Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl00523)

Titus Roth wrote:
> 1) Free will - even the Satanic ability to go against God - is the way we
> learn. And together with the law of karma ultimately will assure the
> realization of our innate Godhood.

	Interesting. In Roman Catholicism (at least in what they teach to
priests, Judaism, certainly in Calvinist-derived Protestantism, and in
most other Protestant branches, Satan has no free will. He is an aspect
of God, not a separate being.

	I did a bit of research into Blavatsky's attitude towards Satan, when
researching her attitude towards hypnotism (far too many people read the
note at the top of the page, "Hypnotism is Satanism" without bothering
to what she is REALLY saying, or looking in the Theosophical Glossary to
see what she means by "hypnotism", or, for that matter, what her sources
knew about hypnotism (if you bother to do the research, you will find
out that Blavatsky's knowledge of hypnotism comes from an account by a
doctor who heard the account of another doctor who saw a demonstration
of hypnosis).

	However, she uses Satan in two ways. One is as a Promethean figure (one
who defies the powers that be to aid humanity at a high personal cost).
She also uses Satanism as meaning (probably deriving from Eliphas Levi,
and certainly the way modern occultists interpret it) the rejection of
the spiritual in favor of the material (note that this is the modern
interpretation of the Devil card in Tarot, as well).

	Bart Lidofsky