Whether or not the Devil is real, his effects in the world are
August 17, 2024 1:10 AM Subscribe
“The figure of Faust is—after Christ, Mary, and the Devil—the single most popular character in the history of Western Christian culture,” writes Jeffrey Burton Russell in his classic Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World. And of those characters, Faust is the most fully human to us, in his arrogance and his failure, his negotiations and his capitulations, in the whole litany of abuse which the cankered soul is capable of inflicting upon itself. Russell’s contention is far from hyperbole, and amending the word “character” to “narrative,” I’d say that there are few archetypal scripts in our culture as essential as the legend of a man selling his soul to the Devil. from A Deal With the Devil: What the Age-Old Faustian Bargain Reveals About the Modern World
An excerpt from Devil's Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain by Ed Simon
An excerpt from Devil's Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain by Ed Simon
“The figure of Faust is—after Christ, Mary, and the Devil—the single most popular character in the history of Western Christian culture,”
He's no Sherlock Holmes.
posted by biffa at 4:29 AM on August 17 [11 favorites]
He's no Sherlock Holmes.
posted by biffa at 4:29 AM on August 17 [11 favorites]
"I rode a tank
Held a general's rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank...
I shouted out "Who killed the Kennedys?"
When after all
It was you and me"
posted by DJZouke at 5:07 AM on August 17 [5 favorites]
Held a general's rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank...
I shouted out "Who killed the Kennedys?"
When after all
It was you and me"
posted by DJZouke at 5:07 AM on August 17 [5 favorites]
Carl Jung once remarked that if you do not think evil is real then you have not heard of (or seen photos of) Buchenwald.
posted by DJZouke at 5:14 AM on August 17 [5 favorites]
posted by DJZouke at 5:14 AM on August 17 [5 favorites]
Robert Johnson has entered the chat.
posted by thecincinnatikid at 8:40 AM on August 17 [5 favorites]
posted by thecincinnatikid at 8:40 AM on August 17 [5 favorites]
"Anybody who believes in the Devil IS the Devil."
-Rob Breszsny
posted by tspae at 10:24 AM on August 17 [4 favorites]
-Rob Breszsny
posted by tspae at 10:24 AM on August 17 [4 favorites]
As a third-generation atheist, the concepts of sin, temptation, redemption, grace, etc., have never meant anything to me on a personal or visceral level.
I understand them intellectually, but have no direct experience to contrast them with, so stories like Faust et al don't resonate with me at all.
As a writer, this means there are certain plots and stories I never write, because it doesn't occur to me, not even as a subplot or background .
I have the same problem with, for example, sports and alcohol.
posted by signal at 12:20 PM on August 17 [2 favorites]
I understand them intellectually, but have no direct experience to contrast them with, so stories like Faust et al don't resonate with me at all.
As a writer, this means there are certain plots and stories I never write, because it doesn't occur to me, not even as a subplot or background .
I have the same problem with, for example, sports and alcohol.
posted by signal at 12:20 PM on August 17 [2 favorites]
signal, if it might be helpful, i recommend Elaine Pagels' The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans and Heretics. she speaks of writing in the New Yorker:
When I read the Gospels now and I come across the figure of Satan, instead of gliding over it as part of the story, I see it as raising a sort of warning flag, and I think, Ah, what is this writer doing now? What is the clue? What group of people are we speaking about and who is saying this? I became really interested in the structure of who is being demonized and who is doing the demonizing. It’s a question of awareness...posted by HearHere at 3:31 PM on August 17 [6 favorites]
You don't have to believe in the devil to believe evil exists. Frankly a shit load of folks who identify as christians have no problem doing evil, and as some of them have told me, it's ok for me, I'm christian and I'll be forgiven.
posted by evilDoug at 4:43 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
posted by evilDoug at 4:43 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
Season 11 of the Dissect Podcast featured Radiohead's In Rainbows album, which turns out to have some connections to the Faust story.
posted by technodelic at 9:19 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
posted by technodelic at 9:19 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]
what I found so fascinating about this story of a contract with the Devil, for walking upon that hallowed ground, atoms of Marlowe now slick with the dirt on the soles of my shoes, and the part of me that is skeptical of skepticism couldn’t help but feel antique occult enthusiasms, that sense that there may be something beyond this veil of our reality, something that we can access but that we can’t control.
So I've had a couple of instances where I had to focus on both Satan and the nature of evil itself; I once worked in television and was doing research towards a possible show about exorcism, and at another point I was in a really bad relationship and it made me do some really, really shitty things.
When I got out of that shitty relationship, I looked back on some of the things I'd done and it floored me; they seemed really out of character with how I saw who I was. I had to do a lot of work to process that no, actually, I was capable of those things; not because I was inherently uniquely evil, but because I was human, and this situation had stirred up some emotions that I hadn't had experience in regulating before. Fortunately it was enough to get me to practice better coping methods and emotional self-regulation, and I've not ever behaved like that again.
But that shock stuck with me. It was the first time I had ever uncovered that one corner of my psyche, and it freaked me out. And it made me wonder - maybe that kind of shock is behind the human concept of there being a Devil in the first place. It took some therapy for me to wrap my brain around accepting that yes, I am capable of some awful things; but for someone more steeped in religious dogma of any kind, it's very possible that they would attribute that out-of-character behavior to "dang, I must have been temporarily possessed by something." Which isn't too far off - it's just that the thing that they were temporarily possessed by was their own uncontrolled emotion, either anger or fear or something. And if you don't have the support to guide you through that "whoa, I did that?" processing to a point where you can accept that "wow, yeah, I guess I need to learn to manage my anger better", it's possible you come away thinking that "wow, yit must have been the Devil grabbing hold because I'm not like that."
Those darker emotions like anger, fear, and envy can lead people to do super-dark things. Until they accept that "yeah, I'm capable of that" it can be seductive to blame it on Outside Forces.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:56 AM on August 18 [4 favorites]
So I've had a couple of instances where I had to focus on both Satan and the nature of evil itself; I once worked in television and was doing research towards a possible show about exorcism, and at another point I was in a really bad relationship and it made me do some really, really shitty things.
When I got out of that shitty relationship, I looked back on some of the things I'd done and it floored me; they seemed really out of character with how I saw who I was. I had to do a lot of work to process that no, actually, I was capable of those things; not because I was inherently uniquely evil, but because I was human, and this situation had stirred up some emotions that I hadn't had experience in regulating before. Fortunately it was enough to get me to practice better coping methods and emotional self-regulation, and I've not ever behaved like that again.
But that shock stuck with me. It was the first time I had ever uncovered that one corner of my psyche, and it freaked me out. And it made me wonder - maybe that kind of shock is behind the human concept of there being a Devil in the first place. It took some therapy for me to wrap my brain around accepting that yes, I am capable of some awful things; but for someone more steeped in religious dogma of any kind, it's very possible that they would attribute that out-of-character behavior to "dang, I must have been temporarily possessed by something." Which isn't too far off - it's just that the thing that they were temporarily possessed by was their own uncontrolled emotion, either anger or fear or something. And if you don't have the support to guide you through that "whoa, I did that?" processing to a point where you can accept that "wow, yeah, I guess I need to learn to manage my anger better", it's possible you come away thinking that "wow, yit must have been the Devil grabbing hold because I'm not like that."
Those darker emotions like anger, fear, and envy can lead people to do super-dark things. Until they accept that "yeah, I'm capable of that" it can be seductive to blame it on Outside Forces.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:56 AM on August 18 [4 favorites]
I’d say that there are few archetypal scripts in our culture as essential as the legend of a man selling his soul to the Devil.By some strange coincidence (or was it?) this 1986 SNL sketch popped up in my YouTube recommendations last night..
posted by Nerd of the North at 9:04 AM on August 18
Which isn't too far off - it's just that the thing that they were temporarily possessed by was their own uncontrolled emotion, either anger or fear or something. And if you don't have the support to guide you through that "whoa, I did that?" processing to a point where you can accept that "wow, yeah, I guess I need to learn to manage my anger better", it's possible you come away thinking that "wow, yit must have been the Devil grabbing hold because I'm not like that."
There's a word for that: snapped.
posted by thecincinnatikid at 10:09 AM on August 18
There's a word for that: snapped.
posted by thecincinnatikid at 10:09 AM on August 18
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posted by HearHere at 3:34 AM on August 17 [1 favorite]