You’re walking through darkness, aimlessly wondering what it all leads to. Finally you see a light, and walk into it. It appears there is nothing there but a mirror, but then the space around you reveals itself. It’s a space dedicated to worship. An altar. But there are no gods here. No idols. No statues of saviours. No sacred art. No sacred names. Not even a high priest or an audience. It’s just a mirror occupying the space, and you’re the only one here. But this is still a sacred space. You must wonder: who is the god enshrined here?
Lucifer in the Shin Megami Tensei series, who apparently looks gorgeous.
We know the story, the devil (Lucifer/Beelzebub/Satan, whoever you want to call him) wanted a place higher than the biblical “God”, considers himself better than the other angels and didn’t like having to bow down to humans, and in general never liked being told what to do. And so, after waging war against heaven with a third of the angelic host, he was defeated and fell to the ground, watching and waiting for a chance to strike again. From then on he’d be propagandized as the one responsible for all sin and evil, the supreme tempter of mankind, the lord of nasty things (much like Ahriman in Zoroastrian myth being the creator of pain and creepy-crawlies), the king of evil, etc. In other words, the rebellious angel became the scapegoat through which we absolve ourselves of thought and personal responsibility by blaming it all on another entity. But that’s not what being a devil is about.
Have you ever noticed that demons and devils seem to appear in just about every religion, or least what could be called religion? A devil is the antithesis of all religious thought, and of conventional thought. Who in the right mind could deny that in the Bible, the thing most greatly attributed to him was the fact that the devil refused to obey the orders of god? The greatest attribute of a devil is that a devil is self-serving. A devil thinks for himself. A devil doesn’t care how he’s perceived. A devil follows his own judgement on just about everything. A devil worships nothing and no one, not even a “satanic” god. Being a devil is about freedom, in a way. By that logic, what is true freedom? Freedom is autonomous thought, thinking for yourself, never having to worship or bow down to anyone, never being governed by anyone except yourself, never having to be responsible for anything except yourself. That’s why a devil is so appealing, because a devil is a freethinker, not bound by anything.
A more demonic artwork of Lucifer from Shin Megami Tensei II, just for the lulz
Aleph's Heretical Domain 