THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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worship God's creation, man.
Lust, pride, envy, jealousy, and the unnatural union of
mortal and divine are thus all biblical reasons cited for Satan's expulsion from heaven.
1.6 Demons as the remnants of pagan gods
The original Greek word daemon had no evil significance, but referred instead to "a
guardian spirit, or spirit of inspiration; a spiritual manifestation or intensification" (Hoyt,
1989, p. 17). In Christianity, however, demons are exclusively destructive spirits. In the
New Testament, Jesus frequently vanquished these "unclean spirits", which were
collectively portrayed as members of Satan's host, sent to torment man. Many of these
demons were the transformed remnants of pagan gods, as "the gods of a conquered
people become the devils oftheir conquerors" (Hoyt, 1989, p. 18).
In the formative period of Christianity, ascetics ventured into the deserts and uninhabited
salt marshes where the heathen gods were thought to have withdrawn (Cavendish, 1977;
Ribi, 1989; Robbins, 1959). These hermits sought to do battle with the pagan gods who,
manifesting as tempting evil spirits, filled the ascetics with impure thoughts and
impulses. The imaginal remnants of the pagan gods is evident in the demonological
iconography of the Christian ascetics' visions of evil. Satan appeared as a grotesque
figure, half man and half goat - a clear reference to the pagan god Pan, the "goat-footed,
double-homed lover of riotous orgies, who wanders through tree-studded pastures with
gaily dancing nymphs" (Zacharias, 1980, p. 9). The goat is a symbol of fertility and, as
the image evolved to become more human, portrayed as a sexually insatiable and potent
being, endlessly in pursuit of further carnal conquests. The goat was not only lustful and
foul-smelling, but also ill-tempered, and harmful to crops and fields. For this reason, it
was also associated with anger and destructiveness (Cavendish, 1975). In this historical
context, it is not surprising that Christianity, with its emphasis on the spirit, should cast
the ancient Pan in a demonic role. Historically, Pan is associated with Dionysus who, in
some myths, appears in the form of a goat (Zacharias, 1980). Dionysus was the liberator
god "who set men free of themselves, who released them from the prison of the normal,
constricted, respectable and sane self, and made them for a moment divine" (Cavendish,