I’m getting my car looked at tomorrow. Too many things all at once. Getting the car detailed on either Tuesday or Wednesday, can’t remember which one. Have physical therapy one day next week; can’t remember which day. I have an appointment calendar somewhere; can’t find it at the moment. Have been wasting fabric and time screwing up the applique portion of Beautiful Beige; can’t seem to get it right for the life of me. Have no idea why things are so chaotic at the moment; it feels like New York City and The Cutting Room all over again.
I thought I would have a leg brace by now; I don’t. So I’m back to needing to struggle my way around Westerly, Rhode Island without one next weekend. Just like New York City. And how well I remember the physical problems I had after New York.
Meanwhile ... ahh, the fun of researching ... I realized that at some point I would need to get some background on Milton’s belief in the character of Satan to begin with. Since I pay next to no attention to that particular character, one way or the other, I went and read up on what various groups of people have to say about him ... and if that wasn’t a messy and confusing collection of opinions, I can’t tell you what is. You have christians squealing “Eeek!” and running around in circles like chickens with their heads chopped off, and you have satanists squealing “Yay!” and making him sound like the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel. Was actually hoping for a more rational, reasonable, unemotional approach. Origins? History?I eventually looked up various books written on the subject, and ordered two of them – my interest was in the historical background of the concept, not the generally hysterical fear or glee that some people get themselves bound into knots over ... those people you end up feeling (somewhat) sorry for, as it must be awful to live your lives in such fear all the time.
My own thoughts on the subject? He exists for those who believe he exists; for those of us who don’t, he’s irrelevant. And the character is more of an archetype. You create him in your own mind because you’re told to when you’re too young to question it, or because he meets a need that is already inside of you to begin with. Or, as Milton himself wrote: “The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
You want to run around being a serial killer, you invent someone who propels you into it, because you need to.
The Luciferians are another breed altogether – they don’t buy into the Satanic thing; they do believe in the Morning Star being; one of light and radiance. So, as I said, there are a lot of different thoughts on the subject; and trying to wade through all of it can start your eyeballs rolling around in your head. You start looking for individual threads to start untangling the mess. Not an easy task, believe me.
I did know that the concept is believed to have originated with both the Zoroastrian concepts of dark and light that infiltrated Jewish tradition during their Babylonian exile, and in a confused mistranslation of references to the “Morning Star” (hence the name of Lucifer – Bright Star, Morning Star, etc.) which seems a rather inappropriate name for the being eventually saddled with the “root-of-all-evil” moniker. And that christians took this and literally ran with it ... they absolutely adored the concept of an entirely evil creature to hang their dark, shameful sins on. That wasn’t me, the Devil made me do it!
So how did this being – whose brilliance was so intense that he was named after a bright morning star, and who even resided in the heavenly realms long after ancient scrolls were incorporated into the Torah – come to personify the changes in people’s beliefs that transformed a being who was a brilliant denizen of the heavenly realms to a being who scares the (bleep) out of people and yet makes them do horrible things?
And which version of him was Milton looking at or envisioning, as he wrote Paradise Lost? The beliefs of Milton’s time had their own flavoring ... the beliefs of the American fundamentalists today may not match Milton’s.
I may have missed something in all of those pages, but it seems like his big crime was “pride”. Really. Pride? That’s what did it – that’s what precipitated the gigantic “fall”? Do you have any idea how many people on the planet are guilty of the same thing, if not worse levels of it? Hell, the asshole who cuts you off on the highway and the woman too fat and lazy to wheel her shopping cart into the shopping cart bay are both guilty of the same thing: the underlying belief that their needs surpass everyone else’s needs – at its most basic level: pride.
Everyone knows someone who believes that they exist at the center of everyone else’s universe ... which is another form of pride. People who post their opinions as standards that everyone else should aspire to – yet another form. Your local gym is packed to the walls with people admiring their own physiques; everyone knows a manager who practically oozes arrogance out of his or her pores. Let’s face it – the whole planet is practically waterlogged with people who have the same issue that Satan supposedly did: a seriously overinflated sense of themselves – and that includes the a lot of the same people I mentioned above who are running around flapping their hands and squealing “Eeek!” at the very mention of his name. And this was his big crime? It almost makes you laugh, when you think about it.
My favorite current example of overweening pride came from (naturally) an American fundamentalist who witnessed the devastation caused by the earthquake in Nepal and tweeted: “Praying 4 the lost souls in Nepal. Praying not a single destroyed pagan temple will b rebuilt & the people will repent/receive Christ.”
The revulsion that tweet generated was global, because it was such an evil thing to think – much less say out loud – and, practically dripping with arrogance, horrified and disgusted just about everyone other than other American fundamentalists. I don’t think even “Satan” has ever been credited with a quote that awful. So congratulations to the Santa Clarita, California author of that – for surpassing the big bad guy who supposedly experienced a great “fall” for even less arrogance and pride than that one tweet evinced. Everyone has been hearing how California is running out of water. And yet, you don’t see the millions of Hindus and Buddhists tweeting that obviously his beliefs generated a terrifying drought in the State of California, so he should come around to their way of thinking, do you? Ought to tell you something, right there. Insufferable pride. In his case, a nauseating degree of it, and an utter lack of compassion his own deity would have found horrifying.
Needless to say, I look forward to doing a bit more research into the subject ...
Am now the proud owner of the most beautiful ring – a rose quartz in the shape of a teardrop, which means, according to some site which I have forgotten to credit: “Innocence. Will help you to link with the confidence of your inner being and be grounded with the earth.” The rose quartz is supposed to attract love, so the combination of the two should ... attract love, but enable me to retain my innocence, which almost sounds like a false impression of unbroken virginity? Okay, maybe not such a good interpretation. And okay, I feel neither innocent, confident in my inner being or grounded at the moment – but wow, does it ever look nice on my finger! Let’s hope I don’t break the nail again, shall we? Breaking nails right and left does not do a lot for my confidence – in either my inner or outer being.But maybe it will attract the perfect lover, who doesn’t care that (a) my innocent and confident demeanor exists only in my ring, (b) I have dirt on my shoes (well, I am ‘grounded with the earth’, right?), and (c) my nails may or may not be broken? I like that possibility, let’s hold out hope for that one.
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