but being capable of a future spiritual development of a more holistic kind.

Demonic views on life are powerful but they lack this holistic spiritualism, and thus, the suffering effect will always continue and fuel itself with its excess, or more specificly, its toomuchism ideology. Too much any kind of "good" always becomes evil, because world needs so many different balancing things and so little extra tautology. Powerfully redundant beings are the most sad cases, and O Lord does our time have enough of such a demonic view.

Smaragd wrote:Now does a demonic being realize the sacredness of it's role to enable the dynamic — the dance to go through, and both sides of the story to come together?


I think that that tiny spark of realizing just that is the divine spark that keeps a demon alive in its seemingly preferred state; and at the same time, it is just that spark which constantly ignites its hells.

So, the demon's view of God – the God within the demon, so to say – is the one that keeps it both going on & suffering. This is the ultimate paradox of the telos of evil, be it however subconscious or seemingly realized. (A full realization would be an enlightenment of one's state & thus freeing the demonic mind.)

Smaragd wrote:They seem to be very much dualistic beings and lacking the kind of subconscious/conscious reflection skills as they are a part of subconscious themself.


Exactly. But, this can also be said of us human beings, in a way. We can say that the state of an astral demon is just a normally developed state for a standard human being "living inside a dream", as we not fully initiated beings are. Every human being is also a part of our collective subconscious, and living there as much as here. For many human beings, crossing over the threshold (of death) is practically almost trivial to the point that they might easily be ignorant of themselves being "dead". This is because they never were individuals in the word's true sense.

Smaragd wrote:Only way for a demon to rise up and understand god a bit better is by the help of other beings making their own realizations, winning the battles with the demon. From the demons perspective this might be seen as succesful altruism executed according to the beings dharma.


This is a point vital to our occultism in the Star of Azazel, I think. That we converse with demons, cooperate with demons, invoke & sometimes even evoke demons in order to help ourselves; them; the whole. We do not fight them, because as you said, the help can only come by "realizations". The battles that are thus fought are inner conversations & energetical miracles (of change & gradual ascension). The adeptual apotheosis is not a triumph for a separate individual only: it is the triumph for all the heavenly host that has fell with us. Our friends, our enemies, our challenges, our pains shall not die "but we shall all be changed" by (anyone's) my individual accomplishment.

Smaragd wrote:Satan as an archetype or a high being is the laws by which the demon acts and declares the dance as a sacred one.


Very beautifully put and, as I personally believe, correct to the letter.

Smaragd wrote:If I understood correctly, Milton's Satan is in the demonic end of this hierarchy. An idea of maya emerges when we think the pyramid hierarchy is constructed of mirrors and the further one gets from the starting point, more and more reflections obscure and divide the view towards god, but the pyramids construct remains and thus the demon acts according to the law.


Yes. The oceans paint the glory of the heavens by reflecting them, instead of trying to capture them or compete with them. Thus, in a different world, in a paradise regained, a holy demon would be a possibility: a way of seeing a pure, if rare, silhouette of the shadowed God. (And are not all of God's silhouettes equally rare & shadowed?)
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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