Of all the demons, monsters, fiends, and ogres to preoccupy the western imagination in literature, art, and film, no figure has been more feared—or misunderstood--than Satan. But how accurate are the popular images of Satan? How--and why--did this rather minor biblical character morph into the very embodiment of evil? T.J. Wray and Gregory Mobley guide readers on a journey to retrace Satan's biblical roots. Engaging and informative, The Birth of Satan is a must read for anyone who has ever wondered about the origins of the Devil.

This work is a social history of the devil. The figure of Satan has been a standing puzzle in the history of religion. This study examines his origins and his shifting functions. Satan is not present in classical Jewish sources (and scarcely present in traditional Judaism to this day). Images of Satan began to develop and proliferate in later Jewish sources not included in the Hebrew Bible. The book explores this early history or invention of the devil, and traces Satan's subsequent transformations as one of society's most necessary fictions.

"Returned from a three-year Grand Tour, Gideon Viscount St. Mars is accused of murdering his own father. Son of a Jacobite with no friends at Court, Gideon must escape arrest or be hanged. The only person willing to help him is Hester Kean, waiting woman to the lady he had hoped to wed. With her intelligence and his daring--in the guise of the highwayman, Blue Satan--they uncover the secrets that have changed their lives."--Page 4 of cover.

Publisher description

Using an interdisciplinary approach, Kelman underscores the role that common people have played in shaping the city and portrays the Mississippi as an active participant in New Orlean's history."--BOOK JACKET.

The description for this book, The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth, will be forthcoming.

The Story of Satan's Many Struggles, Across the History of Human Existence, to Unshackle the Human Mind, and Open the Gates to Forbidden Knowledge. From the moment of his first emergence as a single spark in the dimness of prehistory, to the more enlightening force into which he evolves across the full span of human existence, Satan, as he now clearly illustrates, has been urging human beings to open their eyes to the world around them, and to continue seeking, with unfettered minds, for ultimate answers, yet to be found. To do so he must struggle against the persistent attempts to stifle that urge by the "spoon feeders," as he calls them, individuals who have insisted, within every age, and often with a bloody fist, that they, and they alone, are the possessors of the only beliefs that every human being should accept and live by, without question. As Satan traces the history of their many attempts to stop human beings from thinking for themselves, he also takes his readers on a search for the ultimate source of all evil in this world. Readers will obviously enter the book with the standard concept of Satan as a supernatural figure of evil. They will leave the book, however, with a better understanding of how such mind-twisting concepts have been used to keep people away from the "forbidden" knowledge that lies beyond the borders of entrenched beliefs.

Lucifer Rising is a popular history of Satanism: from Old Testament lore to the posturing of the world's most notorious heavy metal rock bands, all is made accessible. Containing many candid interviews with modern-day Satanists and controversial rock stars, this book makes light of popular culture's darkest secret.

From the National Book Award-winning and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of The Gnostic Gospels comes a dramatic interpretation of Satan and his role on the Christian tradition. "Arresting...brilliant...this book illuminates the angels with which we must wrestle to come to the truth of our bedeviling spritual problems." —The Boston Globe With magisterial learning and the elan of a born storyteller, Pagels turns Satan’s story into an audacious exploration of Christianity’s shadow side, in which the gospel of love gives way to irrational hatreds that continue to haunt Christians and non-Christians alike.

"Although the Devil still 'lives' in modern popular culture, for the past 250 years he has become marginal to the dominant concerns of Western intellectual thought. That life could not be thought or imagined without him, that he was a part of the everyday, continually present in nature and history, and active at the depths of our selves, has been all but forgotten. It is the aim of this work to bring modern readers to a deeper appreciation of how, from the early centuries of the Christian period through to the recent beginnings of the modern world, the human story could not be told and human life could not be lived apart from the 'life' of the Devil. With that comes the deeper recognition that, for the better part of the last two thousand years, the battle between good and evil in the hearts and minds of men and women was but the reflection of a cosmic battle between God and Satan, the divine and the diabolic, that was at the heart of history itself."—from The Devil Lucifer, Mephistopheles, Beelzebub; Ha-Satan or the Adversary; Iblis or Shaitan: no matter what name he travels under, the Devil has throughout the ages and across civilizations been a compelling and charismatic presence. In Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, the supposed reign of God has long been challenged by the fiery malice of his opponent, as contending forces of good and evil have between them weighed human souls in the balance. In The Devil, Philip C. Almond explores the figure of evil incarnate from the first centuries of the Christian era. Along the way, he describes the rise of demonology as an intellectual and theological pursuit, the persecution as witches of women believed to consort with the Devil and his minions, and the decline in the belief in Hell and in angels and demons as corporeal beings as a result of the Enlightenment. Almond shows that the Prince of Darkness remains an irresistible subject in history, religion, art, literature, and culture. Almond brilliantly locates the "life" of the Devil within the broader Christian story of which it is inextricably a part; the "demonic paradox" of the Devil as both God's enforcer and his enemy is at the heart of Christianity. Woven throughout the account of the Christian history of the Devil is another complex and complicated history: that of the idea of the Devil in Western thought. Sorcery, witchcraft, possession, even melancholy, have all been laid at the Devil's doorstep. Until the Enlightenment enforced a "disenchantment" with the old archetypes, even rational figures such as Thomas Aquinas were obsessed with the nature of the Devil and the specific characteristics of the orders of demons and angels. It was a significant moment both in the history of demonology and in theology when Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677) denied the Devil's existence; almost four hundred years later, popular fascination with the idea of the Devil has not yet dimmed.