Echo-locating Satan

Those who investigate the Inquisition, and most especially the witch trials, have come to understand that at the beginning of the era of torture, the confessions of the victims and their descriptions of Satan were quite varied. It was only over time that these confessions coalesced into a somewhat consistent picture of the nature of Satan and their sexually promiscuous orgies with him.

It is also understood that torture does not produce the truth; it evinces a narrative created by a suffering victim desperately seeking to tell the torturer what they want to hear so the pain will end. And, thus, over time the tortured victims produced an image of Satan that the torturers carried within themselves. The Inquisitors sent out the signal and the tales of the victims gradually coalesced into an image of Satan the Inquisitors carried within themselves: sexually promiscuous, cloven hooves, horns, tail, etc…

How else could it have occurred to man to divide the cosmos, on the analogy of day and night, summer and winter, into a bright day-world and a dark night-world peopled with fabulous monsters, unless he had the prototype of such a division in himself, in the polarity between the conscious and the invisible and unknowable unconscious? — Carl Jung

We all carry shadows within us and , unfortunately, can project them upon others because accepting the Shadow within ourselves is so difficult. So our communities become polluted with righteous egos and poisoned by mutual projections.

As for God, so for Satan; who is your Satan? Where do you echolocate evil? You do. Yes, you really do sometimes. You send out the signals and they bounce back to you and activate the sweet, sweet, desire for righteousness within you. You point your finger and, Bam!, there is Satan! (Those f’n devils!)

With what color do you paint your Satan? It’s worthwhile to notice that in spite of your choice of pallette, if you look behind you, you will see that all of our shadows are the same color.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people, somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? -A.Solzhenitzen