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Damned: An Illustrated History of the Devil (Hardcover)


Review:

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
This wickedly attractive coffee-table book by Muchembled, a Parisian scholar who specializes in the history of witchcraft, traces the devil from the 12th century to the present. Satan, writes Muchembled, represents "the dark side of Western culture" and is a product of the human imagination, so any analysis of Old Scratch reveals a great deal about the changing landscapes of Europe and America through the ages. One particularly intriguing chapter touches on contemporary themes: how psychoanalysis has changed our view of the devil, how horror films have depicted Satan and how recent marketers have blithely employed his image to sell products. Muchembled doesn't have time for real depth of analysis in the short essays that form the text of this book, which is a pity, because he offers some provocative insights and sharp cultural critique. The real star is the book's full-color art, with its dazzling display of images from medieval manuscripts to contemporary comics. We see depictions of masks, cartoons, sketches, masters' paintings, facsimiles of broadsides, woodcuts and carvings of the devil through the ages. All are accompanied by Muchembled's incisive (and occasionally mordant) commentary.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
This gorgeously illustrated volume chronicles how the image of the devil in Western art has changed over the years. Muchembled divides the book into five sections, beginning with early images of the devil from the Middle Ages. The devil and his acolytes primarily showed up to torment sinners in grotesque, often sexual, ways. Subsequent sections deal with witches and sorcerers, who were believed to have consorted with the devil, and wicked women, whose tempting figures represented an almost satanic lure for otherwise pious men. Muchembled includes a diverse collection of images from artists such as Vasari, Bosch, and Goya, depicting the devil's visage in everything from a small imp to a sinister, distinctly sexual woman. But as he progresses to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Muchembled finds the devil losing his power to provoke fear; instead, he becomes a more human figure and sometimes even a comic one. Muchembled has done an admirable job of presenting the history of the devil in popular culture by mixing lively text with a variety of colorful renditions of Satan. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review: Diabolically good!
Ah, the Devil. I've always been intrigued by the guy. From a brief foray into the Church of Satan in high school to a more academic interest in college, I've long been interested in the way religion and society attempt to explain the darker side of human existence. So I was rather delighted to receive this book as (irony alert) a Christmas present.

I was not disappointed. This is one gorgeous tome. The illustrations are striking and the commentary insightful and illuminating (if a bit brief). In particular, the section on medieval depictions of Satan is stunning...there is a creatively unsettling streak to those images which has yet to be matched. I do think the book fizzles out towards the end, as it enters modernity, but perhaps this is simply because us modern enlightened people have little use for devils and demons anymore. At any rate, pictures of the devil as a medium for advertising just don't compare to paintings of a triumphant King of Hell torturing the wicked.

Lastly, I had hoped that perhaps this book would take a little time to look at how non-Christian cultures have viewed the Devil or similar beings (like the Talmudic Lilith or the Arabic Shaitan). Even without that hope fulfilled, this is still a worthy and enlightening read. If you've got any sympathy for the devil, you'd do well to check this out.

The History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (Open Court paperback) (Paperback)

An Interesting History With A Little Personal Theology, December 14, 2004
Reviewer: Skylar (United States) - See all my reviews
The author of this history is an avid proponent of what he regards to be "true religion": in this case, "the religion of science," in which the devil and his legions are regarded as mere symbols and in which belief in literal demons is labeled a base superstition, a sort of primitive dualism, and the springboard for all manner of evil (witch hunts, inquisitions, etc.). The author seems to regard himself as the herald of a new age of scientific objectivism.

The book outlines the history of man's perception of evil, presenting it as a sort of progressive evolution from superstition to reason, assisted by the "divine light of science." In deifying science, however, the author seems to forget that science is likely to be as false as religion (what is held as scientific truth in one generation may be the laughingstock of the next); it can be as dogmatic as religion (take the modern rigid stance on evolution, for example); and it can be a source of as great an evil (consider the Nazi's eugenics program).

The author often asserts as fact matters that would more accurately be termed hypothesis. But whether or not one agrees with his interpretations of religious history, or with his questionable definition of true religion, "The History of the Devil" is a fascinating book. It teaches many interesting--and rarely emphasized--components of Christian history, introducing to us a large cast of historical figures. These men and women the author judges according to their degree of enlightenment, that is, according to how literally they regard the devil. Luther, however, receives much praise, despite his strong belief in a literal devil, because in his lifetime he ensured that none of his followers ever burned a human soul for a witch. Calvin, on the other hand, the instigator of numerous executions, is offered no such kindness.

The book is not solely the story of the Christian view of the devil. It begins with the most primitive views of good and evil, passing through Ancient Egypt, the early Semites, Persian Dualism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other religions. The book is replete with eye-catching illustrations, and it is spattered with fascinating quotations from literature and historical and theological sources. Whatever your theological objections, The History of the Devil is worth reading.

Review: DISCOURSES ON THE IDEA OF DEVIL FROM PAST TO PRESENT
A wonderfully written and illustrated book takes you through the concept of devil from the ancient egypt to modern times. Paul ideas on the demonology of the christendom will keep you on the edge of your seat. A must buy classic!

Review: a demonological classic and scholarly opus

Paul Carus's classic treatise, writ and published to great occult acclaim circa 1900, remains a much deserved classic; 350 illustrations carefully chosen alone warrant applause, but it is his highly focused text that deserves scholars' attentions and demands republication. Foremost of importance for current day readers is the extent to which the work delves far beyond the pulpish, tho non-fictive, profit-orientated goals of the majority of the Devil's historians making a buck and a name out there today (Jeffrey B. Russell, whose depictions of the late eliphas Levi as a mere flop Satanist---of which as a devout Catholic Abbe' he was strictly railing against the entirety of his miraculous life---exemplifies such). None such opinionations are within carus's exemplar work. Crucial to this review is coneying the standard of success he reaches in establishing his goal of a thorough, precise and organized historiography mapping and dilineating the crucial developments and differences amidst the varied beliefs and ideas concerning evil and its dominions and servitors, on a level worldwide in conception. Cultural relativity is and remains established throughout; no opinions are broached to instead focus strictly upon orientating the reader with The History Of The Devil And The Idea Of Evil ( the book's subtitle) with little sensationalism besides the already stranger than fiction truth of the matter.

As a Romantic debauchee lusting for poetic description with the kind of wit that bites its object of desire in the middle of the back, my only complaint of such a work as Carus's lies here. Those searching for the blasphemous variety need not turn to necromancy to evoke such animated literature as some precious few remain miraculously in print ( Eliphas Levi, Montague Summers,and Grillot de Givry, respectively, all relative contemporaries of Carus---1860, 1926 & 1931---serve excellent examples). Carus however was unconcerned with novelistic delights and concentrated upon discovering underlying formations of principles and morality within a cultural context; his establishing of historical factual sources, verifiable and in most cases evident, posits him upon a high mount of scholarly regard in the lands of comparative religions.

Review: Carus Drops the Devil Ball
Mr Paul Carus comes at the problems of evil in society with a refreshing,albeit strained, neutrality. I think that Mr. Carus seriously digs Satan and this comes through in the background of his writing, especially when he came no longer hold his tongue in the witchcraft sections. He is a mighty scholar, tis true, but I wonder, Mr. Paul Carus, where is the discussion of our present understanding of evil? The Chapter "In Verse and Fable," was a move in the right direction, but sadly, the book dries up before Carus can point to any application of his fine scholarship to our present existance, so it becomes simply a fine reproduction of the endless parade of devil literature...

Review: Controversial? I think not.
This book isn't exactly your classic bedtime reading. It's a great book, no doubt about that. But the book tells fact after fact after fact. It reads like an encyclopedia, which is why I find it difficult to doubt anything the author is stating. But again, it's a great book if your just wanting the facts. It vary rarely contains personal thoughts and feelings about the subjects. I recommend it for anyone just wanting the facts, then wanting to base their own opinions.

Devil
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

The Devil is the name given to a supernatural entity who, in most Western religions, is the central embodiment of evil. This entity is commonly referred to by a variety of other names, including Satan, Asmodai, Beelzebub, Lucifer and/or Mephistopheles. In classic demonology, however, each of these alternate names refers to a specific supernatural entity, and there is significant disagreement as to whether any of these specific entities is actually evil. The English word devil is derived from the Greek word diabolos ("to slander"), and the term devil can refer to a greater demon in the hierarchy of Hell. In other languages devil may be derived from the same Indo-European root word for deva, which roughly translates as "angel".

Raising the devil.
Some scholars believe that the notion of a central supernatural embodiment of evil, as well as the notion of angels, first arose in Western monotheism when Judaism came into contact with the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism. Unlike classical monotheism, Zoroastrianism features two gods, one good and one evil, locked in a cosmic struggle where both are more or less evenly matched and the outcome is uncertain. Ahura Mazda ("Wise Lord"), also known as Ohrmazd, is the god of light, and Ahriman ("Evil Spirit"), also known as Angra Mainyu, is the god of darkness. In a final battle between the supernatural forces of good and evil, human souls will be judged in a fiery ordeal, and only the good will survive. Accordingly, humans are urged to align themselves with the god of light and his angels and to shun the god of darkness and his demons.

Christianity views Satan as a being created by God, whereas the evil god of Zoroastrianism is not a created being.

Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night (Hardcover)

From Publishers Weekly
If America is a melting pot, then Halloween is the stew that simmers in our national cauldron. In this fascinating study, Rogers shows how the holiday is a hodgepodge of ancient European pagan traditions, 19th-century Irish and Scottish celebrations, Western Christian interpretations of All Souls' Day and thoroughly modern American consumer ideals. At its heart, he says, Halloween is a celebration of the inversion of social codes-children have power over adults, marauders can make demands of established homeowners and anyone may assume a temporary disguise. Canadian professor Rogers is a fine cultural historian, who carefully sifts through complex social and religious data to tease out meanings and trajectories. One excellent chapter illuminates Halloween and Hollywood, while a chapter entitled Border Crossings discusses Halloween observance among non-Anglo populations in North America, including Mexico's "Dia de los Muertos." Rogers's is the best study to date of the history and growing significance of Halloween.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Book Description
Boasting a rich, complex history rooted in Celtic and Christian ritual, Halloween has evolved from ethnic celebration to a blend of street festival, fright night, and vast commercial enterprise. In this colorful history, Nicholas Rogers takes a lively, entertaining look at the cultural origins and development of one of the most popular holidays of the year. Drawing on a fascinating array of sources, from classical history to Hollywood films, Rogers traces Halloween as it emerged from the Celtic festival of Samhain (summer's end), picked up elements of the Christian Hallowtide (All Saint's Day and All Soul's Day), arrived in North America as an Irish and Scottish festival, and evolved into an unofficial but large-scale holiday by the early 20th century. He examines the 1970s and '80s phenomena of Halloween sadism (razor blades in apples) and inner-city violence (arson in Detroit), as well as the immense influence of the horror film genre on the reinvention of Halloween as a terror-fest. Throughout his vivid account, Rogers shows how Halloween remains, at its core, a night of inversion, when social norms are turned upside down, and a temporary freedom of expression reigns supreme. He examines how this very license has prompted censure by the religious Right, occasional outrage from law enforcement officials, and appropriation by Left-leaning political groups. Engagingly written and based on extensive research, Halloween is the definitive history of the most bewitching day of the year, illuminating the intricate history and shifting cultural forces behind this enduring trick-or-treat holiday.

Review: A serious cultural history of Halloween
Single-subject histories on the likes of salt, codfish and even the color red have become a fashionable lately, and this book is a fine specimen of the genre. It traces the history of the celebration of October 31 from Samhain, the year cycle rite observed by the pagan Celts in Britain, to the many ways it is marked in North America at the time of the new millennium. His central thesis, supported by myriad examples and illustrations, is that Halloween has always been a liminal time, a boundary between autumn and winter, this world and the other world, life and death. Drawing from the theory of anthropologist Victor Turner, he argues that liminal times are also periods of ritual inversion in which the obverse of cultural values, however they are construed, are temporarily allowed to emerge into public consciousness and celebrated before being relegated once again to the cultural closet. Whether these oppositional symbols are spiritual otherworlds, as they were for the ancient Celts, or consist instead of what is disavowed by the dominant cultural paradigm, Halloween provides a framework during which they can be publicly explored and performed. This central feature of Halloween, more than any individual rite or symbol, constitutes the core of the holiday that has endured for over a thousand years.

Rogers begins by examining the practices of the ancient Celts, for whom Samhain was a year cycle rite that marked the passage from autumn into winter, a time out of time when the boundaries between the world of humans and that of otherworldly creatures - be they ancestors, deities or other kinds of spirits - were thought to be thin, and the "reverse world" was allowed to briefly overlap with the everyday world. Carrying this metaphor forward into history, Rogers shows how Halloween's supernatural connotations continued in medieval and early modern festivities associated with All Saints' and All Souls' Days, from which we get many of the rituals still associated with the holiday today, including jack-o'-lanterns, pranking behavior and petty vandalism. He traces the migration of these customs to the New World with two groups of immigrants: English Catholics and liberal Protestants (the Puritans disdained the observance as too popish), and the Irish.

Rogers really shines in describing the growth of Halloween in New World soil. He addresses the development of trick-or-treating in the 20th century not only as a form of social inversion in which children demand candy from strangers, in a reversal of the usual cautions, but as a rite that prepared children to become consumers of sweets and other paraphernalia associated with the holiday, such as costumes and decorations. But the dangers of the otherworld could not be tamed by conspicuous consumption; they re-emerged in the 1960s and 70s as fear of contaminated treats - the infamous razor blade in the apple. The very symbol of harvest home, the fruit of the Celtic otherworld, the Isle of Apples, was transformed into an instrument of danger - not, this time, from otherworldly beings, but from other human beings. Human beings similarly were the source of other Halloween dangers, such as the arson and vandalism of "Devil's Night" in Detroit and other North American cities. Meantime, Hollywood horror films picked up Halloween's association with the supernatural, darkness, death and decay, often weaving in themes associated with contemporary legends and rumor panics. The resulting mix blurred the lines between reality and the imaginary in a way that was new in the history of Halloween, emphasizing gory hyperrealism over the spiritual or supernatural frights that predominated in earlier centuries. At the same time that parents began to be afraid of allowing children to trick-or-treat on Halloween for fear of candy contamination and crime, Halloween emerged as a party night for adults, when those who had enjoyed costuming and rites of reversal as children wanted to experience them in a new, grown-up context. It reached its apotheosis in street parades of large North American cities such as Toronto, New York and Los Angeles, where it has become an occasion for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered communities to publicly celebrate identities usually relegated to the margins of society by the dominant culture. As in much of Halloween behavior, this is done through play, humor and parody, hallmarks of symbolic inversion at the core of Halloween. Rogers also treats the holiday's globalization: both the spread throughout North America of the analogous Mexican holiday El Día de los Muertos on the heels of Latino immigration, and the global diffusion of the commercialized Halloween to Europe and other markets. He provocatively asks whether the transformation of the holiday into a mass-marketed occasion for conspicuous consumption will eventually trump its subversive qualities, or whether individuals' creativity and sense of play will ultimately reclaim Halloween as a site of contestation.

Regardless of the cultural changes this holiday undergoes, Halloween seems to attract to it the oppositional and the carnivalesque. No wonder, then, that is has become a popular target for the invectives of conservative Christian ministers and their congregations, who label it "Satanic" and call for its suppression. But the suppression of culturally contested symbols never successfully eliminates the ideas behind them. In fact, as Turner and French cultural historian Michel Foucault argue, these oppositional images are fertile ground for cultural renewal, and provide alternative ways of envisioning reality: they are cultural countersites where social mores and pretensions can be mocked, parodied, and lampooned with impunity, and an alternative universe can temporarily be imagined.
Rogers does not address at any length the reclamation of Halloween by Neopagan groups in Europe and North America - a pity, because this trend fits well with his overarching theoretical approach. And he seems ignorant of the considerable work done on the holiday by American folklorists. Still, this excellent book will appeal to a wide range of readers. It reads fluidly and easily, is theoretically well-informed without being jargon-ridden or using theory as a bludgeon, and could easily be adopted for use in large undergraduate courses on cultural history, folkloristics and anthropology.

Review: Oops, wrong kind of book
I can honestly say that I have almost always finished reading a book that I start. This is the exception.

It's my fault, really. I was looking for a book that would discuss the origins and development of Halloween. I had in mind the sort that would discuss Charlie Brown and The Great Pumpkin and other Americana. You know, a nostalgic trip down Memory Lane in rural/suburban America.

Oops.

This is actually an academic treatise where the author wants to discuss social inversion, gender identity, and queer politics. No offense to the author, but most people don't regularly use the term "social inversion", let alone bring it up constantly in conversation. If you are a cultural transgressor looking to be affirmed in your okayness, this is perhaps a good book for you. I was looking to be affirmed in my nostalgia, so I am out of luck.

(Normally I don't review books down because I disagree with the author; however, I feel that this is marketed deceptively. Normal people don't talk like this guy writes, so I can only imagine that he is one of those people that must rework every concept to fit his sociological theories. Or maybe I'm just a jerk - you decide).

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