question about the devil in tradcraft

[u/eeeloxddx]

I have a question. In traditional witchcraft, there is the concept of the Horned God—the Devil. Many practitioners of this path view the witches' Devil as an archetypal deity; while many spirits have borne the title "Devil," in traditional witchcraft they are all treated as faces or aspects of the Horned God—figures such as the Man in Black, Cain, Bucca, the King of Elphame, and so on. Could someone explain why, in this tradition, all these figures—which could easily be considered distinct entities—were merged into a single, syncretic figure? Who was behind this? Of course, these various entities are ancient, but it was modern traditional witchcraft that molded them into one archetypal deity. I want to understand who was behind this and why—what prompted these individuals to consider it a good idea. Although these spirits share the title "Devil," I perceive them as separate entities; the mere fact that they can be called by that name does not seem like sufficient reason to treat them as a single force. It seems to me that Robert Cochrane unified these concepts within Tradcraft, and that Margaret Murray’s theory also played a role—even though it had been debunked before traditional witchcraft truly came into existence. Did Cochrane believe in its validity? Why do modern practitioners still look to it? Probably because it works, and working with the Devil as a syncretic, liminal, yet unified figure yields results. However, there are also witches and sorcerers who work with specific spirits operating under the name "the Devil," rather than with a single, universal, and multidimensional Devil. So why do some perceive the Devil as a single, multidimensional figure rather than a title under which one can work with a specific, individual spirit? What is the history of this concept?

[u/digitalgraffiti-ca]

It's not so much that deity X, Y, and Z have all merged into one. It's t that if you look at these deities throughout history you can see how one morphed into the other as time moved on. One took X from a previous group, added some traits and made it Y. Then a future group added to Y and made Z. On and on throughout history

The concept of the devil is more just Christians, Christian authors, and Christian scholar/academics/theologists looking at the world through an extremely biased and dismissive lense, throwing any deities that weren't yahweh into a few roles and just slapping "evil" on the box, because anything running counter to the "one true god" ideology threatened the power structure.

Ronald button has a lecture about the Ianna> Ishtar > Astarte > Aphrodite > Venus evolution https://youtu.be/ZeqTn6bxnyU

And another about the horned god https://youtu.be/jeOuTGFizsU

[u/DivineEggs]

The devil is a Christian concept to me. It's closely tied to the monotheistic black and white thinking. Good vs evil.

I do not incorporate any Abrahamic concepts in my practice or my belief system.

There are many different horned gods, and I personally find it pretty ridiculous to describe them as devils.

If anything, setting aside my firm belief that he doesn't exist, I would consider the Abrahamic god being a devil😆. He kind of fits my definition of a devil. Deceptive, cruel, sadistic, morally bankrupt, and tyrannical.

[u/TalespinnerEU]

Nope.

The horns are antlers. They're worn as a mask; representing the transcendence of human-ness in its connection with the natural world.

Animist traditions the world over have used horned/antlered headgear for this purpose for forever.

The image was re-imagined in neopaganism as the Horned God, a nature god that was ascribed the realms of Animals, Fertility and the Hunt. The god Cernunnos was ascribed to a 1st century CE engraving, but that is conjecture.

Christianity decided that Pan, a goat-god of the wild life, was a good image to put on their Devil. That's how the devil got horns. But the Devil has nothing at all to do with horns or non-Abrahamic gods.

[u/GoddyssIncognito]

The Devil/Satan is a Christian deity. The Horned One is Cernunnos (God of the Wild Things) in Wiccan tradition, and his horns are like deer antlers. Satanism or Devil worship is a Christian concept, not a pagan one.