The History of the Devil - The Horned God Of The West - Magic And Worship

By R Thompson

Originally published London 1929. A detailed history of the Devil in all his forms. Includes much content on magic, paganism and early Wicca practices. Contents Include: Early Belief. The Power of Magic. Magicians and Priests. Horned God of the West. Witch God and Devil. The Evolved Magician. Herne and his Kin. Decline of the Devil. Magic Today. etc. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Home Farm Books are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Apr 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781473390003

R Thompson

The author, after a mundane life which grows ever closer to the end, has looked back on it and decided that he needs to do something of note – even just slightly of note, so he has written a novel or two or three. This is his first. He was a teacher, a painter of some small talent (his webpage is robsgeocrylics.com, or andartbybob.com, which can be found by looking them up on Google) The self-portrait is a painting he did some years ago and, like many of the pictures of authors, it is hopelessly out of date. He no longer looks like that. Nor does he want to. The picture was painted during his look like Hemingway period. He has always been a would-be writer, and has written much during his life. When he first submitted this novel to an agent she asked to see the whole work, and eventually rejected it, saying it was a ‘project’. I was rather amused as I rather thought that all thrillers were merely ‘projects’. Anyway, This is my ‘project’ revised, but not much.

Reviews for The History of the Devil - The Horned God Of The West - Magic And Worship

[lolair-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It is supposed to be a history of the beliefs of the devil focusing on magic, magicians and witchcraft, but positive towards them - with only a little bit on the Christian devil. After skimming through this book I’ve realized that it is not a history of the devil, but instead it is the author’s search for the horned god / magician throughout history.I’ve been skimming through it and reading the chapters that call to me the most (it’s hard for me to read non-fiction without jumping around a book). It’s very fascinating so far. Thompson knows his deities and saints well and seems to have done a lot of research on both ancient forms of Paganism as well as Christianity and Catholicism. There is no bibliography but he does cite sources throughout the book, especially when quoting. The sources for some of the chapters have been disproven, such as in “Chapter 5: Witch God and Devil” where he refers to Margaret Murry and the The Golden Bough. But in my opinion it is hard to hard to disprove all theories and works like The God of the Witches and The Golden Bough are still very useful texts for gleaning knowledge. Many of the works he cites are ancient texts written before and during the middle ages, most in Latin. I suppose in the 1920s there were very few modern works to quote from, this gentleman really had to dig deep into the past to do his research.From Thompson’s writing I think that he was either a closet pagan, sympathetic to the Old Religion, or possibly and atheist. The book is not a history of the devil, but Thompson’s search for the horned magician and god throughout history. Many theories and ideas he presents are commonly known and believed in the Pagan communities today, such as horned deities being twisted into the devil with the conversion to Christianity, the festival dates being changed into holy days and saint days - all of which he calls “transformation”. However Thompson goes further into the theories than most modern Pagans would. The transformation of religions goes back further than the rise of Christianity. When a tribe was conquered it’s gods and spirits and priests were labled as evil; witches, sorcerers, demons. This helped the conquering tribe’s religion to fluorish and take over and has happened in cultures and continents all over the world.Here are a few favourite quotes of mine so far from History of the Devil:“…In all these mythologies, legends, and local cults; in fairy tales and in superstitions; under much exaggeration and poetic fancy; under the usual rationalizations, ficticious explanations, and ‘inventions’ of layman and priest alike, there is a precipitate in which the old indigenous elements may still be found. In lonely places and in such a residuum the horned god still continues. Here there are details of dress, fixed dates for festivals, similar forms of magic in widely separated areas, similar names … will reveal his presence and outline his form. It is often by reason of their trivial nature that such details have survived.” (p.84-85)“Tolerance for another man’s belief had not yet been proscribed as a heinous sin.” (p.62)“The Devil was represented as black, with goat’s horns, ass’s ears, cloven hoofs, and an immense phallus. He is, in fact, the Satyr of the old Dionysiac processions, a nature-spirit, the essence of joyous freedom and unrestrained delight, shameless if you will, for the old Greeks knew not shame. He is the figure who danced light-heartedly across the Aristophanic stage, stark nude in broad midday, animally physical, exuberant, ecstatic, crying aloud the primitive refrain, ‘Phales, boon mate of Bacchus, joyous comrade in the dance, wanton wanderer o’ nights’ … in a word, he was Paganism incarnate, and Paganism was the Christian’s deadliest foe; so they took him, the Bacchic reveller, they smutted him from horn to hoof, and he remained the Christian’s deadliest foe, the Devil.” - Summers (p.161-2)