Every known religion supplanted an earlier religion, and usually 
some derogatory mythological niche was created for the deities and 
spirits of the older religion when this happened.  In the case of 
Satan, he is a fusion of our old friend the Horned God (especially 
in the Pan-form to which he was best known by the Greek-speaking 
world) and the Judaic mythic figure of Satan from the book of Job.  
But far from the loyal prosecuting attorney of Job, Satan as 
formulated to insult pagans was made into an evil nemesis of God, 
and the exemplar of what to the pain-worshipping Christians was 
"sin", that is, anything ecstatic and joyful.  Satan is constantly 
telling us to get drunk, pig out on good food, and have sex in the 
Christians' accounts, to which my reaction is "Amen".

 I think you have put it very well when you say that "Even though 
[new pagans] have thrown off the chains of Jehovah they still fear 
Lucifer. They cringe at the sound of his name."  Over and over we 
hear this shallow refrain, that witches are NOT NOT NOT Satanists, 
and I think: Why the Hell not?  There's more wisdom in any one page 
of William Blake's overtly Satanic "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" 
than in the whole corpus of Starhawk's work, after all.  (But then, 
Blake wrote sophisticated and literate poetry, not folk tales, so 
few neo-pagans have read him.)  What are these people so afraid of?

 Not only are neo-pagans NOT NOT NOT Satanists, they are quite 
nasty toward anyone who recognizes the deep truth of Satanism.  One 
widely liked member of this board called me a "neurotic 
Christian-lover" for espousing the reading of Blake and Shaw's 
Satanic works.  Needless to say, no neo-pagan objected.

 Within the last month a person interested in invoking Lucifer had 
his account removed by one of the sysops, who said the reason was 
that "he was extremely abusive"; of course, he didn't mention that 
the guy started out polite and only became abusive after the 
aforesaid sysop himself sent some
*very* nasty and prejudiced messages to him.  Again, zero objection 
from
 the neo-pagans.

 Similar examples abound; but I think things are beginning to 
loosen up on this front, thanks to people like yourself, and (I 
like to think) because of my continued pounding on the 
counter-consensual drum.

 Tim

 PS.  You called for resources; aside from the Blake, there is 
Shaw's "The Devil's Disciple", and you might want to check out 
Campbell's "Masks of God" for more information on the mythic 
disparagement of older deities such as happened to the Titans in 
Greek myth and various matriarchal deities.  Campbell's sympathies 
are clearly with the underdog.

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