The Darker Side of Dawn

ISBN: 9781332809998 出版年：2016 页码：748 Ananda K Coomaraswamy Forgotten Books

Students of theology and mythology are well aware that the concept of deity presents itself to us under a double aspect; on the one hand as gracious, on the other as awful. He evokes both love and fear. He is both a light and a darkness, a revelation and a mystery. In the latter and awful aspect, clouds and darkness are round about him. The Light is Life, the Darkness Death. The one corresponds to our concept of Good, the other to our concept of Evil, within the recognized defini tions of good as that which all creatures desire and of evil as that which-all creatures would avoid. A majority of religions in their exoteric formulation treat these contrasted aspects in outward operation as distinct and Opposed forces, divine and Satanic, celestial and chthonic. Satan is commonly thought of as a Serpent or Dragon and is often so represented, upon the stage or in art. Yet the Solar hero and the Dragon, at war on the Open stage, are blood brothers in the green room. From the Christian point of view, the fallen Angels are fallen in grace, but not in nature and from the Islamic, Iblis is restored at the end of time; in other words Satan becomes again Lucifer. The same deity, Zeus for example in Greek mythology, may be worshipped and represented both in anthropomorphic and in snake forms. Serpent worship and its iconography, despite their outwardly primitive appearance, have profound metaphysical foundations.