I went to the weekly poetry reading at the World Stage last Wednesday, and there was a poet who read something called "I Don't Like The Devil." He was a Christian poet, a concept I normally equate with extreme didactics and about as much craftsmanship as hurling dung at a wall blindfolded.

However, his piece was compelling. His use of simile, metaphor and imagery was masterful. In particular he brought the house down with a line that referred to his disdain for the first archangel, "like another man's semen in my woman's panties." It was bangin.'

However, on later reflection I started to do some thinking. The doctrine and position he spouted claimed that the devil "cannot tell the truth." That his every act is evil blah blah blah.

Then I remembered the Vertigo series Lucifer that I've picked up since issue 4 (word is it's totally ass during its first three issues, I dunno). The titular character is trying to regain his wings and get back into heaven.

Y'see, if Lucifer was unable to tell the truth, if everything he did was evil, then either he is more powerful than any of the Judaeo-Christians can admit (that he'd have fooled God himself into signing this guy up as first officer) or their God is a drooling, addle-brained, pissing-his-Depends moron of the first degree to not notice that his go-to guy is evil personified.

Neither of those alternatives seems logical. Well, okay, there's a certain appeal to the idea the Judaeo-Christian God is an idiot, as it would mean people like Nixon really could get into Heaven. Still, naw.

A more realistic concept is this: the Judaeo-Christian God is not "the" god at all, much like Zeus or Odin or Ausar aren't the one overarching God. He's a powerful head of a pantheon (that he doesn't consider as impressive as Zeus or the rest consider their "gangs") and he named as his second a normal being with ego and ambition who one day acted on it and was "cast out."

Then, the Judaeo-Christian God lets his propagandistic, overzealous henchmen and toadies get at the official records, shmucks who were always jealous of Lucifer in the first place, who suddenly turn him into far worse a threat than he could ever have been. Outgunned. Outnumbered. Just a guy.

I'm no satanist, nor an apologist for thousands of years of Christian doctrine. Just something I'm thinking, is all.

Oddly enough, in the Kemetic pantheon you see Set getting the same vilification in latter day retellings, ditto Loki and Hela for the Norse, Ares and Hades become bad guys, and so on. In these days of absolutism, somebody has to play the scapegoat despite the fact that they're probably just doing their job. Funny, that.