Did God Create Evil?

Did God Create Evil?

When believers think of God, they generally see Him/She/It as totally good and only responsible for light, yet the Bible itself says differently:

“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.” Isa 45:7

According to Jehovah speaking through Isaiah then God makes both peace and evil and darkness as well as light. We are even told that God uses the evil ones as his “sword.”

“Arise, O LORD, disappoint him, cast him down: deliver my soul from the wicked, which is thy sword:” Psalms17:13

Indeed, God uses the evil ones to slay the wicked: “Evil shall slay the wicked: and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate.” Psalms 34:21

Okay, so the Bible says that God created evil and even uses evil as a sword to destroy unwanted evil.   This disposes of the idea of a god that exists beyond the existence of any evil. After all, aren’t we told that there was a war in heaven?

“And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” Rev 12:7-9

We can thus conclude that since Satan was in heaven when he rebelled that evil can even exist there.

All this may sound perplexing to the true believer, but what do other spiritual teachings besides the Bible say about this perplexing subject?

The Gnostics were a very popular Christian related sect for three centuries after Christ. These had a very unorthodox view of our creator God and Jesus, and were seen as heretical. They were suppressed and attempts were made to destroy all their writings. They were not completely successful as in 1945 the Nag Hammadi library was discovered in Egypt revealing many of their writings.

The Gnostics saw the Jehovah, the god of the Bible as an imposter of the true God and associated him with a being called Yaldabaoth often referred to as a Demiurge.

This Demiurge is born from Sophia (Wisdom), a spiritual female who acts without divine consent, producing a misshapen offspring cast out into the void. Yaldabaoth, unaware of higher realms, fashions the cosmos as a pale, corrupted imitation of the true spiritual heaven, populating it with beings of a lower order seeking to trap humanity in material bodies.

They see Jesus as kind of a rebel who saw the truth of the Demiurge, Jehovah, and achieved Gnosis, or knowledge of the true god of love who existed in the highest spiritual realm and was not touched by evil. He saw that Jehovah did indeed create evil and used it as a weapon. This he rejected and gave as a prayer, “deliver us from evil.” Matt 6:13

Madame H. P. Blavatsky seemed to support the idea of Jehovah not only being an inferior god or Demiurge, but the devil himself with her interpretation of Jesus’ encounter with the Pharisees who insisted that God was their father. He told them:

“Ye do the deeds of your father… Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” John 8:41 & 44

She pointed out that the Jews claimed that Jehovah was their father and this was the being who Jesus called the devil.

This idea is backed up in the Old Testament where Jehovah is identified with Satan. Israel Anderson came up with these interesting scriptures:

“And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.” I Chronicles 21:1

And who was this Satan who caused David to number Israel? None other than Jehovah:

“And again the anger of the LORD (Jehovah) was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.” II Sam 24:1

The Book of Revelation gives this description of the Satanic Beast:

“And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.” Rev 13:2

And Hosea gives these same animal symbols for Jehovah:

“Therefore I will be unto them as a lion: as a leopard by the way will I observe them: I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend the caul of their heart, and there will I devour them like a lion: the wild beast shall tear them.” Hosea 13:7-8

Both the satanic beast and Jehovah are represented by the leopard, the bear and the lion.

Jehovah is also linked to the planet Saturn for he commanded the Israelites to “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”  That was Saturday, which word is derived from the Roman  “dies Saturni” which mean’s Saturn’s Day. St. Augustine went so far as identifing Saturn as a “god of the Jews,” and the early Gnostics identified Saturn with Satan.

A Course in Miracles has a similar take to the Gnostics except they do not equate the creator of time and space as evil, but merely misled.

According to the Course we all lived in peace and bliss in the heavenly realms until the Son, who is identified as the prodigal son in the parable of Jesus, decided he wanted to create and explore a universe of time and space where there would be great challenges of overcoming limitation and pain as well as the manifestation of love that they would take with them.

God, who the Course calls the Father refused to give the Son permission so he went ahead and created a universe based on illusion as if in a dream state.

According to the Course the rebellious Son was not one individual, but all of us as  parts of the one life which is the Son.

Jesus, who is called our “elder brother” awakened from the dream state and assumed the position of helping the rest of us also awaken and return home.

As we return home God does not see us as evil or seek to punish us but merely welcomes us back as a parent would a  wayward child.

According to the Course then, evil was the result of the creation of time, space and form initiated by the Son. The supreme God lives in a realm of pure spirit where pain, suffering and evil are impossible.

Most alternative and esoteric spiritual teachings deal with good and evil from the view of the universe of time and space and not a universe of pure spirit as taught by the Gnostics and A Course in Miracles.

Yogananda seems to side with Isaiah in his view of good and evil:

The Omnipresent Lord knows that He is the creator of evil as a test to encourage human beings to shun sin and thus recover their inner divine nature. By creating a film of light-and-shadow images and passing it through a movie projector, a director manipulates the one beam that projects the pictures of both the villain and the hero on the screen; the villain was included to make people disgusted with his ways and, by use of discrimination, applaud the great hero. For the same reason, evil exists to turn people’s attention to the better ways of virtue. Bhavagad Gita Commentary By Yogananda, Vol 1, Page 551

The Bailey writings make a number of interesting comments on evil.  Here DK seems to agree with the Gnostics:

“The Forces of Evil are inherent in substance itself—of which all the many forms of life are constructed.”    Rays and Initiations, Page 144

Think of it – without matter time and space – and the resulting pain, what evil could be committed? When God created the physical universe that which we call good and evil was a natural manifestation.

Now that we are here good is seen as that which takes us toward Spirit and away from pain and distress.

In a nutshell good takes us forward in spiritual evolution and evil takes us backward.

It will be considered a good thing to overcome all limitations here, awaken and return home to the house of our true Father.

Only the leading dog on a sled team has a good view. – Anonymous

Oct 14, 2025

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Who’s Who of the Gods

Who’s Who of the Gods

A reader gives thus supposed quote from H. P. Blavatsky: “Satan and his rebellious host will thus prove to have become the direct Saviors and Creators of divine man. Thus Satan, once he ceases to be viewed in the superstitious spirit of the church, grows into the grandiose image. It is Satan who is the God of our planet, and the only God.”

He then asks: Is she being facetious, quoting another paradigm, or is she speaking her truth?

JJ: First, let me point out that this quote is a compilation of phrases pieced together to create a negative effect.

A reader did a great job of research on this and pointed out, a lot of that which is included in the writings of HPB are quotes from others. In her writings she will give a large variety of quotes that take the reader all over the place. Oftentimes one quote is not in agreement with another but she throws them out as possibilities stimulating thinking out of the box.

She will often throw out this idea for consideration: What if that which we thought was good is really evil and the evil is really good?

She presents provocative thinking by making us think on:

What if the serpent was really a good guy in attempting to bring the knowledge of good and evil to Adam and Eve?

What if Jehovah was really Satan by ordering the death penalty for the smallest of infractions?

Then he ordered Israelites to take the land of Canaan by force even though it did not belong to them.

He ordered men, woman and children of their enemies to be put to death.

He approved of slavery.

HPB legitimately posits that this seems to be more like the work of what we now see as a devil rather than God.

She doesn’t have any problem with Jesus being on the side of light and love but presents the idea that the Jehovah of the Jews was really Satan and Jesus rebelled against him and ascended in consciousness to his Father in Heaven, which was not Jehovah but a more benevolent force or entity.

It is interesting that the writings of Alice A. Bailey often do not support or ignores many of HPB’s more controversial teachings. Here Jehovah is not called Satan but neither are orthodox teachings supported. DK says that Jehovah is not the highest God but created from the soul of the Jewish people and thus his laws are geared toward the Jewish mindset at that time in history.

DK doesn’t talk about the being who made the initial encounter with Moses which could have been a different entity.

Overall, I do not get nearly as much light from HPB as I do from the Bailey writings. A lot of HPBs writings are obscure quotes that she has dug up and thrown at us without much explanation on her part. I have come across a lot of things in her writings with which I either disagree or think the presentation is slanted or incomplete.

I personally am unconcerned about who is good and who is evil in the far past. Instead, I am much more concerned about “What” is good and what is evil in the present.

If there is a choice between more freedom for the whole or less then I always go with the more freedom and anyone who stands in the way of this is the true adversary in my opinion. It matters not what name or title that is applied to them.

Our reader says this about the quote in question

This HPB “quote” you refer to above is a false one that has been scattered far and wide across the ‘net. The most HONEST form in which I have found this “quote is this:

“[O]ne of the most hidden secrets…involves the so called fall of Angels. Satan and his rebellious host…will thus prove to have…become the direct Saviors and Creators of divine man …. Thus Satan, once he ceases to be viewed in the superstitious spirit of the church, grows into the grandiose image…It is Satan who is the God of our planet and the only God. [The last line sits on a page headed ‘Holy Satan.’] Satan [or Lucifer] represents…the Centrifugal Energy of the Universe…this ever-living symbol of self-sacrifice for the intellectual independence of humanity.” -H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, pg. 215, 216, 220, 245, 225, 533

The author of this quote (yes AUTHOR) at LEAST put ellipses (…) where s/he left out LARGE sections of text (some pieces appear in different books altogether :-). If you will look at the page attributions, you will also see that some chunks are out of sequence, and in 2 chunks HPB was actually quoting some other author 🙂

Below I have copied the sections from which the quote was excerpted and then pasted back together to look as though one continuous quote.

Inside each quote I have capitalized the phrases that were STOLEN in order to MANUFACTURE the “quote” referenced to above.

[beginquote] (c) “There were many wars” refers to several struggles of adjustment, spiritual, cosmical, and astronomical, but chiefly to the mystery of the evolution of man as he is now. Powers—pure Essences—”that were told to create” is a sentence that relates to a mystery explained, as already said, elsewhere. It is not only ONE OF THE MOST HIDDEN SECRETS of Nature—that of generation, over whose solution the Embryologists have vainly put their heads together—but likewise a divine function that INVOLVES that other religious, or rather dogmatic, mystery, the “FALL” OF THE ANGELS, as it is called. SATAN AND HIS REBELLIOUS HOST WOULD THUS PROVE, when the meaning of the allegory is explained, TO HAVE refused to create physical man, only to BECOME THE DIRECT SAVIOURS AND THE CREATORS OF “DIVINE MAN.” The symbolical teaching is more than mystical and religious, it is purely scientific, as will be seen later on. For, instead of remaining a mere blind, functioning medium, impelled and guided by fathomless LAW, the “rebellious” Angel claimed and enforced his right of independent judgment and will, his right of free-agency and responsibility, since man and angel are alike under Karmic Law.* [endquote] The Secret Doctrine, Vol I, pg 194-195

[beginquote] In Volume II. of Isis (p. 183 et seq.) the philosophical systems of the Gnostics and the primitive Jewish Christians, the Nazarenes and the Ebionites, are fully considered. They show the views held in those days—outside the circle of Mosaic Jews—about Jehovah. He was identified by all the Gnostics with the evil, rather than with the good principle. For them, he was Ilda-Baoth, “the son of Darkness,” whose mother, Sophia Achamoth, was the daughter of Sophia, the Divine Wisdom (the female Holy Ghost of the early Christians)—Akâsa; † while Sophia Achamoth personified the lower Astral Light or Ether. Ilda-Baoth, ‡ or Jehovah, is simply one of the Elohim, the seven creative Spirits, and one of the lower Sephiroth. He produces from himself seven other Gods, “Stellar Spirits” (or the lunar ancestors *), for they are all the same. † They are all in his own image (the “Spirits of the Face”), and the reflections one of the other, and have become darker and more material as they successively receded from their originator. They also inhabit seven regions disposed like a ladder, as its rungs slope up and down the scale of spirit and matter. ‡ With Pagans and Christians, with Hindus and Chaldeans, with the Greek as with the Roman Catholics—with a slight variation of the texts in their interpretations—they all were the Genii of the seven planets, as of the seven planetary spheres of our septenary chain, of which Earth is the lowest. (See Isis, Vol. II. p. 186.) This connects the “Stellar” and “Lunar” Spirits with the higher planetary Angels and the Saptarishis (the seven Rishis of the Stars) of the Hindus—as subordinate Angels (Messengers) to these “Rishis,” the emanations, on the descending scale, of the former. Such, in the opinion of the philosophical Gnostics, were the God and the Archangels now worshipped by the Christians! The “Fallen Angels” and the legend of the “War in Heaven” is thus purely pagan in its origin and comes from India via Persia and Chaldea. The only reference to it in the Christian canon is found in Revelations xii., as quoted a few pages back. THUS “SATAN,” ONCE HE CEASES TO BE VIEWED IN THE SUPERSTITIOUS, dogmatic, unphilosophical SPIRIT OF THE CHURCHes, GROWS INTO THE GRANDIOSE IMAGE of one who made of terrestrial a divine MAN; who gave him, throughout the long cycle of Maha-kalpa the law of the Spirit of Life, and made him free from the Sin of Ignorance, hence of death. (See the Section On Satan in Part II. Vol. II.) [endquote] The Secret Doctrine, Vol I, pg 198

[beginquote] The true esoteric view about “Satan,” the opinion held on this subject by the whole philosophic antiquity, is admirably brought out in an appendix, entitled “The Secret of Satan,” to the second edition of Dr. A. Kingsford’s “Perfect Way.” No better and clearer indication of the truth could be offered to the intelligent reader, and it is therefore quoted here at some length: — […] Therefore, as continued in the APPENDIX: […] IT IS “SATAN WHO IS THE GOD OF OUR PLANET AND THE ONLY GOD,” and this without any allusive metaphor to its wickedness and depravity. For he is one with the Logos, “the first son, eldest of the gods,” in the order of microcosmic (divine) evolution; Saturn (Satan), astronomically, “is the seventh and last in the order of macrocosmic emanation, being the circumference of the kingdom of which Phœbus (the light of wisdom, also the Sun) is the centre.” The Gnostics were right, then, in calling the Jewish god “an angel of matter,” or he who breathed (conscious) life into Adam, and he whose planet was Saturn. [endquote] The Secret Doctrine, Vol II, pg 233-235

[beginquote] For, to quote from an able article by one who, confusing the planes of existence and consciousness, fell a victim to it: — “SATAN, OR LUCIFER, REPRESENTS the active, or, as M. Jules Baissac calls it, THE ‘CENTRIFUGAL ENERGY OF THE UNIVERSE’ in a cosmic sense. He is Fire, Light, Life, Struggle, Effort, Thought, Consciousness, Progress, Civilization, Liberty, Independence. At the same time he is pain, which is the Re-action of the pleasure of action, and death — which is the revolution of life — Satan, burning in his own hell, produced by the fury of his own momentum …” [endquote] The Secret Doctrine, Vol II, pg 244-245

[beginquote] The “Old Dragon” and Satan, now become singly and collectively the symbol of, and the theological term for, the “Fallen Angel,” is not so described either in the original Kabala (the Chaldean “Book of Numbers”) or in the modern. For the most learned, if not the greatest of modern Kabalists, namely Eliphas Levi, describes Satan in the following glowing terms: — “It is that Angel who was proud enough to believe himself God; brave enough to buy his independence at the price of eternal suffering and torture; beautiful enough to have adored himself in full divine light; strong enough to reign in darkness amidst agony, and to have built himself a throne on his inextinguishable pyre. It is the Satan of the Republican and heretical Milton. . . . . the prince of anarchy, served by a hierarchy of pure Spirits (! ! ) . . . . “(Histoire de la Magie, 16-17) This description — one which reconciles so cunningly theological dogma and the Kabalistic allegory, and even contrives to include a political compliment in its phraseology — is, when read in the right spirit, quite correct.

Yes, indeed; it is this grandest of ideals, THIS EVER-LIVING SYMBOL — nay apotheosis — OF SELF-SACRIFICE FOR THE INTELLECTUAL INDEPENDENCE OF HUMANITY; this ever active Energy protesting against Static Inertia — the principle to which Self-assertion is a crime, and Thought and the Light of Knowledge odious. It is — as Eliphas says with unparalleled justice and irony — “this pretended hero of tenebrous eternities, who, slanderously charged with ugliness, is decorated with horns and claws, which would fit far better his implacable tormentor — it is he who has been finally transformed into a serpent — the red Dragon.” But Eliphas Levi was yet too subservient to his Roman Catholic authorities; one may add, too jesuitical, to confess that this devil was mankind, and never had any existence on earth outside of that mankind.*

In this, Christian theology, although following slavishly in the steps of Paganism, was only true to its own time-honoured policy. It had to isolate itself, and to assert its authority. Hence it could not do better than turn every pagan deity into a devil. Every bright sun-god of antiquity — a glorious deity by day, and its own opponent and adversary by night, named the Dragon of Wisdom, because it was supposed to contain the germs of night and day — has now been turned into the antithetical shadow of God, and has become Satan on the sole and unsupported authority of despotic human dogma. After which all these producers of light and shadow, all the Sun and the Moon Gods, were cursed, and thus the one God chosen out of the many, and Satan, were both anthropomorphised. But theology seems to have lost sight of the human capacity for discriminating and finally analysing all that is artificially forced upon its reverence. History shows in every race and even tribe, especially in the Semitic nations, the natural impulse to exalt its own tribal deity above all others to the hegemony of the gods; and proves that the God of the Israelites was such a tribal God, and no more, even though the Christian Church, following the lead of the “chosen” people, is pleased to enforce the worship of that one particular deity, and to anathematize all the others. Whether originally a conscious or an unconscious blunder, nevertheless, it was one. Jehovah has ever been in antiquity only “a god among other Gods,” (lxxxii. Psalm). The Lord appears to Abraham, and while saying, “I am the Almighty God,” yet adds, “I will establish my covenant to be a God unto thee” (Abraham), and unto his seed after him (Gen. xvii. 7) — not unto Aryan Europeans.

* What devil could be possessed of more cunning, craft and cruelty than the “Whitechapel murderer” “Jack the Ripper” of 1888, whose unparalleled blood-thirsty and cool wickedness led him to slaughter and mutilate in cold blood seven unfortunate and otherwise innocent women! One has but to read the daily papers to find in those wife and child-beating, drunken brutes (husbands and fathers!), a small percentage of whom is daily brought before the courts, the complete personifications of the devils of Christian Hell! of the gods; and proves that the God of the Israelites was such a tribal God, and no more, even though the Christian Church, following the lead of the “chosen” people, is pleased to enforce the worship of that one particular deity, and to anathematize all the others. Whether originally a conscious or an unconscious blunder, nevertheless, it was one. Jehovah has ever been in antiquity only “a god among other Gods,” (lxxxii. Psalm). The Lord appears to Abraham, and while saying, “I am the Almighty God,” yet adds, “I will establish my covenant to be a God unto thee” (Abraham), and unto his seed after him (Gen. xvii. 7) — not unto Aryan Europeans. [endquote] The Secret Doctrine, Vol II, pg 506-508

Here is another quote:

There is at present no need to touch upon the mystic and manifold meaning of the name Jehovah in its abstract sense, one independent of the Deity falsely called by that name. It was a blind created purposely by the Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten-fold care after the Christians had despoiled them of this God-name which was their own property.(3) But the following statement is made. The personage who is named in the first four chapters of Genesis variously as “God,” the “Lord God,” and “Lord” simply, is not one and the same person; certainly it is not Jehovah. There are three distinct classes or groups of the Elohim called Sephiroth in the Kabala, Jehovah appearing only in chapter iv., in the first verse of which he is named Cain, and in the last transformed into mankind — male and female, Jah-veh.(4) The “Serpent,” moreover, is not Satan, but the bright Angel, one of the Elohim clothed in radiance and glory, who, promising the woman that if they ate of the forbidden fruit “ye shall not surely die,” kept his promise, and made man immortal in his incorruptible nature. He is the Iao of the mysteries, the chief of the Androgyne creators of men. Chapter 3 contains (esoterically) the withdrawal of the veil of ignorance that closed the perceptions of the Angelic Man, made in the image of the “Boneless” gods, and the opening of his consciousness to his real nature: thus showing the bright Angel (Lucifer) in the light of a giver of Immortality, and as the “Enlightener”; while the real Fall into generation and matter is to be sought in chapter 4. There, Jehovah-Cain, the male part of Adam the dual man, having separated himself from Eve, creates in her “Abel,” the first natural woman, and sheds the Virgin blood. Now Cain, being shown identical with Jehovah, on the authority of the correct reading of verse 1 (chapter 4, Genesis), in the original Hebrew text; and the Rabbins teaching that “Kin (Cain), the Evil, was the Son of Eve by Samael, the devil who took Adam’s place”; and the Talmud adding that “the evil Spirit, and Samael, the angel of Death, are the same,” it becomes easy to see that Jehovah (mankind, or “Jah-hovah”) and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent) are one and the same in every particular. There is no Devil, no Evil, outside of mankind to produce a Devil. Evil is a necessity in, and one of the supporters of the manifested universe. It is a necessity for progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of Day, and Death for that of Life — that man may live for ever.

The Secret Doctrine, Vol 2, Page 388

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction. – Blaise Pascal

Oct 26, 2010

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