"The only person responsible for the couple’s [Adam and Eve's] offense escaped; and not only escaped but became the executioner of the innocent.” - Mark Twain from Letters from the Earth
Notice I said "The Satan?" This is important... but first...
Satan! The only super villain in a league with Darth Vader.
He is regarded as this kind of goat like guy, but he can change shape at will. He has to move around physically (flys? takes Uber?) but he knows all your thoughts and can even make suggestions (uh... what about free will again?). So he is either everywhere all the time or he is really fast... faster than Sant Claus... and that's fast.
Good thing he has only one planet to worry about.
He seems to have all the powers of Yahweh, except Yahweh has just a little bit more so, in a fair fight, Yahweh wins... wait... Yahweh doesn't fight, his son does. God damn this is confusing. Oops... I mean gosh darn...
Who is the Satan character and how did he become an Evil God?
He took on the form we all know and love now and love in medieval times. It is no accident that his form bears striking resemblance to Pan the God of Nature and it's no accident.
To the Christians (at least the Roman Empire version) all of nature was fallen and needed to be redeemed.
Modern Christianity took this and gave the Dark One comic book level super villainy. But that isn't at all when the figure represented.
Satan: noun - from the Hebrew
"adversary, one who plots against another" "to show enmity to, oppose, plot against" (wait, it's a verb? I can satan someone?) from root s-t-n "one who opposes, obstructs, or acts as an adversary." In the Septuagint usually translated into Greek as diabolos "slanderer," means literally "one who throws (something) across" the path of another "In biblical sources the Hebrew term "the satan" describes an adversarial role. It is not the name of a particular character. Although Hebrew storytellers as early as the sixth century B.C.E. occasionally introduced a supernatural character whom they called "the satan", what they meant was any one of the angels sent by God for the specific purpose of blocking or obstructing human activity." Elaine Pagels from The Origin of Satan
This is all from the Online Etymology Dictionary
It is simply a TITLE for an adversary, an obstacle. IT'S A TITLE NOT A NAME!
It is literally the prosecuting attorney in a court of law, the accuser trying to prove that you are a guilty SOB and need to be punished. (Of course, the devil would be a lawyer... duh!) Moreover, just to make this even more mind blowing, satan is the title give to an ANGEL, SENT BY GOD, to get in your way!
WTF?
Every culture has such a character. They are the trickster gods, ready to throw the monkey wrench and help snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But to what end? Is this just Yahweh entertaining Himself. I guess eternity can get pretty boring.
"Adversity is the first path to truth. - Lord Byron"
Just look at your own life. Are there not times in your life you are grateful for now that seemed utterly oppressive when you were in them? Have not the most significant gains been made when forced to drop our assumptions and petty entitlements? It seems wisdom is only taught as the School of Hard Knocks and apparently, it is the only school that teaches it.
I have found in my own life though, that, having recognized everything that is not true must fall away and that I am too often clinging to that which is not at all serving my highest self, I have come to welcome the coming of the satan, the trickster. Even finding that, indeed, he/she/it was sent by the highest to bring me higher and never as a punishment.
Understanding this tends to make us more malleable, more cooperative with life, more willing to flow with the Tao than to try to push the waves back out to sea. More humble in recognizing that life is not against me and all of it is for my blessing.
When our dreams are thwarted and it seems as though "God has forsaken me" and my life circumstances look like the gargoyles on the church wall, recognize that is really God in disguise, reminding us of the folly of human conceit and the inevitable destiny that awaits us all. The awakening to the truth that God, impersonal and universal, is all that has ever existed.
"When you truly know the things, you know yourself and when you know yourself, you know the Lord." - Awhad al-din Balyani
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