"He was despised:" Christmas and the Messiah

Madonna and Child with St. Anne

I would like to begin this post by noting that it took me a long time to figure out exactly what I wanted to write about for this post, but I also knew I could not let Christmas go by without writing something about it. I thought I would simultaneously revisit a previous topic on this blog – the nature of Atu XV The Devil from the tarot. While this seems like an unlikely subject to bring into a discussion about Christmas, there’s, as always, a reason for doing so.

As I get older (and one would like to imagine, wiser), I keep feeling this deep urge within myself to search out the religious experience with greater enthusiasm. For me, the holiday is not so much about presents, food, or celebrations, but has become more about meditation and penance, as well as great hope. I recognize that I am a contemplative person naturally, but this season in particular – perhaps because of the increasing cold and barrenness, the way nature wants to make us slow down – seems geared toward greater introspection.

Advent, if you may be aware, is a penitential season, not one of celebration. We are reminded that Christ is “coming” in order to die a wretched death, not to be coddled and cooed over like every other baby. This is why it is so important in Luke’s Gospel that Christ is born in a manger, shunned by everyone in Bethlehem. Christ comes into the world undesired and for the most part unloved. He dies hated for being a rebellious religious upstart, after having healed many who did not necessarily deserve His blessing.

Therefore, I cannot help but feel that there’s something profoundly bittersweet and sad about Christmas. Part of the Christmas celebration is about recognizing the salvation that comes with the Nativity, but we conveniently forget that that salvation comes at a tremendous price. I also think of the old Renaissance paintings of the Virgin and Child, where Mary looks slightly melancholy in her contemplation of the God she holds, and the Christ Child restlessly squirms in her embrace, nervous but anxious to do His Father’s Will. Both of them know what will happen. How is it that we seem to have forgotten what will happen?

The true joy of Christmas then, cannot have anything to do with transitory things that grant momentary pleasures. The pure blessings of happiness the season is supposed to bring must be received in acknowledging that we are entirely unworthy of so great a gift. It is through humility and fear of the Lord that we come to appreciate the religious significance of the holiday.

But instead, the holiday has been degraded into a time when children look forward to receiving endless things, and adults (myself included) struggle and grope to recreate the Christmases of their youth. And while there can be beautiful aspects of these as well – that is, the ideas of charity, innocence, nostalgia, and tradition – they seem to reflect only parts of the central idea without laying it bare and honestly. I sympathize with the people who want to “put Christ back in Christmas,” but also with the people who want to celebrate the holiday with exciting parties alongside their families. But if we are to be realistic with ourselves, these things make Christmas a chore, not a joy. By distracting ourselves from the main source of joy in Christmas with several other little and transitory joys, we have missed out a great deal. And we have also created an awful lot of stress and financial burden for ourselves.

I promised that I would somehow include XV The Devil into this post, and now might be a good opportunity to try. Of course, your average Christian will look at the Devil’s presence in the tarot and immediately jump to irrational conclusions about the practice of divination – “it’s satanic!” or “you’ll go to hell!” etc. All of these are of course entirely false. First of all, XV The Devil (at least in Crowley’s tarot) represents an initiated individual who has recreated their own morality based on the nature of their divine True Will. People label something as “a devil” or “evil” if they are afraid of it, or if they do not understand it. An individual who has questioned set modes of morality and made up their own mind on the subject may be unconventional or less inhibited, and could in that case be considered such absurd things by others. But at the same time, psychologists argue that real maturity comes from being able to dissolve morality learned from parents, societies, and religious institutions, and reassemble it back into a better understood, more flexible, and unique framework. The individuals who never take steps to question morality never fully develop as people, and remain in the darkness of ignorance. They are also the people who are most likely to not understand why something is right or wrong. Let this be clearly understood by those who would irrationally and rashly jump to conclusions about the Devil trump card, or tarot in general.

This is a significant aspect of the Devil card, as Crowley writes that he is a symbol of the Messiah revealed to the initiated. Indeed, some Gnostic Christians (albeit “heretical” Christians) believed that Satan and Christ were two sides of the same coin. For them,  Satan lead man to truth and wisdom and thereby redeemed man from his state of ignorance. But Christ Himself fits the description of the Devil card’s personality: He is rebellious; He disobeys the Law of the masses because He possesses greater authentic understanding of it; He advocates preaching of the Gospel by all, despite their ability to do so or not; He is hated by many, and is condemned from the moment of his birth until his Passion; He wields miraculous power over natural substances, whether it be the body, food, or wine; and He is “the Word made flesh.”

I will try to explain this last bit as succinctly as possible, since I realize it is probably the most esoteric part of this post so far. XV The Devil represents the reconciling of the highest with the lowest – the incarnation of the spirit in the flesh. In Kabbalistic term, it is the notion that Kether (IAO, the masculine Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is contained in Malkuth (the body, the Bride of Christ, and the Tabernacle of the Holy Spirit). Kether is the First Mover of the Aristotelian cosmology, and is seen as the First Logos (Word or Will) as well, since a God is synonymous with its Will. In fact, a God may only be contemplated by understanding of its Will, since His name is ineffable and His presence concealed – hence why we come to know the Father through the Son, who represents the Father’s Will. But of course, Christ was made incarnate in the flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit, and through the womb of the Virgin Mary. It is said that in this moment, God reconciled the difference between the highest and lowest, and thereby granted salvation. The Devil card is therefore a representation of the Messiah – the Zeal of the Lord of Hosts descending in joy upon the earth, Malkuth, or the lowest aspect of an individual, and thereby anointing him/her (“Christ” means “anointed one”), granting them prosperity and fertility.

There is nothing “Satanic” about this. Satan in the form Christianity has given him – the glowing red, black-winged, pitchfork-wielding human-devourer – is a fallacy invented by the ignorant in their fear of death. But the image of Satan as the fusion between the Spirit and the animal self that we cannot deny we bear, is entirely relevant.

To return to the matter of Christmas. XV The Devil in its most negative connotation is seen as materialism, and indeed as we have seen he does represent that to some extent, as it represents the incarnation of the spirit in the bowels of the earth. But there is a danger to this, as we are all too aware. When we become too materialistic, we breed egotism, ignorance, and evil. This is the real “Devil” of Christianity, whose force is exhibited in the Seven Deadly Sins, each of which is based on some base desire of the body. These, then, are the meanings contained the spectrum of meanings for the symbol of the Devil. On one hand we have Godliness and the birth of the Messiah – on the other hand, materialism and wickedness. Christmas itself contains both these polar meanings; one is superior, the other far less desirable. In our eagerness to turn Christmas into a meaningless celebration of consumerism, we have substituted the benevolence of God’s gifts with our own, and these could, based on what I have previously written, be considered “evil.”

Once again, it seems that we have rejected the Messiah because we do not try hard enough to understand Him. Like the image of the Devil in the tarot, He is despised for His independence and almost foreign nature. What Christ brought with His message was almost revolutionary. The idea of divinity incarnating as man, thereby coming to understand human suffering, and thus developing enough sympathy for man so as to grant him salvation was not new. This was the basic premise of the Dionysian mystery cult, after all. But the notion that God comes into the world hated and shamed, but still willing to sacrifice Himself out of love even for those who hated Him, was truly unheard of. What Jesus did through His acts was unheard of. His idea of morality was not understood by the majority of people, and because he resisted the power of the moral authority, He was targeted, labeled by many who feared Him as "evil," or even "demonic," and was ultimately slain. 

But of course, there are shades of gray to my argument as far as Christmas is concerned. I don’t mean to suggest that all material aspects of the holiday should be abandoned, only reevaluated. When we place all our expectations for the season in its abundance, we miss out greatly. And frankly, there is an allegorical value to the prosperity Christmas celebrations are supposed to represent. As I mentioned before, the Devil/Messiah is also a symbol of fructification and fertility, success, ecstasy, and supreme happiness. It’s as if all our cultural materialism in regards to the holiday is a reflection of God’s humor; we’re close to understanding it, but simultaneously disastrously distant from it. 

I’d like to end in the same witty vein: XV The Devil represents the sign of Capricorn, which is the sign the sun enters on the 22^nd of December. That’s right – Jesus is a Capricorn.

Da capo section of "He was despised" from Handel's Messiah

[I hope this post did not offend anyone, and only offered some points to meditate on. I would like to include as a disclaimer that I do not consider myself a Satanist in any capacity. I am simply an anti-dogmatist, and I believe in the value of pushing people outside their bounds of “right” and “wrong.” Otherwise, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and a blessed New Year.]

Atu XV The Devil: "Ye shall be as gods"

Atu XV, the Devil, is easily the most misunderstood card in the entire pack, and yet, for Crowley, it was a card of tremendous importance. Of course, the idea of Satan was deeply significant to Crowley, so much so that Crowley is often described as "the father of modern Satanism." This is a subject endlessly up for debate, but I believe it's important to try to figure out what Satan meant to Crowley as an esoteric symbol. One can obviously draw biographical connections between Crowley and the Devil (remember his mother called him "the Beast," which led him to adopt the title for himself as the prophet of Thelema; he also had issues with his father, who I believe represented the demiurgic god of law and authority for Crowley), but what does he actually have to say about this symbol in regards to tarot? How can we come to fear the Devil less as Crowley learned, in order to strip ourselves from backward thinking?

Firstly, we must reevaluate the mythology of Satan. As we know, the devil was the serpent which caused the Fall of man and woman, resulting in their expulsion from Eden. Yet, a line that is often overlooked in Genesis is 3:5, "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Additionally, in Genesis 3:22, God says, "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever..." Clearly the Devil wasn't lying, so why should he be known as the deceiver? Also important to understanding the devil is a well-known bit from Qabbalistic Gematria. Both the words for messiah (Meshiach) and serpent (nachash) add up to 358. Therefore, there is some deep-seated connection between the devil and salvation. Additionally, Crowley reminds us that Satan is associated with Set, the Egyptian lord of the desserts in the south, as opposed to Nuit who rules the northern regions.

Like any tarot card, trump XV has a number of Qabbalistic and astrological attributions that we must also look into if we are to truly understand its overall message. The Devil represents the sign of Capricorn, which is ruled by Saturn, Mars is exalted therein. It is therefore associated with the depths of winter, when the sun starts to move northward from the southern hemisphere. XV also connects Tiphareth to Hod and is therefore the influence of the True Self (or Christ Consciousness) upon the reason. This is absolutely crucial to understand if we are to see the Devil in a more positive light. The True Self or Christ-like identity is the hub of the individual consciousness. It is the highest expression of individuality within the consciousness as it stems directly from Kether, the original concealed point of singular consciousness that is beyond the abyss. The Devil thus represents the affirmation of true divine individuality within the intellect, the rational mind. Individuality is ultimately "proven" to our intellects by our integration of sensory knowledge, for if I feel pain, I believe that only I am feeling it; likewise, if I touch an object, my brain knows that I was not what received the touch, but rather was the one who touched something else.

The connection between XV The Devil and the senses is confirmed by the fact that the trump's letter is Ayin, which when spelled out in full is the word for "eye," or "fountain." Let us also remember that Capricorn is the cardinal sign of earth, the element of physicality. Given the meanings of the other zodiacal earth trumps, the Devil's association with the senses is not implausible; if the Capricorn is the senses, then the Hierophant as Taurus represents rote custom and practice that the body is taught to do, and Virgo in the Hermit is that same body ready to undergo cultivation and redemption.

This relationship between the Devil, the senses, and individuality is analogous with the mythology of the Devil. He is a figure who taught mankind independence from God, and thereby condemned them paradoxically to misery and greatness. For that reason he must not be seen as evil, but as entirely ambivalent; as Crowley says in his description of the trump: "The sign of Capricornus is rough, harsh, dark, even blind; the impulse to create takes no account of reason, custom, or foresight. It is divinely unscrupulous, sublimely careless of result."

And yet, oddly enough, the Devil is clearly associated with salvation. He stems from Tiphareth, the Christ-like redeeming sun; as the Serpent he numerologically corresponds to the word Messiah; and finally, in Liber 777, Crowley associates the 26th path on the Tree of Life (the path of XV the Devil) with the god Bacchus, a Roman deity very much associated with both divine ecstasy and human salvation.

Let us return to the what Crowley has to say about Atu XV: (I'll sum up the main points)
- "This card represents creative energy in its most material form..."
- "The card represents Pan Pangenetor, the All-Begetter," who also leaps "upon the highest and most secret mountains of the earth."
- It is associated with the divine madness of spring and high desolate places.
- The phallus in the background pierces "the ring of the body of Nuith." His wand extends into the depths of the earth. Therefore, the Devil exults in all things from the lowest to the high. "He represents the finding of ecstasy in every phenomenon, however naturally repugnant; he transcends all limitations; he is Pan; he is All."

Clearly the most obvious emphasis here is on the Devil's role as the creator of all materiality. How could that possibly be? Crowley also tells us that, as the later Ayin, O in other words, the Devil takes part in the name of God, IAO (a Golden Dawn god name for the Holy Guardian Angel). It is therefore part of a trinity with the Hermit and the Fool (Yod and Aleph respectively) which make up a hieroglyph of masculine creative energy as expressed in the HGA. Let us remember that the Masculine corresponds to the primary source of divine individuality within an entity. The Devil therefore fits nicely in with this triad. And as far as creation is concerned, we must return to the connection between XV and Ayin, "eye" and "fountain." We must note that this is clearly suggestive of the phallus, seen in the background of the card, which has has a sort of "eye" and is also a "fountain" of creation. But can we not also suppose that the analogy works backwards? Can the human eye itself be a kind of phallus, constantly creating everything? Can we furthermore extend the "eye" to all the senses, as we mentioned before all the senses were integral in understanding the Devil? Therefore, the doctrine would state that the senses of the individual point of consciousness perpetually create existence without any discrimination, as we cannot prevent our eyes from seeing what is in front of them. What does happen is the brain discriminates the information it receives through the senses and filters out the information it doesn't know how to process, mainly because it hasn't experienced that information before and therefore has nothing in its neural network to compare it to. Could this be why the Devil represents things we fear? It's the totality of the universe that we are aware of on a remotely exalted level (the secret mountains of the earth), but which we are ultimately afraid of. It is the frenzied awesomeness of the unknown. We must be open to the divine madness of the Devil in order to expand our understanding of what is actually possible, as opposed to what we think is possible.

This certainly puts reality into context, and affirms the old Magickal doctrine that "every act is a Magickal act." By sensing things through the body we come to believe that those things are in fact real, and thereby collapse the infinite waves of potential which make up matter into a single possibility that we can experience and integrate into our knowledge. We are creating life around us constantly. We must know this in order "to be as gods." Here is the hub of the Devil's ultimate message - you are a god because, through your individuality, you create everything around you. Perhaps Satan/Set rules the desert because this "reality" is ultimately barren as it exists below the Abyss, in the real as opposed to the ideal. This forces us to entirely reevaluate the Fall. Was it humanity that sinned or God himself? This is what certain sectors of Qabbalistic theory suggest - that the Fall occurred when God became curious about its own potential nature. Indeed, how can a Being that is ultimate and infinite come to know itself if it is in fact everything and cannot conceive of any difference within itself? Given all this evidence, it is clear why, as the founder of Thelema, a philosophy/religion that, at its heart, focuses on personal liberation and apotheosis, Crowley would undoubtedly have seen the archetype of the Devil as crucial in his cosmology.

Thus, in a tarot reading, we can confidently add a new set of divinatory meanings for the card: confidence, self-initiative, revolution in the name of one's desires, powerful creation of physical things, general carnality, assertion of the self, perhaps even being shown the truth through physical evidence. The standard definitions of obsession, addiction, dark thoughts, evil, imprisonment, etc., can be relegated to the ill-aspected section of the Devil's definitions. For we are all aware of how enticing the senses can in fact be, and how we can sometimes be slaves to them. Yet, in this regard, we must be careful - note that the Devil does not fall upon the sephira of Netzach, the passions and emotions, but rather on Hod, the intellect. So in this light he does not grip us by our desires, but instead enslaves our minds, convincing them to see stubbornly and narrowly. In his lowest form, therefore, he can be associated with ignorance, as Crowley suggests.

Ultimately it is all very mysterious but we must stop viewing the Devil in an anachronistic light. The Christian concept of the Devil is worthless. He himself is not evil - he is indifferent, and is in the right by simply following his Will and purpose. More importantly, he is an exalted aspect of you, not some external wickedness. That's absurd. We as confused beings create evil with our myopic concepts of reality, enforcing stagnant modes of living upon individuals, causing damage to others in our foolish embrace of the illusory ego.

This is the nature of the Fall, and how the Devil can be simultaneously condemner, savior, creator, imbecile, Satan/Set, and God. He is truly Pan. He is All.