A demon is a malevolent supernatural entity. Historically, belief in demons, or stories about demons, occurs in folklore, mythology, religion, and literature; these beliefs are reflected in media including comics, fiction, film, television, and video games. Belief in demons probably goes back to the Paleolithic age, stemming from humanity's fear of the unknown, the strange and the horrific. In ancient Near Eastern religions and in the Abrahamic religions, including early Judaism and ancient-medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered a harmful spiritual entity that may cause demonic possession, calling for an exorcism. Large portions of Jewish demonology, a key influence on Christianity and Islam, originated from a later form of Zoroastrianism, and was transferred to Judaism during the Persian era.
A devil is the mythical personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of the devil can be summed up as 1) a principle of evil independent from God, 2) an aspect of God, 3) a created being turning evil or 4) a symbol of human evil.
The most common meaning for Lucifer in English is as a name for the Devil in Christian theology. It appeared in the King James Version of the Bible in Isaiah and before that in the Vulgate, not as the name of a devil but as the Latin word lucifer (uncapitalized), meaning "the morning star", "the planet Venus", or, as an adjective, "light-bringing". It is a translation of the Hebrew word הֵילֵל, hêlēl, meaning "Shining One".
In Greek mythology, Prometheus is one of the Titans and a god of fire. Prometheus is best known for defying the Olympian gods by taking fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge and, more generally, civilization.
Satan, also known as the Devil, is an entity in Abrahamic religions that seduces humans into sin. In Judaism, Satan is seen as an agent subservient to God, typically regarded as a metaphor for the yetzer hara, or 'evil inclination'. In Christianity and Islam, he is usually seen as a fallen angel or jinn who has rebelled against God, who nevertheless allows him temporary power over the fallen world and a host of demons. In the Quran, Iblis is an evil entity (shaitan) made of fire who was cast out of Heaven because he refused to bow before the newly created Adam and incites humans to sin by infecting their minds with waswās.
Satanism refers to a group of religious, ideological, and/or philosophical beliefs based on Satan—particularly his worship or veneration. Satan is commonly associated with the Devil in Christianity, a fallen angel often regarded as chief of the demons who tempt humans into sin. The phenomenon of Satanism shares "historical connections and family resemblances" with the Left Hand Path milieu of other occult figures such as Chaos, Hecate, Lilith, Lucifer, and Set. Self-identified Satanism is a relatively modern phenomenon, largely attributed to the 1966 founding of the Church of Satan by Anton LaVey in the United States—an atheistic group that does not believe in a supernatural Satan.
In Greek mythology, Icarus was the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth of Crete. After Theseus, king of Athens and enemy of Minos, escaped from the labyrinth, King Minos suspected that Icarus and Daedalus had revealed the labyrinth's secrets and imprisoned them—either in a large tower overlooking the ocean or in the labyrinth itself, depending upon the account. Icarus and Daedalus escaped using wings Daedalus constructed from birds’ molted feathers, threads from blankets, the leather straps from their sandals, and beeswax. Before escaping, Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too low or the water would soak the feathers and not to fly too close to the sun or the heat would melt the wax. Icarus ignored Daedalus's instructions not to fly too close to the sun, causing the beeswax in his wings to melt. Icarus fell from the sky, plunged into the sea, and drowned. The myth gave rise to the idiom, "fly too close to the sun." In some versions of the tale, Daedalus and Icarus escape by ship.
Fallen angels are angels who were expelled from Heaven. The literal term "fallen angel" does not appear in any Abrahamic religious texts, but is used to describe angels cast out of heaven or angels who sinned. Such angels often tempt humans to sin.
The Satanic Bible is a collection of essays, observations, and rituals published by Anton LaVey in 1969. It is the central religious text of LaVeyan Satanism, and is considered the foundation of its philosophy and dogma. It has been described as the most important document to influence contemporary Satanism. Though The Satanic Bible is not considered to be sacred scripture in the way that the Christian Bible is to Christianity, LaVeyan Satanists regard it as an authoritative text as it is a contemporary text that has attained for them scriptural status. It extols the virtues of exploring one's nature and instincts. Believers have been described as "atheistic Satanists" because they believe that God and Satan are not external entities, but rather projections of an individual's personality—benevolent and stabilizing forces in their life. There have been thirty printings of The Satanic Bible, selling over a million copies.
Károly Kerényi, also known as Karl Kerényi and Karl Kerenyi, was a Hungarian scholar in classical philology and one of the founders of modern studies of Greek mythology.
In analytical psychology, the shadow is an unconscious aspect of the personality that does not correspond with the ego ideal, leading the ego to resist and project the shadow, creating conflict with it. The shadow may be personified as archetypes which relate to the collective unconscious, such as the trickster.
Luciferianism is a belief system that venerates the essential characteristics that are affixed to Lucifer, the name of various mythological and religious figures associated with the planet Venus. The tradition usually reveres Lucifer not as the Devil, but as a destroyer, a guardian, liberator, light bringer or guiding spirit to darkness, or even the true god. According to Ethan Doyle White of the Britannica, among those who "called themselves Satanists or Luciferians", some insist that Lucifer is an entity separate from Satan, while others maintain "the two names as synonyms for the same being".
Amy Maud Bodkin was an English classical scholar, writer on mythology, and literary critic. She is best known for her 1934 book Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination. It is generally taken to be a major work in applying the theories of Carl Jung to literature.
Theistic Satanism, otherwise referred to as traditional Satanism, religious Satanism, or spiritual Satanism, is an umbrella term for religious groups that consider Satan, the Devil, to objectively exist as a deity, supernatural entity, or spiritual being worthy of worship or reverence, whom individuals may believe in, contact, and convene with, in contrast to the atheistic archetype, metaphor, or symbol found in LaVeyan Satanism.
In Christianity, the Devil is the personification of evil. He is traditionally held to have rebelled against God in an attempt to become equal to God himself. He is said to be a fallen angel, who was expelled from Heaven at the beginning of time, before God created the material world, and is in constant opposition to God. The devil is conjectured to be several other figures in the Bible including the serpent in the Garden of Eden, Lucifer, Satan, the tempter of the Gospels, Leviathan, and the dragon in the Book of Revelation.
The War in Heaven is a mythical conflict between supernatural forces in traditional Christian cosmology, attested in the Book of Revelation alongside proposed parallels in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is described as the result of the Archangel Satan rebelling against God and leading to a war between his followers and those still loyal to God, led by the Archangel Michael. Within the New Testament, the War in Heaven provides basis for the concept of the fallen angels and for Satan's banishment to Christian Hell. The War is frequently featured in works of Christian art, such as John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, which describes it as occurring over the course of three days as a result of God the Father announcing Jesus Christ as His Son.
Jungian archetypes are a concept from psychology that refers to a universal, inherited idea, pattern of thought, or image that is present in the collective unconscious of all human beings. The psychic counterpart of instinct, archetypes are thought to be the basis of many of the common themes and symbols that appear in stories, myths, and dreams across different cultures and societies. Some examples of archetypes include those of the mother, the child, the trickster, and the flood, among others. The concept of the collective unconscious was first proposed by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.
The International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method was an influential series of monographs published from 1922 to 1965 under the general editorship of Charles Kay Ogden by Kegan Paul, Trench Trubner & Co. in London. This series published some of the landmark works on psychology and philosophy, particularly the thought of the Vienna Circle in English. It published some of the major psychologists and philosophers of the time, such as Alfred Adler, C. D. Broad, Rudolf Carnap, F. M. Cornford, Edmund Husserl, Carl Jung, Kurt Koffka, Ernst Kretschmer, Bronisław Malinowski, Karl Mannheim, George Edward Moore, Jean Nicod, Jean Piaget, Frank P. Ramsey, Otto Rank, W. H. R. Rivers, Louis Leon Thurstone, Jakob von Uexküll, Hans Vaihinger, Edvard Westermarck, William Morton Wheeler, Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. N. Findlay and others. Most of the 204 volumes in the series have been reprinted, some in revised editions.
Le génie du mal, known informally in English as Lucifer or The Lucifer of Liège is a religious sculpture executed in white marble and installed in 1848 by the Belgian artist Guillaume Geefs. Francophone art historians often refer to the figure as an ange déchu, a "fallen angel".
Raphael Judah (R.J.) Zwi Werblowsky was an Israeli scholar of religion specializing in comparative religion and interfaith dialogue. Werblowsky served as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem between 1965—1969, Secretary-General and later Vice-President of the International Association for the History of Religions, Vice-President of the International Council for Philosophy and the Humanities of UNESCO and the chief editor of the journal Numen. He also co-edited The Encyclopedia of the Jewish Religion. In 2005 R.J. Zvi Werblowsky became a recipient of The EMET Prize for Art, Science and Culture, and in 2009 he was awarded Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon by the government of Japan.
