A Propos The Satan Pit

[poliphilo]

Things with horns don't scare me.

Comes of being a pagan, I think.

The freaking out at horns is a  Christian thing; a bit parochial.

Before Christianity came along horns were  a symbol of divinity. Osiris has horns, so does Isis, so does Hermes, so does Diana, so does Pan and so on and on and on....

Horns of beasts, horns of the moon.

I guess the Christians gave the devil horns (a) because they associated him with the old gods and (b) because they were iffy about Nature.

So Satan- he's just Pan with a  makeover- and Pan is cool.

Just saying...

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You're probably right about it being archetypal. There are horned devils in oriental art too.

I'm baffled by the cuckoldry thing. Why horns? And, another equally baffling thing, why did people (sometime in the course of the 17th century) stop finding that joke funny?