Wednesday 15 December 2010

What is Devil Worship?

To define the concept of devil worship I came across an informative website called Devil Worship, Your Friendly neighbourhood Devil Worshipper’s Site mapThroughout the website there are links to articles or as the website describes them as 'sermons' regarding topics that concern Devil Worship. The first sermon is titled What Devil Worship is.
The author of this sermon focuses on who devil worshipers actually worship. He denies the basic assumption that many followers of others make (including myself also), that the devil is an fallen Angel. He goes on to claim that the Bible does not refer to the devil as a fallen Angel at all but rather as a dragon. He provides a quote from Revelation 12:9 : "The great dragon was hurled down - that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray."


It is a clear from reading this introduction that devil worship is a way of expressing one's devotion to a cultural scapegoat that is reclaimed as a slandered divinity. The examples that are mentioned include Apep in Egypt, Loki in Northern Europe and Satan in Christianity.
However if the particular devil being worshiped is Satan a more specific term is used. Instead of devil worship it is referred to as Theistic Satanism.
Another website I came across is The Description, Philosophies and Justification of Satanism. This website had a very negative perspective on devil worship. arguing that those who choose to worship the devil are influenced by Christianity and are looking for a way to rebel. To carry out this rebellion they worship the devil rather then God in Christianity. It is clear that this website is biased and is attacking devil worship to justify its own form of satan worship. However the polemics of this website and the differences between devil worship and satanism is a discussion I am going to leave for another post.
I am guilty myself for automatically associating the term devil worship to a group of people who worship satan, who is the evil entity mentioned in Christianity and Islam. The tern devil is not limites to a single evil entity such as satan but can be used differntly across various cultures. Although one thing is clear, the term devil whenever used in any culture refers to some sort of evil, be that a spirit or a human being.