Soon…

I will return.  Please be patient.  I am sorry for my unexpected absence.

Satan 2:1

 

Could I enter Man as I had in Eden?  Would my corporeal form possess the same abilities?

To test this I sat upon a stone bench in the city of Babylon and focused my attention on a young woman.  Nothing.  There was no connection.  Not in the sense that I desired.  As she looked at a blanket of woven cloth I willed her hand to drop the material. My will had no effect. I then focused my attention on her companion, another young woman who stood at her elbow and chattered on about the dull colors embodied in the material.  I attempted to push into her being as I had with Adam.

I remained where I sat.  Locked within my own flesh.  

This troubled me and I remained upon the bench for some time.  When night fell I walked the streets, avoiding all human contact.  Eventually I grew weary of walking.  Weary of the mind.  Not of the body.  So I sat again.  This time on the steps of a bath house.  Within the bath house men slept.  I closed my eyes and concentrated.

Wonder where she is…?

Tomorrow will be better…

I grow weaker by the day.

I do not wish to return…

What was this?

I opened my eyes and the strange thoughts dissipated.  I tried again.  In moments they returned.  This after I had succeeded in blocking out all else.

Such a strange man.  

Startled, I opened  my eyes.  A man, progressed in years, stood beneath a tree.  He carried a towel and I realized he was on his way to the bath house when he spotted me upon its steps. He continued to watch me and I realized he had not spoken yet I knew the voice I’d heard had to be his.

I again closed my eyes and sought to focus on where he stood.

…slip past him now.

 Again I opened my eyes.  The man was slowly moving towards the steps I sat upon.  He paused again.

Darius.  This man’s name was Darius and he was hoping to speak with another inside.  A man of similar age and disposition.  A man he considered a friend.

How did I know this?  And those earlier voices I heard only moments before?  Thoughts of those men within the bath house?  Some sleeping and some in silent contemplation?

As the man known as Darius passed my step I again closed my eyes.  He was relieved to be past me.

I remained upon my step until all within had fallen asleep.  I had an idea.

Satan 1:4

 

I learned of angels and of man’s reverence for them.  Man called them God’s children.  God’s children.  

Was this what I was?  An angel? An angel condemned?  Fallen from grace for interfering with His grand scheme? 

Was there even a scheme?

These questions haunted me for I feared there was no answer.  I feared that it was all a series of unconnected chaotic events hurtling through time and space and signifying nothing.  That He existed and had created it all there was no doubt.  I had felt His warmth and bathed in it.  I had witnessed others like me flittering in and out of His presence, but preferring His warmth to that of the coldness without.  

Was this then my sin?  Turning my back on His warmth and preferring to focus my love and attention on this world I now walked upon?  There were other worlds similar to this one of which man knew not.  But this world captivated me as no other.  I yearned for it to be mine. And instead of it being of me, I was now of it.

As man sinned, their grew stories surrounding his sins.  It was not the fault of man that neighbor turned on neighbor.  No.  It was the fault of another.  A dark Tempter who descended from the heavens to thwart God’s will.  This was the cloak I bore as I walked across the continents.  As I witnessed wars, hunger, and idiocy.

 It was in Babylon that man began to set the rules in stone for which they were to live by.  Hammurabi’s code of law.  A monument of stone tablets built to thwart the devices of the Lord’s Adversary.  I stood for days before this stele and studied man’s laws as set forth by Hammurabi’s scribes.  I made note of the hypocrisy’s contained therein and anger brewed in my chest.  These were God’s chosen one’s? For interfering with them I was imprisoned in flesh?

They had no love for God’s creation as I had for eons.  His children were the embodiment of selfishness. Their destructive ways were as boils on His world.  Their sins far outweighed any that I may have been guilty of.

I would show Him that I was right.

Satan 1:3

 

As man’s search for civilization and God progressed I became aware of the folly that is free will. By allowing man to bathe in this great gift, God also provided him with the cloth to dry himself.  When man’s skin became pruned with excess he had a foil to turn to.  A scapegoat to explain away his gluttony and greed.  Why did man partake of the apple and kill his brother? 

The Devil.  Satan. 

How easy it was.  To turn woeful eyes towards the clouds and weep for forgiveness.  It was not his fault that the blood of children stained the streets.  It was the fault of the serpent.  Man’s immorality had a source if not a face.  

In hearing these stories and feeling the weight with which they were thrown, I shuddered in horror.  These were the creatures I envied.  These were the divine creations I had once marveled at.  These selfish, immoral, and hypocritical beasts that worshipped God as they wielded swords in His name.  They feared His wrath so they attributed their actions to me.

Me. 

I stood on a mountain and watched as a man feverishly built an ark because he feared the wrath of a vengeful God.  For all who would listen this man spoke of God. This God was going to purge the earth of man’s sins.  And in the shadow of this vessel men gathered.  They ridiculed its builder and the stories of a flood that never came. 

The ark stands their still.  Its builder had been right.  There was a terrible flood threatening to cover the earth. 

Evil.

Satan 1:2

 

I watched men perish.  And as family and friends wept at the grave of a fallen loved one I stood beside them.  To learn and to listen.  I heard stories, passed down orally through the generations of God and His adversary.  I came to understand that when Man spoke of God he spoke of our Creator.  The Grand Designer.  Creator of the heavens and the earth.  And in the clouds God reigned, looked down upon His creation, and passed judgement.  This God was a wicked God and one who did not tolerate disobedience among His creations.  And the grand example, as was told, was the Adversary.

And who was this Adversary that man spoke of?  

This Adversary was me.  I was the serpent who apparently served as the example to all that the greatest of man’s sins was pride. It was pride that drove the serpent to tempt Eve with an apple.  My Eve.  Passed down through the generations this story took on a life of its own.  In Man’s mind, Adam and Eve were the first and from them were borne all.  They were the conduit by which God populated the earth.  Eve from Adam’s rib and from them Mankind.  Man did not know that Eve was the more powerful of the two or that eons of development took place before Eden was seeded.  

Man also spoke of life after death.  Of this I had no evidence.  I had watched beasts perish for centuries.  I had never seen the remnant of a perished being.  If this was possible I knew not. But Man knew of God and this surprised me.  Man’s version of the Creator was flawed and grew more flawed as time, and generations, passed.  But the concept was there.

I spoke to no one.  I walked among God’s favored one’s and grew bitter.  He had somehow revealed Himself to them and in the process I had become the villain.  A devourer of Man and Man’s souls.  All ills were attributed to the Adversary.  He who had fallen from grace and the right hand of God.  I began to believe that Man knew something more than what I saw on the surface.  That some great truth had been revealed to them as I withered in the darkness and was eventually imprisoned in this form.

The Devil was the creation of Man.  As the Devil became linked to the serpent of Eden thus did I.  I was the fallen one Man spoke of.  I was the Tempter, the Adversary, the Bright Star, poor Lucifer.

Man wove the thread of the robe that adorned the Devil’s back and I put it on.