darkness moved over the face of the abyss
“The earth was without form, and void; and darkness moved over the face of the abyss.”
—the Holy Bible, Genesis 1: 2, as quoted in The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History by Jeffrey Burton Russell, 1988.
darkness wrapped in darkness
“At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness.”
—the Rig Veda, as quoted in The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History by Jeffrey Burton Russell, 1988.
Blackness
“Blackness and darkness are almost always asociated with evil, in opposition to the whiteness and light associated with good. This is true even in black Africa. Blackness has an immense range of negative and fearful associations: death, the underworld, the void, blindness, night stalked by robbers and ghosts. Psychologically it signifies the fearful, uncontrollable depths of the unconscious. it is also associated with depression, stupidity, sin, despair, dirt, poison, and plague.”
—Jeffrey Burton Russell, from The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History, 1988.
The red glow of hellfire
“The gods of the underworld, such as the Greco-Roman Plouton or Pluto, are lords of both fertility and death. The Devil’s association with hell comes from his identification with the malevolent aspects of the subterranean lord. The red glow of hellfire, together with the red tint of land scorched by fire and with the color of blood, led to the association of the Devil with the color red.”
—Jeffrey Burton Russell, from The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History, 1988.
Seth
“No Egyptian deity ever became the principle of evil, but one god, Seth, displays the destructive element more than the others. . . . Seth was a god of the dry, arid south, where the red deserts stretched lifeless to the rocky, burning mountains on the horizon. Because of Seth’s association with the desert, he was usually portrayed as a reddish animal of unknown identity, and redhaired people were considered in some special way his own.”
—Jeffrey Burton Russell, from The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History, 1988.
bright son of the morning
“How did you come to fall from heaven, bright son of the morning,
how thrown to the earth, you who enslaved the nations?”
—Isaiah, Isaiah, 14: 12, King James Version of the Holy Bible, 1611. As quoted in The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History, by Jeffrey Burton Russell, 1988.
falling like lightning
“I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven.”
—Jesus Christ, Luke, 10: 18, King James Version of the Holy Bible, 1611. As quoted in The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History, by Jeffrey Burton Russell, 1988.
The Devil’s nickname
“The Devil is usually black, symbolizing the absence of light and goodness. His skin is black, or he is a black animal, or his clothing is black. Sometimes he is a black rider on a black horse. His next most common hue is red, the color of blood and fire; he dresses in red or has a red or flaming beard; redheaded men and women are more subject to his influence than others. Occasionally he is green, owing to his association with the powers of vegetation, of forest wilderness, and of the hunt. . . .
The Devil comes from the north, domain of darkness and punishing cold. Curious connections exist between Satan and Santa Claus (Saint Nicholas). The Devil lives in the far north and drives reindeer; he wears a suit of red fur; he goes down chimneys in the guise of Black Jack or the Black Man covered in soot; as Black Peter he carries a large sack into which he pops sins or sinners (including naughty children); he carries a stick or cane to thrash the guilty (now he merely brings candy canes); he flies through the air with the help of strange animals; food and wine are left out for him as a bribe to secure his favors. The Devil’s nickname (!) “Old Nick” derives directly from Saint Nicholas.”
—Jeffrey Burton Russell, commenting on the popular folklore of Europe in the middle ages. From The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History, 1988. Santa is Satan . . . I knew it!
the prince of darkness
“. . . the prince of darkness, the enemy of the human race, . . . was bigger even than any of the beasts he had seen in hell before. . . . For this beast was black as a crow, having the shape of a human body from head to toe except that it had a tail and many hands. Indeed, the horrible monster had thousands of hands, each one of which was a hundred cubits long and ten cubits thick. Each hand had twenty fingers, which were each a hundred palms long and ten palms wide, with fingernails longer than knights’s lances, and toenails much the same. The beast also had a long, thick beak, and a long, sharp tail fitted with spikes to hurt the damned souls. This horrible being lay prone on an iron grate over burning coals fanned by a great throng of demons. . . . This enemy of the human race was bound in all his members and joints with iron and bronze chains burning and thick. . . . Whenever he breathed, he blew out and scattered the souls of the damned throughout all the regions of hell. . . . And when he breathed back in, he sucked all the souls back up and, when they had fallen into the sulphurous smoke of his maw, he chewed them up. . . . This beast is called Lucifer and is the first creature that God made.”
—from The Vision of Tundale, a “minor masterpiece” of the eleventh century. Found in The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History by Jeffrey Burton Russell, 1988.
black as any coal
“Alas, alas, and woe!
Lucifer, why did you fall so?
We who were angels so fair
and sat so high above the air,
now we’ve become as black as any coal,
ugly and tattered as a fool.”
—Dante (1265–1321), from his Divine Comedy. Found in The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History by Jeffrey Burton Russell, 1988.