As an atheist, I have become fascinated with the Christian institution of Satan. The Devil, Lucifer, the Morning Star, Mephistopheles. Just imagining it. A singularity of all ostentation and lust and pleasure. Moreso, I think about the crimes attributed this personage; temptation to consider socially forbidden ideas and practices, the doubting of dogma, the brokering of the rejection of established custom for something new, and maybe better. I think about all that is welcomed by them, free love, free thought, questioning, innovation, creativity, diversity, alternatives, and apostasy, music, dancing, food, fucking, orgies, and unincriminated enjoyment of the body, the mind, the fruits of life, and the Earthly world. And finally, I think of all those sent to them, and who are accepted in their domain, lesbians, gays, trangendereds, scientists, inventors, animals, literally anyone from any religion outside the Abrahamic traditions, potentially anyone from within them, and the Rolling Stones.
Truly, there is evil in this world. But it comes from a lack of empathy, which I hold to be a verb. I say all this, again, as an atheist. But my reading has been that Satan is tolerant, accepting, open minded, free thinking, and undiscriminating. Pondering at the case as objectively as I can, I wonder if Satan might not be a highly representative and venerable exemplar of the values we in the modern day hold the very dearest.
Satan is described as appearing in many shapes, and in popular culture has been both male and female. I love this idea of a character who qualmlessly slides between genders. I was concerned that in depicting Satan as a woman I might be sending an inculpating message. I hope my other works make clear that I hold all human beings in the highest respects, nor in my mind is the casting of Satan as one or the other or in between, given the opinion above, be a condemnation. To me, imagining this character of beauty and lust and pleasure, the most tempting creature in the universe, they simply had to be, if they appeared to me, a woman.
