when men seek a god . . . they make one like themselves, only larger, uglier, and more evil . . . Also, often they say that this god was once their king, since at the bottom all worship their ancestors who gave them life, if they worship anything at all, and often, too, because they gave them life, they think that they must have been devils. Great ancestors were the first gods . . . and if they had not been evil they would never have been great. Look at Chaka, the Lion of the Zulus. He is called great because he was so wicked and cruel, and so it was and is with others if they succeed, though, if they fail, men speak otherwise of them.

God ~Since the remotest times, Mankind has always believed in something beyond human understanding, something transcendental that he idolized no matter whether there was question of personified or unpersonified conceptions of God. Anything man was unable to understand or to comprehend was imputed to the powers above such as his intuitive virtue admitted them. In this way, all the deities of mankind, good and evil ones (demons) have been born. As time went on, gods, angels, demiurges, demons and ghosts have been worshiped irrespective of their ever having been alive in reality or their having existed only in fancy.

If you will take the trouble to consult your dictionary, you will find that demons may be either good or bad, like any other class of beings. Originally all demons were good, yet of late years people have come to consider all demons evil. I do not know why. Should you read Hesiod you will find he says: 'Soon was a world of holy demons made, Aerial spirits, by great Jove designed To be on earth the guardians of mankind.' " "But Jove was himself a myth," objected Rob, who had been studying mythology. The Demon shrugged his shoulders. "Then take the words of Mr. Shakespeare, to whom you all defer," he replied. "Do you not remember that he says: 'Thy demon (that's thy spirit which keeps thee) is Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable.' " "Oh, if Shakespeare says it, that's all right,' answered the boy."

These beings have also been called 'not divine' (a-deva) and 'not human' (a-miin~a), which shows that they were something between men and gods, i.e., they were demons.

The demons are not our ancestors—we are theirs. The greeds and lusts, the wealth of horrors here, are not the archetypes of our own—they are the derivatives, the dreadful perfectings of all the evil that men have spawned and nourished. Call Man a great, roasting beast, spitted and turning above the fire of his own unending cruelty. The things of this world then, and of those yet farther down, are the drippings of the tortured giant, Man.

Jehovah, who of all the good gods adored by men was certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile to human dignity and liberty-Jehovah had just created Adam and Eve, to satisfy we know not what caprice; no doubt to while away his time, which must weigh heavy on his hands in his eternal egoistic solitude, or that he might have some new slaves.

When a new religion supplants an old religion, the gods of the old often survive as the demons of the new.

The true nature of the gods is that of magical images shaped out of the astral plane by mankind's thought, and influenced by the mind.

They had the faces of angels and the determination of demons.

Monsters and demons are metaphors for the dark side of human nature. The irrational. The fanatical. The animal.

If demons existed, they would be the work of God; but would it he just on the part of God to have created beings condemned eternally to evil and to misery? If demons exist, it is in your low world, and in other worlds of similar degree that they are to be found. They are the human hypocrites who represent a just God as being cruel and vindictive, and who imagine that they make themselves agreeable to Him by the abominations they commit in His name.

At any rate, Judaism, while insisting upon the unity of God and His government of the world, recognizes alongside of God no principle of evil in creation. God has no counterpart either in the powers of darkness, as the deities of Egypt and Babylon had, or in the power of evil, such as Ahriman in the Zoroastrian religion is, whose demoniacal nature was transferred by the Gnostic and Christian systems to Satan. In the Jewish Scriptures Satan has his place among the angels of heaven, and is bound to execute the will of God, his master.

Behold the Great God Pan! Yes, and behold the Serpent, the Tempter, the Fallen Angel! Behold Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Azriel, Asmodeus, Sammael, Zamiel, Prince of Darkness and Father of Lies! Gaze on the Black Goat of the Sabbath, gaze on fabled Ahriman, on Set, Typhon, Malik Tawis, Abaddon, Yama, Primal Nodens, the archetype of evil, known to all men by all names!

The ancient poets animated all objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity; Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of, & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began priesthood; Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things. Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.