The Evolution of the Devil: From Nature Spirit to Moral Symbol

Introduction

The Devil, as a moral and theological concept, has not always existed in the form familiar to monotheistic religions. In Demonology and Devil-Lore (1879), Moncure Daniel Conway proposed that the Devil evolved from once-benign nature spirits and gods, gradually transformed into moral symbols of evil as religious and cultural paradigms shifted toward monotheism. This essay revisits Conway’s argument, situating it within modern comparative-religious studies by examining the transformation of nature spirits into embodiments of moral opposition. Scholars such as Mircea Eliade (1958), Jeffrey Burton Russell (1986), and David Gordon White (2020) have likewise addressed how religious systems moralize natural or mythological forces, offering a broader context to Conway’s nineteenth-century insight.

Nature Spirits and the Origins of the Demonic

Conway begins his inquiry by asserting that “primitive religion was based on the observation of natural phenomena, whose powers were personalized” (Conway, 1879/2012, p. 5). In early mythic consciousness, these beings, spirits of water, storm, fertility, and wilderness, were morally neutral, existing as reflections of human awe before the natural world. Conway (1879) writes that “the lights of heaven, animal and vegetable life, the elements and natural phenomena” were all “imbued with the sacredness of being” (p. v). Primitive peoples started to create their religious beliefs based on this opposition between the “anger of the gods” present in the elements of nature and its subsequent mythologizing of elements that at times were benign and at other times were evil.

In Conway’s view, evil emerged not from these spirits themselves but from later reinterpretations of them. The moment moral categories entered theology, “the deities of one faith became the demons of another” (Conway, 1879, vol. 2, p. 94). A classical example for those of us who were born in the Americas is that one when the Spanish conquistadores imposed their creed unto indigenous populations whose cosmology had been built centuries before their arrival. This pattern parallels the anthropological observation that moral dualism often arises from cultural competition rather than inherent metaphysical opposition (Eliade, 1958). Eliade describes this shift as a “sacralization and desanctification of nature,” a process where what was once revered becomes taboo or accursed when social order demands new symbols of power (p. 163).

From Nature Deities to Devils

     One of Conway’s most memorable claims is that “every religion is inclined to transform into Devils the Gods of the religion that it supplants” (Conway, 1879, vol. 2, p. 94). He illustrates this with examples from Semitic, Persian, and Greco-Roman traditions. The serpent, he notes, once “the symbol of Vishnu, the Hindu deity,” became the Persian symbol of evil under Ahriman because of sectarian conflict (Conway, 1879, vol. 2, p. 94). Similarly, Pan, once a pastoral deity of music and fertility, was demonized in Christian iconography, his horns and cloven feet adopted as physical attributes of Satan.

Jeffrey Burton Russell (1986) supports this view, noting that the Christian Devil “owes more to Pan, Pluto, and Loki than to any purely biblical source” (p. 34). For Russell, as for Conway, the Devil’s evolution reflects not theological inevitability but cultural borrowing: the transformation of local or rival deities into negative archetypes. David Gordon White (2020) extends this argument, suggesting that such reinterpretations reveal the human tendency to “demonize the Other—both religiously and ethnographically” (p. 211). Conway’s nineteenth-century intuition, therefore, aligns with current understandings of how evil operates as a social and psychological category.

The Devil as a Moral Symbol

Conway draws a critical distinction between “demons” and “devils.” The former are “creatures driven by fate to prey upon mankind for the satisfaction of their needs, but not of necessity malevolent” (Conway, 1879/2012, p. ix). Devils, on the other hand, emerge when moral value is projected onto these neutral spirits, when they are recast as embodiments of cosmic wrongdoing. In Conway’s schema, the Devil is a mirror of moral evolution: as human societies developed ethical codes, they externalized transgression into a single figure representing corruption, rebellion, and impurity.

Jungian interpretations of myth resonate with this perspective. Carl Jung (1959) argued that the devil archetype arises from the “shadow” aspect of the collective psyche, the projection of human fears, instincts, and repressed desires (p. 94). Conway’s “pure malignity” (1879, vol. 1, p. ix) is thus not a metaphysical force but a psychological necessity, the external image of inner contradiction.

Comparative Reflections: Ahriman, Loki, and Satan

By tracing the genealogy of the Devil, Conway identifies recurring mythic patterns across different peoples around the world. Ahriman of Persia, Set of Egypt, and Loki of Norse myth all serve as precursors or analogues of the Christian Satan we know of today. Each embodies chaos, rebellion, or destruction within a larger moral cosmology. As Karen Armstrong (2019) observes, these figures “personify the dangers of freedom — the necessary disobedience through which human consciousness matures” (p. 147).

Conway interprets such transformations historically: when one system of belief becomes dominant, it “moralizes” the cosmological opposition into a drama of good versus evil. What was once cyclical or complementary, light and dark, fertility and death, becomes polarized; something is good, and if not, it has to be bad because the domineering ones are right. The Devil thus becomes the moral residue of a fallen pantheon: a single scapegoat embodying the fears once distributed among many spirits.