He's an explanation for imperfection
Green Lady,
I enjoy reading the various legends and myths about Satan in these posts. I wondered for years how a God who is omniscient and perfect could have created an imperfect world. The old testament was confusing on that point, and further explanations founded in the so-called "traditional" teachings further obfuscated my understanding. Satan as Evil? The guy that made all the bad stuff happen? Wait a minute, didn't the good guy make the world, and so shouldn't the world be all good? What went wrong? I thought God was perfect? He must not have been perfect, after all. It was only in my forties that I emboldened myself enough to confront my brainwashing without fear, and a mythos emerged that was more satisfying to me than what I learned in Sunday School. And here it is:
There is a great God, the Supreme. He or it (I call him He because He stepped forth from himself, i.e., a sort of Yang principal) looked at himself. Thus came "understanding". "Understanding" ("Light, be it!") became thought, will, wisdom (and compassion), and substance. These are aspects of the Great God. But, anyway, wisdom, also called by her feminine name "Sophia" (a Greek word, obviously) thought to herself, "I am perfect, for am I not of perfection?" Which she was, she was good, not bad. But she didn't cooperate with her mate, Understanding, when she bore a child out of herself, by herself. The child was a hideous monstrosity, with the head of a lion and the body of a serpent. She was afraid of it. She called the child "Yaldabaoth", which means (from the Hebrew into the Greek) "Child, come here." Incidentally, notice how many words are derived from "Ya": Jehovih, Jah-Ras-Ta-Far-I, Yahweh, the Greek IAO, the Scottish name for Gods-Child, which is "Janet", etc., etc., etc., Likewise, note the name "Belial", which was what the Jewish Essenes at Qumran (Dead Sea Scrolls) called Satan: Baal (from Babylon), became Bull, etc. Note the earthly symbolism. In this sense, Satan is just a way of attributing earthly attributes like lust, killing, eating, defecation, you name it, as opposed to intellectual and spiritual attributes. It is a metaphor, and the Kabbalah is the understanding of that metaphor (as above, so below) and the Old Testament (and the New!) are stories that unwittingly couch Kabbalah. (My point-of-view: the Bible is not history. To confuse history with allegory is what the madrases in Pakistan and Afghanistan do, and the product is Taliban. I understand the "Bible as the text book" is making a comeback here in the U.S., also--Disturbing)
Back to the story-- Sophia hid Yaldabaoth away in a mist, which was our present universe. Yaldabaoth was not evil, but he was ignorant and without the breath of spirit. He was something of a crafty artisan, and he made the world in which we live. Beautiful, isn't it? But also imperfect, wouldn't you say?
"Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?" - W. Blake was saying things that were revealed in the Nag Hammadi find 100 years later.
He, Yaldabaoth, made humankind, and the animals. Sophia's brothers and sisters, and their Great Father, knew what she had done, and had a group hug, a family talk, making her feel better, and said, "we'll fix things for you little sis." So, the heavenly Archons (the aspects of YHVH) tricked Yaldabaoth into breathing the Holy Spirit into the human. This has to do with the Seth that you read about elsewhere. Seth is the spirit, perfected form of humanity. In us is the breath, or light, of Seth. Yaldabaoth figured out he had been tricked, and was set against humanity ever since. He resented the fact that humankind was heaven-bound, while he had to remain earth bound.
Many things come out of this Greek quasi-ecclectic fantasy, but to me, it makes a great deal of sense. To the Gnostics, the old testament god was an imposter. He tricked the Hebrews, somewhere along the line, into worshipping him. Note the many animal sacrifices in the old testament. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, one of the oldest scrolls, the Temple Scroll, goes on at length about "A pleasing aroma to YHVH", and they burned enough sheep, lambs, rams, and cows to bankrupt a small state. This was confusing to me, I couldn't imagine a good god being pleased with the stench of burning flesh, not to mention the suffering of beautiful, innocent creatures. It is one of those questions that doesn't make sense, until you reject it outright, and better understanding begins to settle in the knowledge vacuum! Now, it is also a brave step to reject certain orthodox teachings. Mind you, good people can follow the wrong symbols. It is easy to be tricked. I will save the story of Constantine and the Cross for another time. Suffice to say, a cross is a horrible device of torture. Imagine carrying a little gold Guillotine around on a chain? And Marie Antoinette looking down from on high and saying, "Good God, man! Take that bloody thing off your neck, it scares me!" The earliest Christians represented their faith through the symbol of a fish--life! Not death. The cross began to creep in a couple of hundred years later, a few miles north of Palestine...in Europe.
So, in short, our physical substance is the handiwork of a creative, but ignorant and imperfect god, Yaldabaoth. Satan, Samael, etc. He doesn't merit hate, because it is like hating a baby who throws a tantrum. He does bad things, but out of ignorance and jealousy. Note also, the "My god is a jealous God" of the old testament. Why would God be jealous? In fact, God is not jealous, but Yaldabaoth (a lesser god) certainly is. He's jealous of us. Our higher, spirit self is the emanation of a heavenly God. The idea of Jesus was that he came to earth to wake up humankind (notice I say human, not man), and remind us that our place is in heaven, with the heavenly father. Earth is nice, but don't make it a habit. To become entrenched in material satisfaction is to fall under the spell of Yaldabaoth, who wants to keep us here to be his playthings.
Find Marvin Meyer's book, "The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus", and read "The Secret Teachings of John"-- my story is a paraphrase of that.
