Being the Gore Monger, I'm naturally good friend's with the Dark Lord. I say things like; "Hi Satan." And he answers with, "Who the hell are you?" "Who let you in here?' or "Shut the damn door! This is a toilet not a convention center." We're buds. He's promised me a BBQ when I get to hell...well, something about turning on a spit anyway.
The world's religions are full of bad guys. In some Indonesian cultures you have to beat the hunters with reeds when they return from the jungle lest they track evil spirits in with them. Loki from Celtic mythology was known to turn himself into a horse so that he could have sex with other horses...I don't really understand why that would make him a bad guy. Unless you were riding the other horse at the time.
For all the fun the world's bad guys provide who could be a better master in hell than a big guy with cloven hooves, horns and a forked tongue. Sometimes the devil is depicted as an almost pitiable, fallen angel. Which is fine if you want to pass up the opportunity to have The Devil leave a burning line of fire on some virgin's thigh as he licks her. Whooo hoo. That gave me a shiver. Anyway.
Satan's image is actually cobbled together from several sources. Most of his history comes from the bible and ancient Hebrew so we'll start there. The most literal translation from Hebrew for the word Satan is "an adversary." Some medieval heretics were actually burned for suggesting that there was no Satan and the old testament was meant to talk about the opponents of the twelve tribes. My feeling is this; once your skin is burning, you can't really remember what you were arguing about. I agree with whoever's got the matches and lighter fluid. Whatever the word origin, old testament folks did not perceive Satan as we do today, as you will see below.
Satan's other name: "The Devil" comes from the Greek for "slanderer" or "accuser." Under this definition, Doug Williamson may be the devil. In the third grade Doug accused me of stealing his yo-yo which I did not do but for which I served detention. Now the backpack full of cold oatmeal that Doug turned up with a week later, well, you get what you deserve. The little shit.
In appearance, Satan is largely designed to look like the Horned God that appears in many Northern European traditions. The Horned God is actually found in many cultures with many names (Cernunnos, Pan.) As Christianity moved out of Israel, into Rome and on to Northern Europe, it began adopting or opposing existing culture as it went. Christmas Day, was picked early on because it coincided with an already existing Roman feast. Some wise Christian realized that Romans would change the name of their holiday, even the intent as long as you didn't make them update their calendars. (Apparently, they couldn't figure out their Outlook calendars either.) The same thing happened again later when Easter ceased being a fertility rite and became a celebration of Christ's resurrection.
There was an equal and negative side of this. European traditions that didn't jive with the early church found themselves under attack. Thousands (some say millions) of midwives and pagan medicine women were slaughtered for being in league with Satan. Never mind that they couldn't read Hebrew and didn't know what the word meant. The old ways were going and so were the "witches." (a perversion of the word Wicca, which has about a zillion meanings now but came from Gaelic paganism.)
The same with the Horned God. Sometime, probably late in the first millennium, images of The Devil, already associated with serpents from biblical times, started appearing in literature and imagery looking much like The Horned God. I'm not sure where he got that stupid goatee. Brad Pitt was wearing it last time I looked. A few hundred years of wars and inquisitions and we arrive at a creature that's the Devil we all know and love. Scales, horns, fallen angel, raging libido, a thing for brimstone, this guy has got it all.
In movies, my favorite depiction of Satan is from the 1985 movie "Legend." Featuring the then unheard of Tom Cruz, "Legend" has no plot, some interesting imagery and the most totally kick ass Satan ever. It's Tim "I'm too sexy for my planet" Curry wearing the most awesome costume and doing evil sexy in a way the makes John Malcovich look like Gilligan. It so rocks.
Satan (or his followers) are so overused in literature and films, that he's sort of fallen into that vampires and H.R. Greiger giant bug aliens dilemma. The markets are so overloaded with stories that they all start to look alike. I've been waiting for a while to read the scifi/horror crossover that realizes that Satan is a part of the universe like God is and that forces like dark energy and entropy tell us profound things about the nature of the devil. Maybe he could start "expanding" people with dark energy. Ooo. Do you think they'd start to leak or would they pop all at once? "Yuck! I had my mouth open when Phil popped."
Gotta go. Satan wants his slippers. Now get out there and write.
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