The Dev­il, the Beast, Beelze­bub, Lucifer, Satan: whichev­er name we hap­pen to call him, we know full well who the guy is — or at least, we think we do. In fact, the images and evo­ca­tions of that embod­i­ment of (or per­haps metaphor for) sin, deceit, and temp­ta­tion that many of us have encoun­tered in pop­u­lar cul­ture have lit­tle, if any­thing, to do with Bib­li­cal scrip­ture. Here to explain Satan’s real tex­tu­al ori­gins is Reli­gion for Break­fast cre­ator Andrew Mark Hen­ry, who in the video above goes all the way back to the ancient Israelites and the Hebrew Bible — in which “the notion of a sin­gu­lar, supreme evil enti­ty and oppo­nent to God is com­plete­ly absent.”

Hen­ry men­tions that the Hebrew term śāṭān, which means “adver­sary or accuser,” does appear ear­ly in the Bible, but it “sim­ply refers to human adver­saries.” Only in lat­er texts, like the Book of Job, does the word take on the mean­ing of a “divine job title, kind of like a pros­e­cu­tor” or “legal adver­sary in a divine court.”

We’re still far from the cur­rent Chris­t­ian con­cept of Satan, which may even­tu­al­ly have arisen, accord­ing to some schol­ars, out of cen­turies of cul­tur­al exchange between Chris­tian­i­ty and Zoroas­tri­an­ism. The ancient Mid­dle East­ern reli­gion pro­pos­es a per­fect­ly good divine being Ahu­ra Maz­da “locked in bat­tle with a whol­ly evil being named Angra Mainyu.” This encounter between civ­i­liza­tions would explain some­thing about the emer­gence of the now wide­ly acknowl­edged idea of “a cos­mic strug­gle between good and evil.”

As one ancient text is lay­ered atop anoth­er, “an evil leader of fall­en angels or evil spir­it in gen­er­al becomes a recur­ring char­ac­ter,” and in the New Tes­ta­ment, “the chief adver­sary of God” is called by the name Satan — or by the Greek word diábo­los, which gave us Dev­il and all its relat­ed words. In ref­er­ence to the ori­gins of Satan, the Book of Isa­iah offers the line “How you are fall­en from heav­en, O Day Star, Son of Dawn!” The term “Day Star,” which refers to the plan­et Venus, was ren­dered in the Latin Vul­gate trans­la­tion as Lucifer, which has become anoth­er com­mon name for this ever-more-charged fig­ure. Whether we fear him, con­demn him, deny his exis­tence, or even — depend­ing on our musi­cal gen­res of choice — imag­ine that we wor­ship him, our cul­ture does, in some sense or anoth­er, seem to need him.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Par­adise Lost Explained: How John Mil­ton Wrote His Epic Reli­gious Poem from Satan’s Per­spec­tive

Behold the Codex Gigas (aka “Devil’s Bible”), the Largest Medieval Man­u­script in the World

The Leg­end of How Blues­man Robert John­son Sold His Soul to the Dev­il at the Cross­roads

A Brief His­to­ry of Mak­ing Deals with the Dev­il: Nic­colò Pagani­ni, Robert John­son, Jim­my Page & More

John Cleese Plays the Dev­il, Makes a Spe­cial Appeal for Hell, 1966

Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn & Twain Him­self Meet Satan in the Zany 1985 Clay­ma­tion The Adven­tures of Mark Twain

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

“Do what thou wilt”: as the cen­tral prin­ci­ple of a world­view, it may not sound like much, but at least there are always a great many peo­ple ready and will­ing to hear it. So dis­cov­ered Aleis­ter Crow­ley, the ear­ly twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Occultist now remem­bered not just for his uncon­ven­tion­al reli­gious prac­tices, but also for his knack for gath­er­ing cults around him­self. It was in Liber AL vel Legis, or The Book of the Law, the cen­tral text of his reli­gion Thele­ma, that he instruct­ed his fol­low­ers to act direct­ly on their own desires, ide­al­ly with the aid of some rit­u­al­is­tic black mag­ick.

You can learn more about the life and pur­suits that even­tu­al­ly got Crow­ley dubbed “the wickedest man in the world” from the Hochela­ga video above. After liv­ing most of his child­hood under a Bib­li­cal-fun­da­men­tal­ist preach­er father, who died when Crow­ley was eleven, he was sent away to var­i­ous board­ing schools, then turned trou­ble­mak­er. At Cam­bridge, where he went to study Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture, he fell for the Roman­tics, then for the occult. After leav­ing with­out his degree, but with a con­sid­er­able inher­i­tance, he enjoyed the free­dom to trav­el the world, climb­ing moun­tains and attempt­ing to mas­ter the dark arts — not to men­tion tak­ing drugs and hav­ing affairs.

As he went from coun­try to coun­try, Crow­ley nev­er met an ancient reli­gion he could­n’t adapt to his own ends. But no gods made as much of an impact on him as those of ancient Egypt, specif­i­cal­ly Hoor-paar-kraat, or Har­pocrates in the Greek; Crow­ley claimed to have been con­tact­ed by the voice of Hoor-paar-kraat’s mes­sen­ger Aiwass, from whom he took the dic­ta­tion that became Liber AL vel Legis. Styling him­self as an Egypt­ian prophet, he preached one way for human­i­ty to push through to a post-Chris­t­ian age: “What­ev­er you feel like doing, go and do it, regard­less of pop­u­lar opin­ion or con­ven­tion­al moral­i­ty.” After all, it seemed to work for Crow­ley him­self, though the work of a noto­ri­ous occultist cer­tain­ly isn’t for every­body.

Nor could even the world’s wickedest man keep it up for­ev­er: “Even­tu­al­ly all the trav­el­ing, drug-tak­ing, and lib­er­tin­ism had caught up with Crow­ley.” His inher­i­tance dried up, and his addic­tions wors­ened. But he did­n’t give up on Thele­ma, even going so far as to estab­lish a com­mune in Sici­ly. Alas, the “respon­si­bil­i­ty-free lifestyle” advo­cat­ed by the reli­gion soon drove its head­quar­ters to chaot­ic dilap­i­da­tion. But just a cou­ple of decades after his death in Eng­land in 1947, Crow­ley’s glow­er­ing vis­age popped up again, on the cov­er of Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. He became the sub­ject of pop-music ref­er­ence not just by the Bea­t­les, but also David Bowie, Iron Maid­en, and the late Ozzy Osbourne. “Genius? Insane? Vision­ary? Fraud? Free­thinker? Cult leader?” We might grant Aleis­ter Crow­ley all these titles, and that of pro­to-rock star besides.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Aleis­ter Crow­ley: The Wickedest Man in the World Doc­u­ments the Life of the Bizarre Occultist, Poet & Moun­taineer

Aleis­ter Crow­ley Reads Occult Poet­ry in the Only Known Record­ings of His Voice (1920)

The Thoth Tarot Deck Designed by Famed Occultist Aleis­ter Crow­ley

The Sur­re­al Paint­ings of the Occult Magi­cian, Writer & Moun­taineer, Aleis­ter Crow­ley

How Aleis­ter Crow­ley, the Infa­mous Occultist, Led the First Attempt to Reach the Sum­mit of K2 (1902)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Chris­tian­i­ty often man­i­fests in pop­u­lar cul­ture through cel­e­bra­tions like Christ­mas and East­er, or icons like lambs and fish. Less often do you see it asso­ci­at­ed with vials of blood and dis­em­bod­ied heads. Yet as the new Hochela­ga video above reveals, the most famed Chris­t­ian arti­facts do tend toward the grue­some. Take one par­tic­u­lar­ly renowned exam­ple, the Shroud of Turin: hear the name, and you imag­ine a cloth bear­ing the image of Jesus Christ. But think about it a moment, and you remem­ber that it’s the blood­stained wrap­ping of a cru­ci­fied body — that is, if the tales told about it are true in the first place.

As with any reli­gious relics, you have to decide for your­self what to believe about all of these. If you pay a vis­it to the Basil­i­ca of St. Antho­ny in Pad­ua, you’ll see on dis­play the pre­served jaw of that holy fig­ure — which does, at least, look like a real human jaw. In south­east­ern France, at the basil­i­ca of Saint-Max­imin-la-Sainte-Baume, you’ll find a skull pur­port­ed to be that of Mary Mag­da­lene.

And we cer­tain­ly can’t rule out that it real­ly is, spec­u­la­tive though the evi­dence may be. The sit­u­a­tion grows some­what more com­pli­cat­ed with the head of John the Bap­tist — or rather, the heads of John the Bap­tist, four of which have been claimed in dif­fer­ent places so far.

“Dur­ing the Mid­dle Ages, relics were in high demand, and there were always peo­ple will­ing to sup­ply them,” explains Hochela­ga cre­ator Tom­mie Trelawny. “It’s often joked that, if you gath­ered all the alleged frag­ments of the true cross, you’d have enough wood to build a small for­est.” Even the Shroud of Turin has come under unfor­giv­ing scruti­ny. Radio­car­bon dat­ing has placed it in the mid-four­teenth cen­tu­ry, imply­ing a forgery, but more recent X‑ray tests sug­gest that its linen was made in the first cen­tu­ry, between the years 55 and 74: close enough to what we under­stand as the time of Jesus’ bur­ial. Debates over the authen­tic­i­ty of all these arti­facts will con­tin­ue for cen­turies — and quite pos­si­bly mil­len­nia — to come, but their pow­er­ful embod­i­ment of both “the deeply dis­turb­ing and the haunt­ing­ly beau­ti­ful” won’t fade away any time soon.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Our Depic­tion of Jesus Changed Over 2,000 Years and What He May Have Actu­al­ly Looked Like

The British Muse­um is Full of Loot­ed Arti­facts

Europe’s Old­est Intact Book Was Pre­served and Found in the Cof­fin of a Saint

Did Psy­che­del­ic Mush­rooms Appear in Medieval Chris­t­ian Art?: A Video Essay

The Real Sto­ry of East­er: How We Got from the First East­er in the Bible to Bun­nies, Eggs & Choco­late

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.