What Does Satan Look Like?
A brief history of evil...
The question of evil is foundational to human culture — but what actually is evil, why does it happen, and what does it look like?
Today, we take a stab at the third question: a brief history of what evil looks like, not just in appearance but in nature as well.
So here’s how our depictions of the devil shape our understanding of evil…
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This Saturday, we dive into the drama of John Milton's Paradise Lost — because no writer in history understood the depths of Satan’s evil like Milton.
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Tricksters, Jokers, Gods
Pre-Christian mythologies give the earliest hints at devilish figures. However, many folkloric bad guys don’t represent pure evil in the same way the Devil does. Instead, pagan cultures tend to tell stories about powerful tricksters — characters that deceive or challenge human beings from motives of mischievousness rather than true evil.
Figures like Loki from Norse Mythology or Prometheus in Greek stories embody the aspect of life that is chaotic and unpredictable. They often cause destruction and harm, but at times, they can be helpful — and even downright likeable.
Batman’s Joker is a close modern reflection of the trickster archetype, even down to the way that he, like the mischievous ones of ancient tales, ends his story by languishing in captivity.
The Serpent and the Accuser
The Devil shows up soon, however. One of the Bible’s oldest books puts the Devil front and center — though it’s not easy to recognize or understand him.
The Book of Job (written sometime between 700-300 BC) tells the story of God bragging to his heavenly court about his faithful servant, Job. At that point, someone referred to simply as the “satan” steps in.
The satan challenges God to take away Job’s blessings to see if the man will remain as pious in poverty and loneliness as he has in wealth and joy. The Book of Job addresses the fundamental religious question of whether one can have faith in God’s goodness in the midst of adverse circumstances.
What it doesn’t answer though is exactly who — or what — the satan is.
The word itself means “accuser,” raising the possibility that a member of God’s angelic court has the dirty job of calling divine attention to human sin. Another popular interpretation is that the Devil, bearing the name of Satan, crashed the heavenly party to try and tarnish Job’s reputation, gambling on gaining a soul. The story doesn’t give context for the satan, focusing instead on the human drama of Job’s losses and his fight to keep his faith.
This isn’t the only covert appearance the Devil makes. In the Genesis story, the tempter shows up in the Garden of Eden and is described as “the serpent” and “the most cunning of the animals made by God.”
Whether the serpent is the Devil in disguise, or simply a representation of the evil that lurks even in the safest places, isn’t specified right here — it’s left open to interpretation.
Ultimately, the Jewish scriptures leave the question of evil’s source ambiguous — later authors, artists, and theologians would make it more clear…
The Ancient Dragon
The serpent and satan figures are finally tied together in the final book of the New Testament, which portrays the enemy of God as “the dragon, the ancient serpent who is the Devil and Satan” (Revelation 12:9). This tradition unites the serpent in the garden, the mysterious intruder in the Divine Council, and the ultimate source of all evil as the same person.
But what does this mean the devil looks like? Years after the Book of Revelation, this question remained open to interpretation, a malleable element shaped more by cultural taste and literary genius than theology.
For instance, Dante’s 14th-century Divine Comedy paints a picture of Hell that still influences cultural ideas about the underworld today. In it, Dante’s Satan is a prisoner of Hell’s deepest depths, a terrible creature trapped in ice. Like all the damned, he is aware that his misery is of his own making.
Three centuries later, John Milton’s Paradise Lost presented the Devil in a very different light…
Widely regarded as literature’s first antihero, Milton’s Satan is a complex, intriguing character who boldly rebels against God’s reign. This version of Satan shakes his fist at God, declaring:
“It is better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven!”
The Mystery of Evil
Depictions of the Devil in great art and literature attempt to show us what evil looks like — not simply in the details of its physical appearance, but in the inherent aspects of its nature.
For example, is evil really its own miserable punishment, as depicted in Dante? Or is it a rebellious spirit, as depicted in Milton? Is it an innocuous trickster, as presented in Norse mythology, or does it actively scheme to deceive and damn souls, like in Goethe’s Faust?
Our depictions of the Devil matter, because the story of the Devil is the story of the mystery of evil. Unless we grapple with the question of why it exists and what it looks like, then we’re at risk of forgetting our own capacity for evil — and most importantly, how to fight it.
Perhaps no writer in history understood the depths of Satan’s evil like John Milton.
This Saturday, we dive into the drama of Paradise Lost, a work that reveals the destructive nature of pride — and the very essence of evil…
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Art of the Week
In this painting the Devil is conspicuously absent, but his presence is still felt — who is that woman holding the apple, and what is she contemplating? A weighty decision seems to hang in the balance…
Momentarily capturing the woman’s gaze is a cherubic child, an image of innocence. Perhaps it's simply the woman’s daughter, but the luminous tones of its skin leaves one wondering if it’s in fact a spiritual being — or at the very least, a memory or manifestation of the woman’s younger, more innocent self.
What is the conversation between the two? What goes through the woman’s mind as she gazes on this mystical infant?
The bucolic setting makes it feel as though, at least for this moment, all is at peace — but the viewer has the dreadful intuition that not all is well.
I think evil is the baser expression of Nietzsche's Will to Power, that power be extended without any thought of the consequences to anyone but oneself. I think evil begins in selfishness, for the self alone. It's what happens when the ego replaces the divine image, the transcendent archetype within the psyche.
Oh wow—that Bouguereau painting is amazingly complex; I will have to spend a long time thinking about it. Certainly I would agree with you that a "loss of innocence" theme is present. It reminds me, in sort of an inverse, negative, mirror way, of the beginning of Barrie's "Peter and Wendy":
"All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand on her heart and cried, 'Oh, why can’t you remain like this forever!' This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end."
Perhaps in the painting, though, the mother is not lamenting the coming end of childhood; she is tempting the child to give up her innocence and enter into he world of adulthood—? Strange!