THE ELIPHAS LEVI BAPHOMET DRAWING
and
HOW THE CHURCH CREATED THE IMAGE OF THE DEVIL.
The rise of the early Christian church was marked by a battle to individualise itself by usurping and suppressing pantheistic ethos of all peasant cultures with which it came into contact. The purpose of pantheism is not idolatry (as the church has continually misinformed us) but a method of representing the method of nature.
At the top of the scale were the God and Goddess images, which were simply human most perfect form. These were icons to which peasants ASPIRE. At the 'bottom' the icons used were those things animate and inanimate, which encapsulated or symbolised elemental or physical forces such as fertility of animals and crops, these were things upon which the populations well being were dependant.
In the rustic communities, which then existed, their reverence for animals and birds went back into prehistory and all organised pagan ceremonies (and later, monotheistic ones) were just developments or dramatisations of these ancient rustic perceptions and rituals, supposedly enacted for the benefit of the community. An example of this might be the sacrifice of a pig from the flock to the god that made pigs grow big This was simply an extension of the development of feudalism where the head of the tribe took a percentage of the peasants stock or food.
Animals were often used by pagans as Totems. The symbols carved into Totem poles by Native American Indians were not 'devils', but simply respect for the spirits, souls and dignity of animals. Even so they were still considered 'devils' by the early Christian missionaries to America.
As early Christianity developed, for the first few hundred years like other religions it adapted much of the p ...