quote:
Originally posted by MagiK:
The Babylonians and Sumerians both had central evil "satan" figures in their beliefs.
Well the Sumerians had actually alot of evil godds, neutral so to say and also alot of good gods. A bit more like the greek mythology. They also put alot of value into the reading of star signs, but saw that as the unknown fearing it. Hence alot of Lovecrafts and other horror writers fascination with the old belief and religions.
Satanism is probably one of the hardest thing to try and root out. The western figure from Satan in print was inspired by the good of luck from old babylonian believes, the goat head was the corner stone from old european fear for loose animals in cities tha spread the plague. Gnosticism is also to "blame" the belief that mankind were tricked by satan to believe that god was satan and vice versa came from gnosticim munks. Satanism as it is in more modern society with Anton De la Vey? (donīt remeber his actual spelling here) have actually denounced his satan bible as LSD provoked printings and the "cool" factor of being hype. But then again some say that is just to make people uncertain and so on..
Satanism is refered to in so many forms it is hard to find one combining factor in most..
Some curiosa.
If someone likes I can try and dig out alot of books about this.. Wrote a work of "satanism" and tried to find the roots of it, it was a big work and not 100% to find it I can tell you. So much combines, twist, influence are misread and so on that tracing things you have more or less to "assume" that some points are the right once to get to the bottom of it.