CAUSES

Some of our greatest thinkers have studied the evil done by evil people. But what causes a “terrifyingly normal” person to do evil as one of the types covered in the last chapter? Let us steer carefully into that whirlpool.

First, we must mind a prevalent lesson from statistical analysis. Perhaps the strongest correlation with evil to be found in historical accounts is religion. Better minds than ours must attempt to determine if religion is the cause of evil or if religion is simply the excuse. We’ll steer around that question as best we can. We might note that one modern writer posits that, given the limitations of direct personal control over others, a major function of myth is to permit the control of many by a few.[i] Thus we veer toward correlation and causation merging in the case of evil.

As a prelude to causation, in the last chapter we discussed the types of evildoers. At the next level, now let us examine a litany of the most common catalysts for evil in the history of our species.

Punishment: This may be the most common source of evil actions. Bart Ehrman covered this thoroughly in his work on suffering (Ehrman, 2008). The use of evil for punishment by omnipotent spirits is common in Hebrew literature. Disobedience is perhaps the most common instigator. Examples include the imposition of the agony of childbirth[ii] for the gender of a species. Perhaps the most virulent involved the near annihilation of all species on earth.[iii]

Other religion-based punishments don’t involve a particular motivating act, i.e. sin, by the victims. Consider the innocents of the City of Jericho, going about their business.[iv] Some examples involve actions on victims for deeds that we might view as untoward but not worthy of violent punishment, say the acts of some young boys in ridiculing a bald man.[v] Being torn apart by wild beasts would seem a little “over the top” by modern standards.

Some societies attempt to create punishment that equated to a crime. Thus, the punishment for the wanton murder of an innocent is a long period of contemplation followed by the imposition of 2,000 volts of electricity through the perpetrator’s body.

Revenge: Again, this is a major determinant involved in the imposition of evil. Sometimes the connection is apparent, say Hiroshima and Nagasaki for Pearl Harbor. Other times, the connection becomes skewed, say the bombing of Baghdad for 9-11.

The act of revenge can allow be personal. A young Julius Caesar was once kidnapped by pirates. After paying off the ransom, Caesar raised an army, captured the pirates and had them crucified.[vi] Acts of revenge can also serve as acts of education.

Victory: Nothing seems to motivate the evil angels of our nature more than victory in war. Ask the Midianites who faced the following wrath after defeat in battle: “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.”[vii] More recently, we might ask German families about the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles following their country’s defeat in World War One.

Cleansing: See Wannsee Conference.[viii] This is, reportedly, from where the Final Solution to ridding Europe of all Jews emerged.

Law: The use of law to promulgate evil provides an unusual difficult task. First, we are not legal scholars. Second, laws derive from many sources, tradition, constitutions, statutes, and ordinances. A particularly needling fact is that, increasingly, our national state, local, and local laws emerge from iron-age writings by unknown authors in distant lands. Third, power determines the validity and enforcement of laws. So, we get the so-called “Nuremberg Laws” [ix] that legalized the persecution of Jews in Germany and the “Jim Crow Laws”[x] that legalized the persecution of African-Americans in the modern South.

Guilt: James A. Michener, in his classic Tales of the South Pacific, recounts how educated military members noticed curious phenomenon among South Pacific Islanders. These groups lived in what might be described as “paradise on earth:” No disease, ample food for the taking, and a moderate climate. In response, some had formed some of the cruelest religions imaginable. They termed this “Paradise Syndrome” which has come to include individuals of such great wealth and success that they feel they no longer have anything left in life to accomplish. Perhaps this might account for the fact that the poorest among us sometimes find a peace that eludes the better off, who think up evil as a pastime. See: “Legislator.”

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[i] Harari, Yuval N. author. ( 2015). Sapiens : a brief history of humankind. New York :Harper,

[ii] Genesis 3.16

[iii] Genesis 6-9

[iv] Joshua 6:21-25

[v] 2 Kings 2:23-24

[vi] Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (Invalid Date). The Time Julius Caesar Was Captured by Pirates. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/story/the-time-julius-caesar-was-captured-by-pirates

[vii] Numbers 31: 14-18

[viii] Berenbaum, M. (2021, January 13). Wannsee Conference. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/Wannsee-Conference

[ix] Bradsher, Greg, The Nuremberg Laws, The National Archives, Winter 2010, Vol. 42, No. 4

[x] Urofsky, M. I. (2021, September 20). Jim Crow law. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/Jim-Crow-law

A Study of Evil

  LEVELS

Is all evil equal in scope? Hardly. Bearing false witness may get one person sent to prison and another elected to high office. Each day we overlook those who endanger others by careless and evil actions. There are scales and degrees. Let us say levels of evil behavior.

One can’t imagine or discuss, though, the Holocaust without classifying it as one of the most evil phenomenon ever perpetrated by a group of individuals. In a spirit not of simplification but of management, let us use it, along with the cleansing of Cambodia, the purges of modern Russia, and others as ore from which we might mine answers. How did those atrocities occur in the presence of knowing witnesses? Who were the prime movers, who the secondary, and who was further down the line? This will require a great deal of value judgements, but that is precisely why we use these examples.

Following is a suggested order of the primacy of evil phenomenon:

Supreme Catalysts: Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Pol Pot come to mind immediately. Let us simply say that, at this level of evildoing, the evil phenomenon in question may have never happened, or at least would have never reached its level of ferocity had these individuals died at birth or some point prior to the culmination of the onslaught of evil. In History’s Gallery of Evil, they and their lot hold the highest of thrones.

Takers of Advantage: Let us take Tomás de Torquemada, (born 1420, Valladolid, Castile [Spain]—died September 16, 1498, Ávila, Castile), first grand inquisitor in Spain, whose name has become synonymous with the Christian Inquisition’s horror, religious bigotry, and cruel fanaticism.[i]

The Spanish Inquisition would likely have occurred had Torquemada never been born. He was able, though, to attach it to a disenoblement of human history, even religion, itself. (Yes, I know that’s probably not a word, but it’s the only term I could think of.) His motivation died with him but it is not hard to imagine that the enrichment of friends and associates, or even himself, may have played a part.

The crew of sycophants who surround the Takers of Advantage often seek advantage of their own. Hitler could not have conducted his evil empire nearly as effectively without the support of those like Himmler, Eichmann, Goering, Speer, and Goebbels. We only need to turn on our TVs today to see the faces of modern sycophants seeking to ride the evil tide, one created by their master, to glory, fame, power, or riches.

Closer to the historical home front, it makes us shudder to learn that some of the financial leaders of New York City wanted to recognize the Confederacy, and its evil purpose, because of their close association with cotton producers.[ii] To paraphrase a modern idiom, “Money talks and honor walks.”

Riders Along: Moving a step down from those who gain from evil, we find those who simply go along with for reasons hidden from view. This begins what many now feel is the truly frightening levels of the “movers and shakers” of evil doings. They enable evil before our very eyes because we have classified them as decent, honorable people. Consider the American general who allowed his troops to capture free Americans and transport them to slave states.

Continuing with the Nazi example, (perhaps the most familiar to us) we find a scale of perpetuators ranging from the commander of the submarine that sank the Lusitania to the Prussian general corps. They allow the winds of evil to fill the sails of history.

Turners of Heads: Even more frightening is the group that sees evil and does nothing. We will seek motivations in the next chapter. Let’s just say for now that these represent the rudders that are never turned though the shoals are quite visible and dead ahead. Apathy destroys by allowing evil to destroy.

Members of a Mob: Of all the members of the forces of evil, this is the only group that might ultimately express repentance. Unable to deny participation, their only defense is having chosen poorly because of the excitement and delirium of the moment. Sadly, they often must stand before the smoldering ruins they have created when seeking our understanding or forgiveness.

Takers of Scalps: The most disgusting movers of evil don’t take part in its execution. They don’t claim participation in any group associated with the damage it causes. When pressed, they deny even being on the scene. But they were. They are like the nonparticipants who rush onto the scene of battle after the warriors have left and proceed to scalp the wounded and rob the dead. All they do, they say, is “report the facts.” Today, as most of us know, facts are not “stubborn things,” as John Adams once said. Instead, they are proprietary things, as owners of news channels use them. Others claim to represent the Galilean while preaching the opposite of his words like some religious episode of the comic book empire of “Bizzaro World.”

The flotilla of evildoers looms large. Do we dare question their choice of courses to travel? Stay tuned.

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[i] Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2021, September 12). Tomás de Torquemada. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tomas-de-Torquemada

[ii] Widner, Ted. Lincoln on the Verge New York: Simon and Shuster, 2020

   Choosing a Course

 We have chosen to pursue a course that separates a discussion evil from a concomitant discussion of religion. So far, this has proven difficult, and will be more so, as we shall see. Disregarding the evil done in the name of religion requires that we sail by some of the great evils of history such as the Spanish Inquisition. That’s not a welcome task, particularly when we note that some of the actions of the Torquemada Band may have been aimed more at the accruing of wealth and the consolidation of power than achieving religious purity.

To maintain our intellectual rigging, we turn once again to concept that evil is done by real people against real people.

This leads into the choppy waters of free will. A person or group of persons must consciously decide to commit evil. Or is evil always a conscious decision? Let us postpone that discussion for the present in favor of a consideration of free will, notwithstanding its source or motivation.

A detailed examination of free would take us into unknown and perilous waters from which, like the Flying Dutchman, we would be doomed to wander eternally and hopelessly with no chance for rest in a comforting port. [i]

Let us, in arguendo,[ii] as our attorney friends would say, limit our concept to as sparse a concept as possible, to wit:

A person has some kind of power to control his or her actions.

When a person exercises free will over choices and actions, those choices and actions are up to them. In what way are those actions up to them? (1) They are up to them in the sense that hey are able to choose otherwise, or at minimum that they are able not to choose or act as they do. (2) They are the source of their actions.[iii]

In this “intellectually close-reefed” definition, we are able to examine a brief sampling of actions from ancient history to present times.

1.     Adolph Hitler exercised free will when making decisions that led to the Holocaust.

2.     Joseph Stalin exercised free will in actions that led to the death of over 20 million people, including entire families and close friends.

3.     Vlad the Impaler exercised free will in making decisions that killed some 20 percent of the population of Wallacha. I spare readers the details of the impaling, only noting that the same system was used by members of one sect over another in the religious wars of Europe which contributed to the mass migration to America and the insistence of its founders that religion and government would always remain separate.

4.     Pol Pot of Cambodia exercised free will in orchestrating the death of around 2 million of his countrymen, about 25 % of the entire population. Frightenly, one of the criteria for execution was the wearing of eyeglasses which, as is well known, indicates a person of learning and intelligence.

And so it goes.

On a minor scale, in an action of which most Americans are familiar, the individuals who attacked our nation’s capitol on January 6, 2021, who defaced and dishonored this noble structure from which Abraham Lincoln once appealed to, "The better angels of our nature,” threatened to murder our elected officials, and slaughtered, or attempted to slaughter, its police force, exercised free will, as did anyone who may have sought to motivate them.

Feeling a little seasick? Let us go below and rest.

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[i] Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2017, April 26). Flying Dutchman. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Flying-Dutchman

[ii] A Latin term meaning "in arguing" or "for the sake of argument".  When one assumes something arguendo, the person is asserting a hypothetical or other statement for the purpose of argument.

[iii] O’Connor, Timothy and Christopher Franklin, "Free Will", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/freewill/>.

A Study of Evil

  Taking Our Bearings

 Now comes the difficult part of our quest. Our sounding tells us we are in deep waters. In order to consider evil, we must, indeed talk about it. It ranks at the bottom of the things about which we like to talk. But, talk about it we must.

We eliminated evil spirits and such early on and pledged to limit our discussion to acts of individuals, or groups of individuals, against individuals, or groups of individuals.

What constitutes evil? It might be a simple act in which perpetrators compromise the well-being of the victims. In ancient societies (and some not so ancient) what we might call “the power force” denied certain groups various forms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in myriad actions. Sequestrations from the right to vote to the right to use a public restroom may fall within this list. Oh, and what about the right of a happy couple to purchase a wedding cake?

Some sociologists refer to this entry-level evil as the imposition of social death. In America, we know of this primarily as the avowed intention of the imprisonment of prisoners for crimes. One writer says of social death that, “a unifying feature is that it is used to comment on the way people may be regarded as if they are something other than human or no longer a person.”[i]

We all know of actions at the top ranking of evil acts and little reason exists in visiting them at this point. Discussions of the gradations between the lower rungs and the higher could fill entire libraries. And they have. To simplify our task, but to focus on severity, let us consider four test cases.

Case One: Individual A and Individual B have harbored bad relations for months. Individual A invites Individual B to his house to resolve their difficulties. During the discussion Individual A begins to taunt Individual B with a series of virulent and personal epithets. When Individual B can stand the taunts no longer, he threatens to assault Individual B who, without warning, produces a firearm from a coat pocket and places one shot into the head of the other, killing him instantly. No signs of pain or prolonged suffering appear. Individual A smiles, blows the smoke from the end of his weapon, twirls it “cowboy style,” replaces it, and utters a simple “That’ll teach you.” He then calls the police.

Case Two: A group is holding a man prisoner, demanding that he produce some information that is key to their intentions. He goes without food or water and suffers daily beatings. Each time he nears death, his captors provide a meager sustenance that keeps him alive for another day. When they despair of meeting their ends, they cease the beatings and the sustenance. The prisoner languishes in agony for several days. His groans of agony and pleas for help resound through the building. When they know he is dead, his captors burn his body and spread the ashes discreetly.

Case Three: A group is holding a man prisoner. Though he receives food and drink, each day his captors enter his cell and remind him of the exact day and time on which he will face execution. Day after day, the ritual is the same. This fills the tiny cell: Days remaining, hours remaining, minutes remaining, sometimes seconds remaining, and the exact method by which he will face eternity. There is no hope for retrieve, his captors tell him. Then they recite again the litany of time remaining. Each day his despair and lack of hope hang heavier around his neck, invading and torturing him mercilessly.

Case Four: A young child is cruelly damaged by an evil source. A cure exists that will remove the child’s pain and agony. As the child writhes in pain, caregivers withhold the cure, stating that the withholding is in the best interest of the child. Though suffering greatly, the child manages to survive the ordeal but with a terrible disfigurement that a simple medical procedure could have prevented.

The attentive among you may have guessed by now.

Case One: Individual A acted totally within his legal rights, according to some state laws, including those of my state of Arkansas.

Case Two: This process is considered appropriate by the military leaders of many countries, including some, blessedly not all, high-ranking members of our own.

Case Three: This ordeal faces every prisoner now sitting on death row.

Case Four: Unless a “Saul on the Road to Damascus Moment” floods our nation’s Supreme Court, every young girl in America may someday face this ordeal.

Dealing with the concept of evil will not prove pleasant sailing.

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[i] Borgstrum. E. Social Death. QJM” An International Journal of Medicine, 20017, 5-7

   Becalmed

 We find ourselves becalmed now in a sea of doubt. If we are to study evil, we must tackle some headwinds in our pursuit of its actual nature.

The first item we find floating past is the concept of context. Anyone who has dealt with modern religious aficionados knows that this is a common defense of doctrinal contradictions. The “taken out of context” explanation ranks only second to the “his ways ain’t our ways” dodge.

Some modern “theologians” would no doubt find themselves unable to speak if forbidden the use of the phrase “out of context.”

An anecdotal story from my own life can set the stage for an explanation of how tricky the concept of context becomes when applied to real-life situations.

Someone who was very dear to me was taken from a rural life on an Arkansas farm in the mid-1940s and mustered into the United States Army to go and fight the Axis powers in Europe. There, he survived unspeakable horrors before his side won. He would speak of artillery attacks in which he, “would want to live one second longer, just one second.” He also told of a stray shell, listlessly fired by Germans during the last days of the war, taking off the head of “the shortest man standing in line for chow.”

The Army disbanded his division, the 79^th Infantry, after VE day and he moved to the First Infantry Division.

Yes, that First Infantry Division: The Big Red One.

Remember that the U.S. was still at war with Japan at that time, and that country’s leaders had vowed resistance to an invasion by every man, woman, and child in the country, using every cannon, gun, plane, knife, sword, implement, stone, and stick available. Not a pleasant scenario for a member of a unit renowned for being assigned to “the first wave.”

When evil prevents evil, is evil sanctified by context? Was the vaporizing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians through the first use of nuclear weapons—an evil end that eliminated further resistance and obviated the end of plans for further military invasions—justified?[i]

We will be debating that question when the remaining homo sapiens take their last breaths, sigh and say, “Look what our hands have wrought.”

Spoiler alert: The man in question survived the war and occupation, returned home, married, and helped produce a beautiful daughter to whom I am still married after 49 years.

It gets murkier, not the story but the consideration of context.

We drift along and encounter some complicated concepts. They are far beyond the scope of this amateur analysis but deserve mentioning.

The first is one currently in play with regard to the idea of sexual orientation. We shouldn’t tack anywhere near that emotional squall, or must we? We’ll see.

The concept is one called “social constructionism.” This is a theory stating that characteristics typically thought to be immutable and solely biological—such as gender, race, class, ability, and sexuality—are products of human definition and interpretation.[ii]

It only requires a look at how the female of our species fares in an historical context to see the ideas creating social construction as a valid concept. In early creation myths, woman is sometimes simply a catalyst for the development of man.[iii] Later, she becomes property, the earliest forms of marriage simply being a contract by which a man protected his harem from theft or, uh, invasion.[iv] In some later societies, woman enjoyed the simple definition of a thing possessing ovaries. We follow a tortuous path of supporting roles to modern times wherein, as a social construction, we create “categories based on certain bodily features; we attach meanings to these categories, and then we place people into the categories by considering their bodies or bodily aspects.”[v]

Let us steer from the dangerous shoals and drop in on the Wannsee Conference outside Berlin on January 20. 1942. There, with the aid of a translator no doubt, we hear high-ranking Nazi officials determining what some historians call “the final solution,” i.e. which innocent humans deserved to be slaughtered by the regime and how. We hear them deciding if a person’s “Jewishness” (a major standard for extermination) relied on a fractional portion of racial “blood” or perhaps whether an individual considered herself, himself, or, one supposes, their children, Jews. What is particularly terrifying is that their production goal (11 million) relied on countries which they hadn’t yet conquered but would get to as soon as they finished with Russia.

Those decisions were social constructs, not fact-based. The evil was not that the victims were Jews. The evil was that the Nazis slaughtered six million of them. Perhaps (almost) all of us can agree that this was not an act perpetuated by “some fine people."

Ahh. A breeze. Let us sail away from this dreadful spot.

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[i] See: Hersey, J. (1946). Hiroshima. New York: A.A. Knopf.

[ii] Saraswati, A. P. L. A., Shaw, A. P. B., & Rellihan, H. (2017). Introduction to women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Oxford University Press.

[iii] Genisis: 2:4-25 NIV

[iv] Durant, Will, and Ariel Durant. The Story of Civilization. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935.

[v] Saraswati, et al, op cit

  Traversing the Narrows

 In seeking a temporary working definition of evil, let us first say that it is an act of humankind, to be distinguished from the mysterious workings of a spirit, a phenomenon, or a god. As an act, it must be planned and enacted by a person or persons. As an act, it must be planned and executed against a person or persons. As an act, it must deprive a person or persons of the ability to continue life in a state of well-being, safety, and opportunity. Finally, as an act, it must involve intent.

Accepting these for the present, questions arise immediately. If we accept the fact that evil thrives from the actions of a prime agent, say an Adolph Hitler, are there attendant gradations?

Are those who support the actions of the prime agent themselves the doers of evil? This becomes cloudy if the support falls within the acts of nationalism. It can lead to what we might call the Nuremburg Defense.” As mentioned earlier Adolph Eichmann used it later after being captured by Israeli agents and put on trial in Jerusalem for his role in the murder of millions of Jews and other innocents. As a primary functionary in the Holocaust, he claimed that he was “only following orders.” His performance during the trial prompted writer Hannah Eichmann to observe:

“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”[i]

Are seemingly normal people who are drawn into evil acts under the spell of a charismatic leader guilty of the evil acts resulting from the following of orders? This question becomes a complex one when we consider orders that aren’t given directly. Instead, they may be implanted by nefarious sources and strengthened by repetition until the irrational among us assume that they are called to an almost divine directive. The resulting rampaging mob may not represent “some fine people” but it does contain, among its throbbing mass, some who we had once considered “terribly and terrifyingly normal.”

Speaking of following orders, at least one religious figurehead ordained that we do not judge others in order that we, ourselves, might not be judged.[ii] If we are to understand the nature of evil at all, however, we must resolve the question of “moral obedience,” a possible one-time act that resulted from achieving a stated end. Standing in opposition to this is the Kantian concept of “moral imperative,” or conduct that is absolute and not dependent upon any desire or end.[iii] Further, though not widely researched, evidence exists that German soldiers who refused a part in the murder of the innocents were not punished but simply reassigned.[iv]

There, at the end of the day’s cruise, we must, I think, abandon the obedience, or Nuremburg, defense. The ashes of the innocent that still cover the fields of Europe demand it of us.

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[i] Arendt, Hannah, op cit

[ii] Matthew 7:1 NIV

[iii] Kant, I., & Beck, L. W. (1956). Critique of practical reason. New York: Liberal Arts Press.

[iv] Goldhagen, D. J. (1996). Hitler's willing executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Knopf.

A Study of Evil

 FROM MYTH TO REALITY

 Now it becomes even more complicated. We can no longer attribute the uncomfortable or disturbing to myth or to the “works in mysterious ways” explanation. We now have actual figures from history burning opponents alive, pouring liquid metal down the throats of prisoners, lowering followers of different religious sects onto sharpened stakes, or hanging children for petty crimes. We look for origins, sadly I might add.

 T.S. Eliot began his classic poem The Waste Land[i], with simple lines since borrowed by every cub reporter who has had the chance to write an editorial about springtime:

“April is the cruellest month …”

None bother to quote it with the next few lines.

“April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.”

So what do we have here?

While offering no claim to be a scholar worthy of analyzing Eliot, I did take the time once to follow the references that he offered to understanding his poem. This led to a reading of the (abridged version) of Sir James George Frazier’s monumental work The Golden Bough, A Study in Magic and Religion.[ii] That work offers an interesting tack into the trade winds of history.

Frazier recounts how, in humankind’s quest for explanations of the world, it shifted from magic to religion and, ultimately to science. Of magic, he found two forms, one an imitative (replication the sounds of thunder, for example) and one based on a sympathetic relationship between causes, i.e. religion. He eventually discounts each as a false, “association of ideas” and credits science with the best avenue for dealing with uncertainties. Of course magic and science did not fail to intermix, as in the case of alchemy for example.

Enough of that. What interests us here are the sections in which Frazier deals with the fear that primitive societies held that the world each fall and winter, requiring specific actions for a rebirth in the spring.

What could be a greater manifestation of sympathetic magic than the sacrificing of strong and/or beautiful victims in order to restore the vitality of the Earth?

Who among us, though, could now doubt the evil in an act of leading a beautiful young virgin, or the tribe’s strongest young male, to an alter to be sacrificed, sometimes horribly, in order that the tribe might bring forth sustenance for the community during the coming year? Of course if youth and beauty were in short supply, as well as virgins, the burning of a man, say a stranger, might suffice.

Yes, for some April was indeed the cruelest month in light of the vegetation rituals that became, according to Frazier, pervasive throughout the planet.

Associated with all this is a companion belief that the well-being of a tribe, nation, or society is equivalent to the vitality of its king, or leader. Thus, we get odd, and some might say evil, practices in some societies by which the aging king rules until a younger one murders him. In fact, Frazier begins his lengthy work with a description of such a practice in ancient Greece. The passage bears repeating:

“In antiquity this sylvan landscape was the scene of a strange and recurring tragedy. On the northern shore of the lake . . . stood the sacred grove and sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, or Diana of the Wood [fertility goddess of Classical Roman tradition] . . . . [in] this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him, he retained office till he was himself slain by a stronger or craftier . . . The post which he held by this precarious tenure carried with it the title of king [King of the Wood–Rex Nemorensis]; but surely no crowned head ever lay uneasier, or was visited by more evil dreams, than his.”[iii]

Here we find a reference to  Shakespeare’s’ “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”[iv]

It would appear then that some of the earliest introductions to evil themes centered on the gaining of great power, either that offered by nature or that offered by society.

How did that shift into such a common practice, a practice instigated by one individual against another, sometimes for no apparent gain?

Mind the helm.

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[i] Eliot, T. S. (2001). The Waste Land (M. North, Ed.). WW Norton.

[ii] Frazer, J. G. (1923). The Golden Bough: A study in magic and religion. Abridged ed. London: Macmillan.

[iii] Frazier, op. cit. Chapter One.

[iv] Henry IV, Part 2.