Episode 197: Satanic Envy

SHOW LINKS

• • • TWITCH: @EnvyTheNB
    • From Origin & History of Envy, Etymology Online, 2001: Late 13th century, from the Old French word for jealousy or rivalry, itself from the tenth century Latin word “invidia,” meaning “jealousy” and invidus” meaning “having hatred or ill-will,” invidere “to hate, to look at (with malice), or to cast the evil eye upon.” The root “in” means “upon” while “videre” is “to see,” [so the word grows from the concept of casting glances.] Jealousy is the malign feeling which is often had toward a rival or possible rival for a thing which we greatly desire, as in love or ambition; envy is a similar feeling toward one who already possesses a thing greatly or which we come to desire. Jealousy is prompted by fear or anxiety; envy is prompted by covetousness. Rancor is defined as “a nourished envy, bitterness, hatred, or malice.” Jaundice means “feeling in which views are colored or distorted,” stemming from yellow’s association with bitterness and envy; green has also been symbolic of envy and jealousy since Middle English. Most of the words for envy had from the beginning a sense of hostile force, based on looking at a thing with malice as opposed to with love, as can be the case for jealousy. “Gall” literally means bile but can mean resentment from a deep sense of injury, especially when directed at the author of the affront, since the 1610s. https://www.etymonline.com/word/envy 
    • From the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Vatican Council, 1992: Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice opposed to god, which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called “Satan” or the “devil,” and it was through the devil’s envy that death entered the world. In the account of Abel’s murder by his brother Cain, Scripture reveals the presence of anger and envy in man, consequences of original sin. Envy is sadness at the sight of another’s goods and the immoderate desire to have them for oneself: It is a capital sin.The tenth commandment requires that envy be banished from the human heart. When the prophet Nathan wanted to spur King David to repentance, he told him the story about the poor man who had only one lamb that he treated like his own daughter and the rich man who, despite the great number of his flocks, envied the poor man his lamb.  Envy can lead to the worst crimes: We fight one another, and envy arms us against one another. Augustine saw envy as “the diabolical sin”: “From envy are born hatred, detraction, calumny, joy caused by the misfortune of a neighbor, and displeasure caused by his prosperity.” Envy represents a form of sadness and therefore a refusal of charity; the baptized person should struggle against it by exercising good will. Envy often comes from pride; the baptized person should train himself to live in humility: Would you like to see god glorified by you? Then rejoice in your brother’s progress and you will immediately give glory to god. 
    • From Later Genesis, Anonymous, 10th Century: God had established these angels so blessedly— but one among them he had made so strong, so mighty in his mind, and God allowed him to wield such power, highest after himself in heavens, and he had shaped this one so splendidly— so beautiful was his flowering form in the heavens that he was like the stars gleaming. Praises of the lord he should have wrought, but this one turned himself away unto worse affairs. He thought to heave up struggle against the highest, the Sovereign of Heaven aseat upon the holy throne. Beloved was he to our Lord—this angel overly proud, heaving himself against his Master. Seeking hateful words and boasting speech against him, he wished to serve god no longer. He said that he was light and brilliant, beautiful and hue-bright, and he could not find it in his heart to serve. It seemed to this one that he possessed greater power and craft than Holy God. He spoke many words, that angel over-proud. He pondered through his own skill how he might create a stronger throne for himself, higher in the heavens. “Why must I toil,” he asked. “There is no need at all for me to have a master. I can mold many wondrous things with my own hands. I have great enough power to make ready a godly throne — to be master in heaven. Why must I scrape after his favor, bowing to him in such vassalage? I can be a god just like him, to rule this realm. And so it does not seem to me right that I should need to flatter him at all, a god after any god. Then the Mighty grew anger-swollen, the Highest Wielder of Heaven, and threw that one from the high throne and cast him into hell, where he changed into a devil, the enemy, with all his allies. Then spoke the haughty king, brightest of angels before, thenceforth called Satan, and hot was the bitter torment from within his heart: “This place is much unlike heaven’s kingdom, which my Master had imparted to me, though we were not permitted to keep it. He has determined that it shall be settled by this ‘mankind, and That is of most sorrow to me— that Adam, who was shaped from dirt, shall possess my throne. If we could further our vengeance upon Adam and his heirs, I could rest more easily in these chains.
    • The devil cast himself into the likeness of a snake and wound himself all around the Tree of Death through devil’s craft. Then he began to ask the first man, with lying words: “Do you ever long at all, Adam, upwards to god? I am on his errand here and have traveled from afar— it has not been long since I sat with him. He ordered that you should eat of this fruit, that your spirit and strength and your intellect would become greater, and your body more beautiful. Adam spoke where he stood upon the earth, the free-willed man: “When I heard the Victory-Lord, Mighty god speak with a strong voice, and he ordered me to abide here, to hold his commandments, and he gave me this woman, and he ordered me to be watchful so that I should not be cast down by the Tree of Death, seduced too strongly. He said that dark Hell must be kept for him who by his heart has produced something hateful. I don’t know whether you come with falsehoods through secrecy or you are really the lord’s messenger from heaven, and I am not able to understand one whit of your intentions. You are not like any of his angels that I have ever seen before. Therefore I can not heed you.” Wrath-minded, Satan, turned himself to where he saw the woman, and he spoke: “If you wish to heed my words, lusty woman, then consider what you can do to ward yourselves from punishment, as I direct you. Eat these fruits! Then your eyes will become so bright that you can see across the whole world, and the throne of your Master itself, and ever have his grace. You could lead Adam and entice him eagerly so that he carries out your precept. If you would perform this deed, best of all women, I will cover up the many harms Adam spoke.” He led her with such lying words and with skillful enticings that she allowed her heart to be stirred by that instruction and took the disastrous fruit from the Tree of Death. And the devil spoke: “Now you can see for yourself bright light from heaven. Now you can touch it— Tell Adam what power of sight you now possess by my arrival. If he obeys my precept, I shall give him as good as I have prepared for you.”
    • From Entertaining Satan, John Demos, 2004: Elizabeth Godman was (described as) “a malicious one”; Elizabeth Morse had acted out of “the malice and envy of her heart”; Mary Hale yielded frequently to “discontent” and so on. In one way or another, suspected witches revealed the angry center of their characters. Moreover, charges against particular witches invariably stemmed from specific episodes of controversy: The victim and the accused had squared off as antagonists, words passed, threats were made or imagined, etc. To seem unduly angry was to invite suspicion, and, once formed, such suspicion prompted the inference of further resentment. Anger vs “peace” was a critical dimension of character dividing witches from honorable Christian folk. The Rev. Deodat Lawson urged, in a famous sermon, that his auditors be especially vigilant against “giving way unto sinful and unruly passions such as envy, malice, or hatred of our neighbors and brethren. These Devil-like passions do endanger the letting in of Satan and his temptations, yea, he generally comes into the soul at these doors, to captivate any person to the horrid sin of covenanting with him.’ Cotton Mather analyzed the famous outbreak at Salem as follows: “It is not irrational to ascribe the late stupendous growth of witches among us partly to the bitter discontents which affliction and poverty has filled us with; it is inconceivable what advantage the Devil gains over men by [material] discontent. Have not many of us been Devils unto one another for slanderings, for backbitings, for animosities?” Closely associated with anger in prompting the witch’s attack was a deep and uncompromising envy. Indeed, the two motives formed a kind of tandem—“malice and envy,” in the common phrase of the time. The witch’s characteristic “discontent” is but the outward manifestation of a vast and invisible system of diabolical influence.In part, the witch was so angry because she was so envious; she could not prevent herself from coveting the possessions and advantages of others. Envy, like “discontent,” was directly associated with the process of becoming a witch, and potential recruits were plied with “fine promises”
    • From Changing perceptions of anaemia in Malawian (Muh-La-Wee-In) children, Sarah Svege, Plos One Journal, 2021: If illness strikes suddenly and occurs repeatedly, community members may suspect the sufferer to be a victim of witchcraft. Caregivers claim that a child who becomes mysteriously and rapidly ill with no apparent reason may be struck by dark magic. Recurring anaemia, particularly if anaemia recurs after a blood transfusion, Evil actions are often driven by ‘jealous witches’ who envy the wealth, success or material possessions of their victims. Even though the jealousy is mostly triggered by material goods, some participants also shared how healthy and well-fed babies may cause jealousy among witches. Several participants stated that bewitchment of children is often performed to punish the parents. While witchcraft [belief] has existed for centuries, a ‘new’ supernatural or religious force, labelled Satanism, has reportedly emerged in Malawian communities, described as a modern, ‘Western’ form of witchcraft that, contrary to ‘ordinary’ witchcraft, employs tricks of technology and the power of the devil to perform evil deeds: Witchcraft is done out of jealousy, while the satanists will just torment someone or they may just kill someone mysteriously. Participants explained how the ‘Western mindset’ among Satanists is related to their wish for materialistic wealth. Witchcraft and Satanism share similarities in the sense that the source of all mischief is in essence supernatural, and the evil acts are performed through magical means. Some participants referred to Satanism as the younger but stronger ‘sibling’ of witchcraft. In their opinion, Satanism holds a markedly greater power than the ‘old’ witchcraft, and Satanists are supposedly members of a group that is working ‘against god’s will’ by causing road accidents and bridge collapses. Members of this group are on a relentless vampire-like quest for blood with the goal of gathering bodily and spiritual strength through human sacrifice. Youth are at a higher risk because they want to get rich fast. Satanists hate prayer and they hate someone who loves to pray. It is also said that their desire is to destroy the belief in god. Malawi is one of the world’s poorest countries, and health facilities are seriously under-resourced in terms of staff, equipment and drugs. It is therefore likely that health workers fail to diagnose correctly, or that the child is not given optimal medication. This would not only contribute to morbidity, but also diminish trust towards formal healthcare and enhance the caregivers’ reliance on traditional and complementary beliefs. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8087048/ 
    • From Envy : a theory of social behavior, Helmut Schoeck, 1970: A certain predisposition to envy is part of man’s physical and social equipment, the lack of which would, in many situations, simply result in his being trampled down by others. We use our latent sense of envy when, for instance, we examine social systems for their efficiency: before joining an association or firm we try to discern whether it has any intrinsic structure which might arouse strong envy in ourselves or in others. If so, it is probably an organization which is not very well adapted to particular functions. In the recent past a few American colleges and universities have tried to attract able academic celebrities as professors by offering salaries perhaps twice as high as those earned by the standard full pro¬ fessor. I know of several cases of a man being unable to bring himself to accept the offer because, as he told me, he could not bear the thought of being the object of so much envy in the faculty. Further, potential envy is an essential part of man’s equipment if he is to be able to test the justice and fairness of the solutions to the many prob¬ lems which occur in his life. Very few of us, when dealing with employees, colleagues, etc., are able to take a position which consciously ignores the existence of envy, such as that adopted by the master in the Biblical parable of the toilers in the vineyard. No matter how mature, how immune from envy a personnel manager or plant manager may himself be, when he has to deal with the taboo subject of wages or staff regulations he must be able to sense exactly what sort of measures are tolerable, given the general tendency to mutual envy. Envy is a fundamental psychological process which of necessity presupposes a social context: the co-existence of two or more individuals. Few concepts are so intrinsic a part of social reality. An exhaustive study of envy in its active and passive roles in social history is important not only because this emotion and motivational syndrome are crucial in individual human life; it is also relevant to politics, since the right or wrong assessment of the phenomenon of envy, the under or over-estimation of its effects, and above all the unfounded hope that we can so order our social existence as to create people or societies devoid of envy, are all considerations of immediate political significance, particularly where economic and social policies are concerned. The kind of maturity achieved by an individual which enables him to conquer his own envy does not seem to be a universally attainable attribute. We must somehow make use of ideologies which will tend to reduce the power of envy and thus allow daily life to proceed with a minimum of friction and conflict.
    • From Envy, Natalie Wynn, Contrapoints, 2021: You might think that envy is simply the product of inequality and that societies that have more inequality have more envy. I used to assume that too, but the more I think about it the more I realize that might not be true. Envy is a basic part of human nature, in all societies and all economic systems, and it begins any time two or more people start comparing themselves. You’re probably familiar with the concept of “the evil eye”: People all over the world today understand the evil eye as  a kind of curse cast by the malignant gaze of an envious person. You might be thinking that sounds superstitious, but I actually think the concept of the evil eye reveals a more sophisticated awareness of envy and of the social danger that it poses. There’s advertisements that literally promise if you buy this exclusive luxury you’ll be the envy of all your friends, as if it’s a good thing to be envied. Being envied is basically the opposite of being loved, so why would anyone want to be envied? Well, it’s human nature. We need to be loved but then there’s this other drive in us, this Homeric striving for fame and glory. In a past gilded age there were stories like “Citizen Kane” and “Sunset Boulevard”, which warned what a sad and lonely thing success can become. In ancient Athens there was a practice called “Ostrakismos” where whoever got the most votes would simply be banished for 10 years, no questions asked. Most cultures understand that being envied is a massive social liability, so it’s best not to draw too much attention to yourself. The fear of envy is a major inhibiting force in many societies. In Haiti, GE Simpson found that a peasant will seek to disguise his true economic position by purchasing several smaller fields rather than one larger piece of land. For the same reason he will not wear good clothes, to protect himself against the envious black magic of his neighbors. 
    • This kind of thing is not unheard of in America: People from wealthy families move to the city and dress like gutter punks. But in general, Americans don’t openly acknowledge fear of envy in the way many other cultures do, but it’s definitely there even if it’s repressed: We could call it the Squidward personality, perfectionistic and orderly, but reserved, priggish, stiff, and then there’s the Spongebob personality, intuitive, chaotic, ecstatic. Squidward is fundamentally a figure of envy, stemming from failed ambition.So maybe fear of envy can serve a softly regulatory function by motivating charity and generosity. But in general I’m suspicious of envy as a motivation for politics.  Cause remember, the basic logic of envy is “if I can’t have it, no one can” which is a purely negative, destructive style of thinking. Like in this debate about forgiving student loan debt, you often hear people say: “I had to pay my student loans, so they should too. Debt forgiveness is not fair!” The logic here is “since I didn’t get my debt forgiven, no one should, it’s not fair that kids these days don’t have to suffer like I suffered”. Or think about the concept of a “welfare queen”, which openly reeks of envy and white resentment, or the way conservatives talk about immigration, it’s all this envious suspicion about immigrants getting government handouts. The Jewish radical feminist Andrea Dworkin made an argument that both anti-Semitism and misogyny are partly rooted in envy. Dworkin explains: “The woman appears to control access to sex, and the man feels rage at her perceived power over him,” power that some men envy. It doesn’t matter to the misogynist that women objectively have less power in society, he envies women anyway. Likewise, it didn’t matter to antisemites that Jewish people were a marginalized minority: Antisemitism is rooted in an envious obsession with [the myth of] the disproportionate influence and affluence of Jewish people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&t=1s&v=aPhrTOg1RUk 
    • From The Church of Satan, Michael Aquino, 2013: I had no idea what kind of future might now lie ahead. I knew only that I could not walk a single step further with a Church of Satan that had become a mockery of its name. Even if Satan were to abandon his church as I failed and premature experiment, still I’d have to make a final statement on its behalf, for the sake of his honor. I suddenly found myself being looked at expectantly by a large number of Satanists, Witches, Warlocks, Priests, and Priestesses: Was this the end, or could we somehow try to carry on? A second Church of Satan? Perhaps so. When it became evident to me that the Church of Satan was to be destroyed, I sought an explanation by serial invocation and consultation of the Book of Thoth. Because of the strength intrinsic in the Church of Satan, it seemed illogical to me that it could cease to exist so suddenly. The actions of LaVey seemed out of character to the point of complete inconsistency. And there had been no manifestation or action evident by the principle entity, the Prince of Darkness himself. It is the right of a Magister to evoke the Prince of Darkness if it is his will to do so. Therefore I addressed such an evocation by means of the Enochian Keys: The evocation was effective and an answer was received. The Prince of Darkness transferred his sanction from the Church of Satan to what now would be called the Temple of set. The passage of time since the 1975 crisis did not serve to soften Anton’s bitterness toward the Temple of set and myself, a mixture of hatred and envy not unlike that which Mr Hyde presumably felt for Dr Jekyll. Ironically, the Temple of Set preserved and has gone on to strengthen the very things about the Church of Satan which had most inspired Anton himself. Similarly, it has rejected the schadenfreude characteristic of the Church. It acknowledges the Prince of Darkness without qualification and affirms the Black Arts is a means to triumph, not as an excuse for failure. If the Temple of Set became an agonizing wound in the side of Anton, it was one which would never could never heal: It is the Grail of the Church of Satan, that which the Church worked so hard to attain during those memorable years from 1966 to 1975.
    • From I Went To a Rational Satanic Ritual, Investigating Rational Satanism Blog, Sam Pegg, 2015:, Rational Satanism is built upon a 90/10 philosophy, for which 90 percent is applying logic to your everyday life, but the 10 percent covers ritualistic magic and other personal practices. I wanted to see if a satanic ritual would actually work. For the purposes of the ritual I had to come with something I wanted to change in my life. The change I came up with was envy. I’ve started to become rather envious of my brother: After leaving university he instantly got a full-time finance job in London on a hefty salary, owning a superb flat and having a lovely girlfriend. I too wanted this success, yet I also wanted these envious emotions banished. After meeting with the Rational Satanism members at the ritual location, I was pretty damn nervous. The altar consisted of several candles, a blank black picture frame, incense, a small clear glass ball, and images that inspired feeling of personal success. I had to dress in a full robe with a hood, which considering I was wearing glasses at the time made me look remarkably like Harry Potter. I was then told by the ritual host to rub mandrake root into my wrists, which contains hallucinogens to make the psychological impact of the ritual more intense. Dark drone music was booming in the background. I was told to focus all my attention towards the picture of my brother which would bring envy emotions to the surface. I then moved my eyes to the black picture frame looking at my own reflection. I felt my hands scorch under the heat of the candle, supposedly ridding the envy from my body. I was then told to pull my shoulders back and sit up straight. Focusing [on] how my face looked inside the picture frame, I had a deep look into my reflection, looking at the achievements I’ve already made. I had to sit up and say something which I felt inspired success: “Some opportunities knock but most present themselves when you beat down the door.”  According to the host, whenever envious emotions towards my brother surface, I should be able to replace them with positive, successful thoughts. Did it work? Time will tell. https://investigatingrationalsatanism.wordpress.com/