I cannot write of what took place in that wetu, because I made a solemn oath, which I have never broken. Some would say it was a pact with the devil, and therefore I am not bound by it. But after that day I was no longer certain that Tequamuck was Satan’s servant. To be sure, father and every other minister in my lifetime has warned that Satan is guileful and adept at concealing his true purpose. But since that day I have come to believe that is not for us to know the subtle mind of God. It may be, as Caleb thought, that Satan is God’s angel still, and works in ways that are obscure to us, to do his will. (Caleb’s Crossing, p. 295)
I am not the devil. I need this to be understood from the outset. If you won’t accept it, then please stop reading. Set these pages aside, and go away. Go and judge someone else. God knows I am not an angel, either. I don’t even profess to be a very good man, for we are none of us good, not in the way that Heaven yearns for us to be. I am just a man. I have needs and desires, some of the lamentable, for like yours my nature is Fallen. I have from time to time indulged these desires, for like you I am weak. At moments indeed I have walked at the Devil’s side, and heard his sweet seductive whispers and perhaps even for the span of a heartbeat been his man—as you have—body and soul. (Daniel O’Thunder, p. 7)
There’s no denying history. For a long time, the average person from the Christianized West believed not just in God, but in the real, physical, non-metaphorical existence of Satan. Eerily enough, I’ve spent the last week reading the fictional accounts of people who believed that the Devil was among them.
The first was Geraldine Brooks’ novel Caleb’s Crossing. It is the first person narrative of Bethia Mayfield, a Puritan minister’s daughter in 17th Century New England. Her father is a missionary, dedicated to converting the native Wopanaak natives to Christianity. As the above paragraph illustrates, the Puritans believed that native religious leaders were the embodiment of Satan. As Bethia learns the native language and befriends the locals, she slowly discovers that Tequamuck, the powerful pawaa, is merely dissimilar, not demonical, as she has been told.
The second excerpt comes from another era and another age, but not one so very different. Ian Weir’s Daniel O’Thunder tells the legendary tale of the titular Daniel O’Thunder from the perspective of the fawning multitude. Some might call the narrators Daniel’s disciples. Daniel, a boxer-turned-Evangelical preacher in mid-19th Century London, wants to thrash Satan. Really thrash him. With his fists. The perpetually benevolent Daniel takes Satan literally.
The excerpted passage is from the primary narrator, Jack, who is more than a little bit like Judas (There also seems to be a Mary Magdalene equivalent). In any case, Jack gets nice and acquainted with a man who seems to be Satan himself. His claim that he is not Satan, therefore, are more than just a rhetorical flair.
So, in Caleb’s Crossing, in the small world of the Puritans, Satan is a foreigner, worshipping strange idols. Two hundred years later, he is a moneyed Lord, arrogant, but otherwise unremarkable. He melts into the London throng, just like everybody else.
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