Jun 24
Decorating Gods, Part 5 (Lucifer)
This one of my many collaborations with photographer Manel Ortega. It took me almost a year to complete. It’s a depiction of Lucifer and his alleged fall. Or - if you prefer - Pan and his alleged ascent. Whatever you choose, you won’t be wrong.
Myths have the power to morph and change as they travel from culture to culture and this one is among the most striking examples. Most of us know Lucifer (or Satan) through the various writings of the Abrahamic religions - Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Although his representation differs in each of them, as a whole, he appears in a negative aspect and in some cases is the antipode of the monotheistic God.
This seems as a paradox to me because if God is all-powerful then Satan shouldn’t be able to have any influence over God’s creations. However, we see this is not the case and Satan’s strength is so profound that he’s able to lead humanity into temptation and suffering. It’s a trap in which any monotheistic belief would fall because the notion of monotheism with its single, almighty deity directly opposes human intuition. And what human intuition says is that good and evil exist simultaneously and need each other as opposites.
Of course the subject of this post is not to clarify the plethora of religious contradictions but it’s important to mention because one conclusion that can be derived from all this charming nonsense is that Satan in monotheism actually relates to nature as it really is and God relates to nature as it should become in some point in the future, as we modify ourselves and our surrounding according to special prescriptions. This is quite apparent if we think about the most common depictions of Satan - horns, hoofs, a tail, hairy body… Did I hear Pan? And what does Pan stand for? Nature of course. In its most unapologetic aspect.
It’s funny but this artwork was started backwards - I began with the Pan idea and I ended up with Lucifer. I wanted to make some kind of a sequel to Atlas which had the heaven-vs-earth conflict at its core. Here, heaven is broken and nature is… as they say… king. :)
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The thing with monotheism is that as a dichotomy, it requires Satan just as it requires the Virgin Mary/Whore Mary. You are correct, of course, that this makes it a paradox. I don’t think that it is much a bother to ‘thinking’ Christians, however, because they tend to ignore the Devil stuff as being stories to scare children with.
That said, Pan is much more interesting that Satan can ever be.
If you don’t know if, btw, you should really look up Aleister Crowley’s “Hymn to Pan”.
Comment by sighthound — 18 July, 2008 @ 9:35 pm