This is a matter of personal opinion. Many are likely to disagree but heres my stance:
Devil is a title, not a name. I think it refers to a certain kind of spirit. A devil is an initiator, a trickster, and unique to each region. I think regional stories about devils are insights to local spirits that don’t have the language outside of ‘devil’ to discuss what’s happening. In some places the terms devil and spirit are interchangeable, but as a contemporary witch I think there is a use in specifying what a devil is for personal practice.
I personally do not think that the biblical devil is the same spirit as the devils featured in regional folklore.Since everyone’s pooping in their pampers about the Devil time to bring this back
I think folkloric devils and the biblical devil are the same in many circumstances, and there’s plenty of historical attestation and modern praxis to suggest this. Though I certainly don’t believe all people who work with a/the devil(s) must find themselves within a Christian framework or paradigm, I think a lot of contemporary new agers are too quick to write off anything that appears remotely Abrahamic in a way that does a lot of damage to real histories of folk magic. Particularly in American regional folklore, I would be hard-pressed to say that many of those spirits aren’t in some way biblically-inflected, particularly considering the types of folks they’re said to have appeared to.
But certainly not all devils=The Devil, and you make a quite good point that there’s a real death of language (at least in English) with which to describe regional folk/initiatory spirits tied to the land.
Like I said people are bound to disagree, and it’s not out of disregarding the devil or Christianity. I use the Bible on a daily basis in my work. I work with more than one devil. I stand by that in my experience most folk devils are called that due to a lack of language but the word is pretty goddamn close to the original use. They are unforgiving, ruthless, and can be horrific. And in my experience they have been there a long time with no bible to say what they are.
Again, I’m not trying to disagree with your personal experience. What I’m saying, though, is that there’s a massive amount of historic attestation to running across the biblical devil in the guise of a folk devil. Your exact words were “I personally do not think that the biblical devil is the same spirit as the devils featured in regional folklore.” As I said, that’s certainly true in some cases! Perhaps many! However, the biblical devil is irrefutably the same as some devils in American regional folklore, and its either disingenuous or ignorant of those folk traditions to say otherwise.
Hey so can we maybe tone it down? Why are we throwing around words like disingenuous and ignorant because of a small technicality in what could be a freaking dialectic difference? Especially to someone who is, in my literal, physical personal experience, one of the most knowledgeable and well-worded witches I know. And I’m not saying that to be somebodies fluffer, I’m saying that because it’s the damn truth. There’s no reason to assume that because you personally did not understand or interpreted their answer to be a certain way that they are disingenuous or ignorant, and this is the kind of thing that makes tumblr a toxic place. You may not have meant it to be nasty but as an outsider looking in it reads like a slap in the face. There is no reason, none whatsoever, for the use of those words when SouthernCunning is literally sharing an opinion based not only on their experiences with the Devil, but with how those experiences have played out. And you know what, SouthernCunning and I don’t share an opinion here, because literally EVERYONE experiences the Devil differently. But that doesn’t mean that I believe they’re telling me I’m incorrect in my experience, or that they’re simply ignorant of other traditions. Like literally they are so fucking knowledgeable about so many other magical traditions that they’re literally like a damnealking Encyclopedia Magica.
Tumblr it’s seriously time for us to stop this. This kind of attitude and callousness is not cool, it doesn’t make you seem like the bigger person, and at the end of the day the people you are talking to another person. Make no mistake I’ll boot stomp someone if I need to, but those comments were not warranted when you were in the process of having a discussion.
Again, you’re talking to someone who has been instrumental in my own personal growth and development, and I’m not sorry to say that you’re comments were unwarranted. SouthernCunning is scaring their own experience, and foryou to say that the way their experiences have shaped their view is disengenuous or ignorant. What even is that? Let m tell y’all something, very few witches will agree on things like this. It’s li👏🏻ter👏🏻a👏🏻lly all about your own personal experience. And I’m really over us being nasty to each other.
I don’t think I was particularly mean–in fact, I took pains to be what I considered level with my tone and choice of language. As I have said (now repeatedly), I am not here to dispute any of SouthernCunning’s personal experience, nor anyone else’s. Personal experience is just that, though–personal. SouthernCunning made a totalizing comment about the nature of folk craft that DOESN’T account for everyone’s experience, though, which is why I said anything at all. I’ll quote it again here, so we’re clear:
“I personally do not think that the biblical devil is the same spirit as the devils featured in regional folklore.”
“I do not think,” I fear, is the missed link here. You seem to be reading it as a measure of personal experience. If that is what they meant, that’s not at all semantically clear. “In my experience I have not encountered a folk devil who is also the biblical devil” would be about personal experience. Though “I do not think” is fundamentally different than, say, “I do not know,” the way that sentence is structured semantically (folklore as the object, not experience) offers us a truth hidden behind the qualifying tenor of “I think.” That sentiment is: the biblical devil is not the same spirit as the devils in regional folklore. And, again, that is factually not true in many, many historical and contemporary instances. This is a really, really, really important part of huge swathes of American folk tradition. It’s not a minor point to me and many others.
To be clear, again: of course all sorts of people experience a/the devil(s) in wildly different ways. I am literally not here to disagree with anyone’s personal experience. All of them can be true. All of them being true includes the biblical devil’s role in American folk heritage in a way SouthernCunning explicitly disagreed with. When we talk about folkloric tradition–which they invoked, not me–that conversation inherently revolves around a historical record which is quite clear about this. Claiming to speak for what folklore “means” while ignoring its (extremely well documented, in this regard) history is either disingenuous or ignorant. Claiming to speak for history and folklore, as such, cannot be question of belief or personal experience.
This may seem like linguistic nitpicking–if you feel that way, so be it. I feel it exposes a critical root that I feel the need to engage with. Belief, “I thinks” of any variety, are dangerous when they present themselves as totalizing and indicative of broad systems.
The Biblical devil isnt even The Biblical Devil half the time. (Agreeing here that both The Devil and Satan are titles and necessarily the names of specific beings, and that there’s still a huge amount of debate over who exactly Satan, Lucifer and Devil are supposed to be referring to in scripture) All discussion of Satan, The Devil, ext are going to be heavily subject to personal experience and interpretation irregardless of typical convention or recorded testimony.
Yes, there are definitely multiple biblical figures referred to as a/the devil! I didn’t want to bring in that wrinkle as it didn’t seem relevant to the broader argument, but you’re absolutely right.
However, I want to resist the idea that when we talk about magic and spirits, we’re always inherently talking about personal experience. Though there’s clearly a critical place for personal experience in such discussions, we can (and, I think, must) also be able to engage with historical and theoretical texts outside of that context. This doesn’t mean we must bow to convention in any means–you use the word “interpretation,” and I think that’s a good one. But engagement with textual histories and arguments–even interpretive engagement, which all readings essentially are–can exist outside of and complement discussions of personal experience.
Particularly in regard to folklore and other historical testimony, the fact that you may have experienced something different doesn’t mean that the folkloric version isn’t also true or important. In essence, folklore is collected experience, and honoring it as itself (rather than only in relation to our individual experiences) is a critical facet of magical praxis and theoretization.
Despite some of the nitpicking which I will assume really comes down to miscommunication, there is a lot of good observation here. I am especially happy that no one on this thread thinks you can simply write the Devil out of the Western Esoteric Tradition. Also, I’m pretty sure the Devil is enjoying this post immensely.