The Christian Mythology

by E. B. Leatherbee

That much of the absurd fabric of Christianity is built upon a belief in Satan cannot be denied, for the whole theology is based upon the necessity of a savior whose death atones for the sins of mankind, which were consequent upon man’s fall from grace through the machinations of the devil. Had man never fallen, there were no need of a savior. Had man never been tempted, he would never have fallen, and in no words was the necessity of a belief in the devil more plainly set forth than by that most orthodox writer, des Mousseaux, in his “Moeurs et Pratiques des Demons,” published in 1852. He says: “The Devil is the chief pillar of Faith. He is one of the grand personages whose life is closely allied to that of the church, and without his speech, which issued out so triumphantly from the mouth of the serpent, the fall of man could never have taken place. Thus, if it were not for him, the Savior, the Crucified, the Redeemer, would be but the most ridiculous of supernumeraries and the cross an insult to good sense!” In his preface to “Les Hauts Phenomènes de la Magie,” des Mousseaux repeats this theory: “If magic and spiritualism were both but chimeras, we would have to bid an eternal farewell to all the rebellious angels now troubling the world; for thus we would have no more demons down here.... And if we lost our demons, we would lose our Savior likewise; for, from whom did that Savior save us? And then there would be no more Redeemer; for, from whom or what could that Redeemer redeem us? Hence, there would be no more Christianity.” He evidently regards Satan as “the prince of this world” ([John xii, 31]; [xvi, 11]); “the god of this world” ([Cor. iv, 4]); and “the prince of the power of the air” ([Eph. ii, 2]).

The universally accepted belief of Christendom in the almost absolute power of the devil was the cause of the most awful persecution of innocence that the world has ever seen. While the tortures of the heretics by the Inquisition had some cause of a political as well as ecclesiastical nature, the houndings of those accused of witchcraft and sorcery had no foundation save in superstition and gross ignorance. During the Christian era millions of persons have been destroyed for this crime in conformity to the command, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” ([Ex. xxii, 18]). The Roman church recognized and punished the crime; Luther approved of the burning of witches; the Scotch reformers did likewise, and the Puritans of New England delighted in the persecution.

While all religiously orthodox people accept the narrative of scriptural miracles with unquestioning faith and never cast a doubt on the greatest improbabilities so long as they are told of biblical heroes, these very people assign all the seeming supernatural affairs of post-scriptural times to the devil. Psychical phenomena which, if performed two thousand years ago by Jesus (such as the resurrection of Lazarus and the materialization to the Magdalene), they accept without hesitation, they brand as trickery or a delusion or Satan, when placed before them by a professed Spiritualist.

Witches and wizards were condemned to horrible deaths by the medieval church for performing the very identical acts for which the same church canonized departed saints and instituted offices for their adoration and worship; and modern Christians smile and sneer derisively at fortune tellers, but condemn in holy horror as heretics those who refuse to believe in the foreseeing powers of the ancient Hebrew prophets.

This Christian devil-worship, for it can be called little else, crept into Judaism during the Babylonian captivity, and was originally a recognition of the dual powers of good and evil, seemingly coequal. By placing Satan in opposition to God, in giving him eternal life, and endowing him with miraculous powers, and even allowing him to upset and vanquish the plans of God, Christians have made Satan equal, if not superior, to the Deity. A Puritan bigot hanging witches in New England was admitting in the plainest manner his faith in Satan’s power, though it never occurred to him for an instant that these curious happenings might be attributed to God. The power of God to perform miracles was then, as now, a matter of the past. With the Protestant Reformation came the idea that no longer did God interfere for the benefit of man. In the seventeenth century God had ceased to work by other than natural agencies. His miraculous powers, if not lost, were at least suspended. But not so Satan—that archfiend was as powerful as ever, if not more so. He could inflict magical tortures on God’s divinely elect and make them writhe in agony. Pious Cotton Mather had ceased to believe in divine miracles, but he had no doubt of devilish ones, and it appears to all students of that dark and shameful period of our history that the belief was rampant among the majority that God was vanquished and Satan ruled. Never was belief in the dual principles of good and evil more surely set forth in ancient Persia than it was in New England by such harsh, cruel, and bigoted priests as Mather and Parrish.

Today, while all churchmen have grown more liberal, we still find both in pulpit and pew innumerable believers in the power of Satan to tempt and force erring humanity into wrong and sinful paths in miraculous salvation from which by God they have no faith. Today, instead of earthly and present salvation by the Deity from the clutches of Satan, the belief seems prevalent that a post-mortem salvation is more efficacious, and that all that is required for eternal bliss is belief in the vicarious atonement of the Christ. To hear our orthodox friends declaim on the powers of Satan almost makes one ready to believe that God is dead and Satan rules supreme. Such is the blasphemy of demonic faith.

While Satan, as the arch-enemy, is somewhat similar to the Persian Ahriman, he is not alone in his wickedness. When Christianity came into power and supplanted paganism as the Roman state religion, it immediately debased all of the pagan gods, whom it did not appropriate to itself as saints, to devils and assigned them subordinate positions in hell, under command of the great Satan. And thus, all the beautiful water sprites, sylvan nymphs, spirits of the air, and other lesser deities, became the associates of wickedness, and, as such, continued, until a very recent date, to hold sway over the superstitious imaginations of the majority of Europeans.

The mediæval church likewise invented the famous succubæ and incubi, the former demons impersonating the beautiful nymphs of the old mythology and attacking the virtue of youths with their seductive arts, while the latter, in imitation of the ancient satyrs, sought the virginity of unsuspecting maidens; all of which may readily be learned of in accounts of the many trials held by “the Holy Inquisition,” in which such were condemned as had held intercourse with these demons.

In many cases, women swearing to have had intercourse with incubi were merely suffering from erotic and nymphomaniac hallucinations, while others may have found it a convenient excuse for explaining illicit impregnations. Men, falling under the charms of women, found it a convenient method for disposing of their loves, after the infatuation had passed, by declaring them succubæ; and monks, who had contracted venereal diseases, laid their sufferings to these same fair demons. In the case of the monks, however, the succubæ were often of purely hallucinary origin, due to excessive asceticism together with the suppression of natural desires and a too faithful conformity to the ordinance of celibacy. Nymphomania is also prevalent in convents, owing to the unnatural sexual lives led by the nuns, who either remain truly chaste or abandon themselves to all sorts of debauchery and perverted lubricities. In former times these rages of demented women were supposed to have been caused by possession of demons, which tormented them at the orders of magicians, and advantage was often taken by the unscrupulous to accuse their enemies of the crime of sorcery, and thus cause their execution.

One of the most famous of these horrible affairs was that of Loudin in Poitiers, where the nuns of the Ursuline convent, becoming hysterical and demented, swore themselves afflicted by Urbain Grandier, a priest of the local church, and despite the attempts of the rational bailiff and sensible civil lieutenants, some enemies of the curé among the exorcists managed to secure the arrest, torture, and final burning of the unfortunate man in 1632. Later, it was discovered that, being personally attractive, handsome and gallant, Grandier, who never denied his numerous amours, had incurred the enmity of the Loudin nuns by entirely ignoring their advances; and hell hath no fury like a woman scorned! These libidinous women, constantly brooding over disappointment to their fond hopes, gave such a character of demonic possession to their neurosis that advantage could be taken of it by rival priests to rid themselves of an envied enemy. The writhings, gesticulations, convulsions, etc., of these unfortunate women, combined with the indecency of their actions on the approach of the exorcists (caused merely by the approach of a male), were believed by the vulgar to be demonstrations of demonic possession. Other nuns, seeing the attention and notoriety thus gained by these sisters, although themselves free from dementia, could not resist the temptation to simulate its forms and thus acquire renown for themselves.