...Oh, shoot. No wonder this wasn't explaining anything.
Alright, so what I know so far is that Heaven and Hell are realms you go to after death, according to how you behaved in life. There is one single god, and he lives in Heaven, along with angels, which are his.... servants? I guess? But the ones that disobeyed him were turned into demons and sent to live in Hell to live amongst the damned.
I'm pretty shaky on everything overall, but mostly I don't really know much about the demon princes, or the various Hells or their factions. I'm also pretty unclear about Heaven and the war between it and Hell. Or what it means to be a demon or an angel. Or really anything.
I know that's kind of a broad place to start, but if you have any information that could illuminate any of those subjects, I'd like to learn.
[takes a deep breath, kind of visibly shifting mental gears as he shifts sitting positions into something crosslegged.]
Okay! Here we go. You're more or less correct! "God" in this tradition is the creator. He made everything. But he also has an adversary, Satan or "the Devil." Actually, originally, the two weren't opposed -- the satan's role was to, um, more or less test people by doing bad things, and it was probably the influence of another religion called Zoroastrianism that-- well, actually, that doesn't matter. It's off-topic and we're talking about reality instead of how mythology developed.
So, you've got God, who's good and all-powerful, and the Devil, who's evil. The Devil may or may not be the same figure as Lucifer, who once was an angel. Here's how that story goes.
Angels were created by God as his messengers and servants. When God created humans, he made them in his image, and gave them dominion over the world. Most importantly, he gave them free will. Angels weren't supposed to have that. Disobeying God was unthinkable for them... supposedly. But when God told the angels to bow before the humans, Lucifer refused. His pride wouldn't let him do otherwise. So he started a rebellion. It failed, of course, and Lucifer and the angels who followed him were cast out of Heaven and God's presence -- the worst possible punishment.
Traditionally, Heaven is portrayed as being above the human world, and Hell below. So when an angel is forced from Heaven, they "fall" and become a "fallen angel." They're sometimes seen as different from just "demons," even though they both exist in Hell. It's the difference between someone like Exael, who's almost definitely a fallen angel or really wants us to think she is, and Mukuro, who seems to have been human before he became a demon. I don't think humans can become angels, but I could be wrong -- they can in some traditions, but that seems to be a more modern invention.
[This is actually a LOT of information he didn't know, so before the end of Anubis' first paragraph, he yanked his notebook out of his bag and furiously started taking notes]
Meanwhile, humans! This is where we get into even more weird free will and power dynamic stuff. God created the first man and woman, Adam and Lilith, and put them in the Garden of Eden. In the garden, they had everything they needed, and everything was peaceful. It was a paradise. There was a problem, though: Lilith refused to submit to her husband. She knew one of God's secret names, and used it to escape from the Garden and go off and do her own thing and became a demon. So when God created the second human woman, he created her from Adam's rib, ensuring that as part of him, Eve would naturally be subservient.
I said earlier that humans were given dominion over everything. That's not quite true. They were forbidden to eat fruit from one tree: the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. What happened with that is probably in your book, but it's worth noting that the serpent in the story is often seen as Satan, Lucifer, or another demon.
So that's what demons do. They tempt people to disobey God. They look for weaknesses, and they whisper in your ear, wouldn't it be okay if you did this one thing? It can't be that bad. Go ahead. Just one bite.
[pauses for a second, taking a breath and folding his hands in lap.]
Over the centuries, various people have come up with rankings of both demons and angels as a way to organize them. It's pretty common to assign demon princes governance over a deadly sin and archangels over a cardinal virtue -- there are seven of each. It seems like the one this version of Hell uses is one where each prince governs a type of sinner instead. Unsurprisingly, angels are usually seen as working together. Their divisions are more like, um, different departments in a company who are all working towards the same goal under a strong CEO. But demons... well, I mean, we know for a fact that they have squabbling factions all grasping at power.
What I want to know is: where's the Devil? Satan, Lucifer, whoever. Who organized Hell's divisions in the first place? We don't know. What we do know is that God is missing or dead. So... there's potential power vacuums all over the place. If the "Heaven" faction of demons wants to become real Heaven, wouldn't that make sense? We know Asmodeus is a relatively new prince, but what if the reason he's interested in suddenly targeting so many souls at once isn't just because his faction is new and has a high turnover rate?
There's something big behind the scenes here, we just don't know what it is yet. Exael compared our situation to the story of Job, which should be in your book, too.
[Taking notes as fast as possible, since just about all of this is new information. He's also scribbling down lots of questions, then striking them back off as Anubis answers them. There are still quite a few left, though.]
The story of Job was that God and Satan had a bet about Job's loyalty. Satan tortured Job relentlessly and took everything good out of his life, but Job never lost faith, and was rewarded at the end of the trial. Is that right?
If our situation is similar... I can understand the torture part, but what are we supposed to have faith in? That if we just sit tight, God will come and rescue us?
Good question. Sort of? Faith is such a vague word, religiously... I think the implication is that if we don't give in to what Asmodeus' faction wants and take the easy routes to end our suffering, we'll be rewarded in the end. We'll pass the test. It seems pretty reductionist, given what we know now about Pythia. Or, I guess, how much we don't know.
Pythia is Exael's boss. The leader of the "Heaven" faction, as far as we know. I think she's probably the one that answered when HSS asked for help when everyone was turning grey, but I don't have any proof.
There should be nine princes, if it corresponds properly to the hierarchy it seems to so far... Pythia is liars, Belial is inventors of evil things, Asmodeus is spirits of vengeance, Mammon is tempters. Those are the ones we know for sure.
We have some pretty good guesses based on Barrett's classifications in The Magus, but I haven't memorized them all. One is "purveyors of pestilence" and one is sorcerers, though. I remember that much.
Oh! I remember reading something about that in the Bible, when I first got here. A friend and I were trying to figure out what Heaven and Hell were.
I remember seeing sorcery listed as a sin, too, because it struck us both as strange, since magic is a gift from the gods where we're from. Seemed backwards.
I remember... mmm.. the cowardly, and ...the faithless? And "sexually immoral," whatever that means. Do those sound like the same ones you're talking about?
Well, if magic is a gift from other gods -- or beings pretending to be gods, from a Christian perspective -- a followers of the singular "true" God would see that as sinful, right? Even if it's helpful. It doesn't really make sense to me either, but there's a weird logic to it.
Those are all definitely sins, but I'm not sure if they're the ones under this particular classification... ah, Asmodeus is the demon in charge of lust under the classifications that use the seven deadly sins, though!
Oh... Yeah, I guess that would make sense that Christianity would reject magic from other gods, I guess...? [But then why wouldn't THIS god give everyone magic, instead? ?????? well, whatever.]
Shoot, I didn't realize there were multiple classifications of sins. I don't know what all the sins are. Or the classifications, for that matter. Is that important?
It's more just... there's a lot of things that have been considered sins over the past two thousand or so years. And sometimes those got assigned to specific demons.
What happened to the real Heaven? Why are our worlds under Hell's domain, and can we do anything to change that? What politics are happening in Hell behind the scenes? Are they related to why Asmodeus wants to recruit a bunch of new demons? What's Pythia's goal in pretending to be "Heaven"?
Probably a bunch of other questions would arise once I got some answers to those.
One thing I want to know is, if Hell already owns all of our worlds, what happens to the people who die at home but don't make it here? Can Lilith revive them, too?
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rollwillpowercheck) wrote2018-12-03 06:11 pm
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Alright, so what I know so far is that Heaven and Hell are realms you go to after death, according to how you behaved in life. There is one single god, and he lives in Heaven, along with angels, which are his.... servants? I guess? But the ones that disobeyed him were turned into demons and sent to live in Hell to live amongst the damned.
I'm pretty shaky on everything overall, but mostly I don't really know much about the demon princes, or the various Hells or their factions. I'm also pretty unclear about Heaven and the war between it and Hell. Or what it means to be a demon or an angel. Or really anything.
I know that's kind of a broad place to start, but if you have any information that could illuminate any of those subjects, I'd like to learn.
no subject
Okay! Here we go. You're more or less correct! "God" in this tradition is the creator. He made everything. But he also has an adversary, Satan or "the Devil." Actually, originally, the two weren't opposed -- the satan's role was to, um, more or less test people by doing bad things, and it was probably the influence of another religion called Zoroastrianism that-- well, actually, that doesn't matter. It's off-topic and we're talking about reality instead of how mythology developed.
So, you've got God, who's good and all-powerful, and the Devil, who's evil. The Devil may or may not be the same figure as Lucifer, who once was an angel. Here's how that story goes.
Angels were created by God as his messengers and servants. When God created humans, he made them in his image, and gave them dominion over the world. Most importantly, he gave them free will. Angels weren't supposed to have that. Disobeying God was unthinkable for them... supposedly. But when God told the angels to bow before the humans, Lucifer refused. His pride wouldn't let him do otherwise. So he started a rebellion. It failed, of course, and Lucifer and the angels who followed him were cast out of Heaven and God's presence -- the worst possible punishment.
Traditionally, Heaven is portrayed as being above the human world, and Hell below. So when an angel is forced from Heaven, they "fall" and become a "fallen angel." They're sometimes seen as different from just "demons," even though they both exist in Hell. It's the difference between someone like Exael, who's almost definitely a fallen angel or really wants us to think she is, and Mukuro, who seems to have been human before he became a demon. I don't think humans can become angels, but I could be wrong -- they can in some traditions, but that seems to be a more modern invention.
Does that make sense so far?
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So far so good!
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I said earlier that humans were given dominion over everything. That's not quite true. They were forbidden to eat fruit from one tree: the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. What happened with that is probably in your book, but it's worth noting that the serpent in the story is often seen as Satan, Lucifer, or another demon.
So that's what demons do. They tempt people to disobey God. They look for weaknesses, and they whisper in your ear, wouldn't it be okay if you did this one thing? It can't be that bad. Go ahead. Just one bite.
[pauses for a second, taking a breath and folding his hands in lap.]
Over the centuries, various people have come up with rankings of both demons and angels as a way to organize them. It's pretty common to assign demon princes governance over a deadly sin and archangels over a cardinal virtue -- there are seven of each. It seems like the one this version of Hell uses is one where each prince governs a type of sinner instead. Unsurprisingly, angels are usually seen as working together. Their divisions are more like, um, different departments in a company who are all working towards the same goal under a strong CEO. But demons... well, I mean, we know for a fact that they have squabbling factions all grasping at power.
What I want to know is: where's the Devil? Satan, Lucifer, whoever. Who organized Hell's divisions in the first place? We don't know. What we do know is that God is missing or dead. So... there's potential power vacuums all over the place. If the "Heaven" faction of demons wants to become real Heaven, wouldn't that make sense? We know Asmodeus is a relatively new prince, but what if the reason he's interested in suddenly targeting so many souls at once isn't just because his faction is new and has a high turnover rate?
There's something big behind the scenes here, we just don't know what it is yet. Exael compared our situation to the story of Job, which should be in your book, too.
no subject
The story of Job was that God and Satan had a bet about Job's loyalty. Satan tortured Job relentlessly and took everything good out of his life, but Job never lost faith, and was rewarded at the end of the trial. Is that right?
If our situation is similar... I can understand the torture part, but what are we supposed to have faith in? That if we just sit tight, God will come and rescue us?
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You said each prince governs a different type of sinner... What are the different types? How many princes are there?
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There should be nine princes, if it corresponds properly to the hierarchy it seems to so far... Pythia is liars, Belial is inventors of evil things, Asmodeus is spirits of vengeance, Mammon is tempters. Those are the ones we know for sure.
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[shrugs]
I don't know. And I don't know what counts as "new" to a demon.
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I remember seeing sorcery listed as a sin, too, because it struck us both as strange, since magic is a gift from the gods where we're from. Seemed backwards.
I remember... mmm.. the cowardly, and ...the faithless? And "sexually immoral," whatever that means. Do those sound like the same ones you're talking about?
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Those are all definitely sins, but I'm not sure if they're the ones under this particular classification... ah, Asmodeus is the demon in charge of lust under the classifications that use the seven deadly sins, though!
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Shoot, I didn't realize there were multiple classifications of sins. I don't know what all the sins are. Or the classifications, for that matter. Is that important?
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So what are some of the major holes in our knowledge right now? What parts do we still not understand?
For example, what happens to dead people who take Heaven's offer. Are there any questions you would want to ask Asmodeus, Pythia, or Lilith?
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What happened to the real Heaven? Why are our worlds under Hell's domain, and can we do anything to change that? What politics are happening in Hell behind the scenes? Are they related to why Asmodeus wants to recruit a bunch of new demons? What's Pythia's goal in pretending to be "Heaven"?
Probably a bunch of other questions would arise once I got some answers to those.
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Yeah, that makes sense.
One thing I want to know is, if Hell already owns all of our worlds, what happens to the people who die at home but don't make it here? Can Lilith revive them, too?
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[frowns a little, thinking.]
Um. I have no idea, honestly. I wonder if the issue is less "can she" and more "would she bother."
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We don't know who yet, though, do we?
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I get the feeling she could decide she's done at any point, too.
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Though... [he frowns, looking conflicted]
...Sometimes I feel like I would rather take a chance with her than keep playing these games.
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...Really?
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