Devil Worship WI

The Abrahamic Faiths all have their main opposite. The men and women that worship the Devil, Satan, what have you. The form of Devil worship differs slightly between Christian, Islamic and Jewish regions and nations.

But is it possible to have a Devil Worshipping Nation or Kingdom created? POD can be when ever you want after the establishment of Judah and Israel.
 
The Yazidi would deny it, but the creation story of their faith is very similar to Genesis only it puts the character that Islam and Christianity would call Satan on a pedestal as the guide of mankind and most worthy of angels. So a Yazidi kingdom could accomplish what you're looking for. A quirk of colonial borders could very well give them their own country.
 
There were plenty of people in he ancient Levant who worshipped Moloch, Beelzebub, Belphegor, and other Semitic gods that the priesthood demonized over time. The accuser himself is bit more difficult, since he seems to have originally been conceived of as a servant of Yahweh rather than having any independent existence or cultus.
 

mojojojo

Gone Fishin'
There were plenty of people in he ancient Levant who worshipped Moloch, Beelzebub, Belphegor, and other Semitic gods that the priesthood demonized over time. The accuser himself is bit more difficult, since he seems to have originally been conceived of as a servant of Yahweh rather than having any independent existence or cultus.

Was Beelzebub original a god of insects?
 
Actually they think that the name is a parody of Baalzebul "Lord of Lords", a fairly traditional divine honorific.

I believe this is it, though I've also read that might be a pun on 'Lord of the Heavenly House.' The Old Testament often uses puns to mock foreign gods and people, e.g. Jezebel, whose name means 'the Lord is exalted,' while the Hebrew form puns it as 'she without husband/lord' (i.e., a whore).
 
There are historical religions (Manichianism and Catharism are the most prominent) which "credited" a Satan-figure with creating the material world. If one of these were to get a firm foothold somewhere, I could see it co-evolving with Catholic/Orthodox Christianity so each identified the other's God as their own Satan.

Is it plausible for Manichianism to become dominant in the ERE while the WRE goes Christian, or for both halves of the Roman Empire to go Christian as per OTL while Manichianism displaces Zoroastrianism in Persia?
 
technically, the most possible POD with recognizable elements are at the time of French Revolution. Instead of pushing State Atheism, more sucessful Robessaphire work with Voltaire and make a religion to Mock Christianity. They decide that directly worship Lucifer, Baal, and other demons are much better than supporting the corrupt clergy. ;)

then we'll have Satanic French nation.
 
Placating...

If some, for whatever reason, began to believe that their religion's forces of evil were more powerful or more active that the forces of good--or just that the good diety wasn't always watching, they might honor the evil one so he turns his wrath or mischief elsewhere. Build the devil a house/temple, and he won't move into YOURS...or help your enemies.
 
The thing is, if you have two rival religious traditions in juxtaposition with each other, they are fairly likely to accuse the other of being devil worshipers. We don't have to look very far--many modern Christian fundamentalists aren't reluctant to point fingers, at Hinduism for instance. Or of course the Protestants of the Reformation age charged Catholics with following the Whore of Babylon...

Rivals don't always do that, but it isn't uncommon. Imagine for instance if the Nordic pantheon, or the Slavic one, had somehow survived and prospered in the face of Christendom, surely the Catholics would say (as they did before and after their OTL triumph) that the Aesir or the Slavic gods were in fact demons; the alternative being to deny they existed at all of course. Perhaps the pagans would reciprocate and find "evidence" that the Christian God was really some demon figure from their own tradition, perhaps modifying Loki to fit, or manufacturing a new fallen god to match.

One can imagine going beyond mere name-calling and that, in the face of a dominant religious tradition, a cult defiantly adopts the label of "the Evil One." Many traditions include the idea of "the Trickster," such as southwestern Native American "Coyote;" perhaps Loki more authentically played a similar role in Aesiric tradition and was reconfigured into a more clearly demonic role by the Christians who recorded the Eddas. Indeed Satan himself, who first appears in Job, is there represented not as the demonic enemy of God, but as a servant of God's who was created to test and challenge God's creations, to test to destruction if so authorized in fact. Hence the title "the Adversary;" he's more like a very zealous prosecutor than The Enemy. A pantheon with a Trickster God has somewhat different values than the "No Darkness in the Divine" world view of orthodox Christianity; when such black-and-white religions look at the deeds and implicit values of such religions they don't have to look far for evidence that the gods and values have "evil" in them and thus must be evil through and through.

But even defiant rebels who adopt the banner of the allegedly evil Trickster tend to believe themselves to be the real good people, embracing chaos and controversy to overthrow stagnant oppression. Can we go farther and imagine a serious cult of evil itself?

If some, for whatever reason, began to believe that their religion's forces of evil were more powerful or more active that the forces of good--or just that the good diety wasn't always watching, they might honor the evil one so he turns his wrath or mischief elsewhere. Build the devil a house/temple, and he won't move into YOURS...or help your enemies.


This seems entirely apropos!

But to get "real Devil worship" I think we have to go farther still, to imagine people who don't just cower before unstoppable power and hope to deflect its ravages somehow, if only by self-destruction, but who embrace values that are clear and consistent inversions of normal human ones. Who uphold cruelty and lying and destruction for its own sake as paramount values.

And there too I fear we won't search in vain. Some of the kookier neo-Nordic cults of the Nazis, with an eye toward Nietzsche's scorn of traditional religion as a mere "slave morality," seem to fit the bill. Modern Neo-Nazis sometimes take the idea even farther.
 
Perhaps the pagans would reciprocate and find "evidence" that the Christian God was really some demon figure from their own tradition, perhaps modifying Loki to fit, or manufacturing a new fallen god to match.

As Loki weren't evil in traditional norse mythology, but mere a trickster that couldn't stop pranking, had a horrible sense of humor, and over time less and less trusted, I highly doubt that they would retool him ...

The issue with 'creating' a new demonic god in the image of Christians, is that the Pagan beliefs were inclusive, merging with other beliefs to a certain degree (Vanir's in the Norse Mythology is believed to have been another belief system which merged into the Norse Aesir), and not as monotheism exclusive, painting everyone not believing the same they does as evil devil-worshippers
 
As Loki weren't evil in traditional norse mythology, but mere a trickster that couldn't stop pranking, had a horrible sense of humor, and over time less and less trusted, I highly doubt that they would retool him ...

Well, I haven't read the Eddas in their originally recorded form, so perhaps the reinterpretation of Loki I've seen as fundamentally, or anyway ultimately evil, are all long after and the original writings in Iceland didn't go that far. What you say supports my point that "Trickster" gods are not really demonic, but are seen as especially so by monotheist missionaries and other dogmatists.

The issue with 'creating' a new demonic god in the image of Christians, is that the Pagan beliefs were inclusive, merging with other beliefs to a certain degree (Vanir's in the Norse Mythology is believed to have been another belief system which merged into the Norse Aesir), and not as monotheism exclusive, painting everyone not believing the same they does as evil devil-worshippers

The question is, if a pagan tradition to were to survive in close contact with such monotheists as Christians or Muslims, would it tend to react to the tendency the monotheists would have to demonize them, by retaliating to debunk and subvert the monotheists by deflating their claims?

Well I don't have the impression that that has been the prevailing Hindu verdict on Muslims.

But anyone familiar with Jack Chick's actual tracts that the "Cthulhu Tract" was parodying knows that some monotheists do this to their rivals, though--Chick was obsessed with the notion that Islamic Allah was a pagan Arab moon god, and to him of course all pagan gods were really demons pretending to be gods to deceive people to damnation.

It's nice that pagans seem to historically keep their cool in the face of monotheistic challengers, but they also tend to get subverted and swept aside, which is why envision an Aesiric or traditional Slavic pagan faith surviving up against Christian or Islamic challengers seems so far fetched. India is about the only place I can think of off the top of my head where any Abrahamic religion has persisted in large numbers and yet failed to convert a pagan majority. So I ought to heed its example I suppose, and yet to imagine a similar survival of paganism elsewhere I do tend to imagine a more adversarial and geographically polarized relationship; the pagans would need to become both more militant and more sophisticated.
 
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