Satan and Suns

So . . . . my Firefox browser knows me better than the Facebook algorithm! This article was the first one shown to me after visiting the forum.

It's from a site called The Conversation and was published on July 2, 2020. The article is titled:
The Invention of Satanic Witchcraft by Medieval Authorities was Originally Met with Skepticism.
https://theconversation.com/the-inventi ... ism-140809

The article's author, a professor of History at Iowa State University, presents that Satanic Witchcraft was created by church and state authorities to further their own purposes.

Thoughts?

TaipanTwist wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 11, 2020 5:31 am

I know that in some regions, if you accused someone of witchcraft and they were found guilty you got to keep half of their possessions. The other half went to the authorities.

As many people were poor this material bonus was useful for keeping the population divided against each other.

It was also a useful cover for sexual predators, who had carte blanche to molest victims on the pretext of looking for the Devil’s mark, which could be anywhere on the victim’s body.

Sounds like a quick and dirty way to fill the institution's coffers.
Sadly, when people are desperate and hungry, they are capable of acts toward their fellow humans that they would never otherwise entertain the idea of.

Yeah, they don't talk about sexual predators in the church, any church. It's like it doesn't exist if you don't talk about it and meanwhile the predators are free to continue to terrorize those unfortunate victims.

It's sort of true but not 100%. The historians Carlo Ginzburg and Jeffrey Betrand Russell have doven deeper into the accusations of Luciferianism, witchcraft, demonolatry, Satanism, etc. in witch trials and they make some compelling cases to believe that least some of them really were genuine Satanists.

The thing is, we actually have some surviving grimoires where demons are called only by barbarous words and sigils, and there's an indication from a variety of authors at the time that it was common to see demon-summoning manuals stripped of their Christian content and republished. We know that this happened at least a few times because we have those texts.

So we kind of have both first-hand and second-hand accounts of Satanists existing for quite awhile. Given that most of the demon-summoning in Western tradition is taken from older Persian and Greek systems of spirit work, one could even argue that demonolatry is older than Christianity, in my opinion. In that sense, Satanic witchcraft wasn't necessarily invented, but the accusations of it were misused.

Interesting article, but he's not really talking about anything new - it's well known at this point that accusations of Satanic witchcraft and Demonology as it was called by King James I (first of England or sixth of Scotland depending on how you count, monarchies are weird) were tools of political maneuvering, asset seizure and assassination. There's also a long, rich history of accusations of witchcraft being the basis for the mass execution and extermination of entire Christian sects, weirdly prominently. From the covenanters to the Knights Templar, a hell of a lot of believers were killed because they swore loyalty to god or the church, not the crown. Knights Templar are a classic example, you can read all about it in your Complete Book of Demonolatry pg 120-121 but to give you the gist in 1307 King Phillip IV arrested the entire order on the basis of it being a Satanic cult, on pretty shaky evidence - the main reason for the arrests was seizure of assets and investments, and the king owed the Templars a great deal of money.

If you want to delve into the topic with more detail, I recommend the following books...
- Malleus Maleficarum (Or, the Hammer of Witches)
- Holy Bible, KJV Edition (I recommend this version specifically so you can see the progression from King James V to King James VI / I and get the context behind the developing Satanic panic of the time)
(I actually don't have great books to recommend yet on King James the Sixth, still reading a bunch to try and get the best recommendation - in the meantime, Scottish History Tours on YouTube is excellent)
- Demonology, by King James I (Given how fundamental this book is to the development of modern Satanism, this is a really important read. It's also complete bullcrap mostly Worth your time if only to understand propaganda)
- Devils of Loudun, The Alleged Possession of the Urusline Nuns, and the Trial and Execution of Urbain Grandier, Told by an Eye-Witness (Originally published in 1887 and limited to 250 copies, you can get reprints from Forgotten Books or read it for free thanks to the Gutenberg Project - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45282 )
- The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology (Comprehensive doesn't even begin to cover this one, highly, HIGHLY recommended)

Christianity in particular has a fascination with rewriting history in it's favor constantly, that the other major faiths centered on the same god (ie, Islam, Judaism) doesn't suffer from. In particular in those faiths, there are less schisms and there's a tendency for more modern treatises and translations of a text or subject to stand alongside the original texts, warts and all to give some context of the time. Christianity? Not so much. Named entities became Daimons in Greek bibles of the 2nd century, Daimon became Demon, Dante Alighieri expanded Hell in the 14th century to also include every believer of every faith that wasn't Christianity, and the greater church ran with the PR and propaganda, pagan faiths were demonised alongside actual Satanists and the good old fashioned schisms of heretic believers from a different denomination (and this IN PARTICULAR makes research difficult, alongside historical revisionism). Christianity in particular has a long and bloody history of rewrites and editing.

Hope the book recommendations help!

I'm a retired factory worker and not a scholar so please bear with me . My biggest influence on this subject is the banned by Christianity book of Enoc . In there it describes the Satan ( s) as angels whose job it is to watch and record everything they consider to be a wrong action . They then pass that written record up to higher authority for judgement . No talk of falling or rebellions or anything like that . I could see why that information was banned as its quite far from the narrative of the times .
Another aspect of this writing is Enoc himself . He ended his days as " Arch Angel Metatron " . It only takes the smallest readings into VEDIC material to learn that higher spirits are constantly taking human form then returning after their reasons have played out . Yet that type of thing has been sanitized out of what I'll call modern teachings . Thats my 2 cents . TX .