He believes that eternal vigilance is required against the psychic domination of the flames, and he also has rejected his former agnosticism and become an orthodox Christian who believes that the flames and their message of spiritual advancement is pure
diabolism. Stapledon may again be satirizing C.
Redden, Andrew,
Diabolism in Colonial Peru, 1560-1750, Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World.
Rusling confessed to having "great faith in the moral power of bayonets, when exhibited on the right side." He explained his rationale, linking slavery and polygamy in the process: "The nation found it necessary to invoke [bayonets] against slavery when nothing else would suffice, and I am not clear that we shall not yet have to invoke them against polygamy, the other 'twin relic,' before we are well quit of that
diabolism." (80) Others, however, cautioned against such brash measures.
There was not a whiff of
diabolism in the opening adagio, where the shade of Don Giovanni should stalk; the andante plodded rather than sang and the final was hardly exhilarating.
Psanek appears to Daphne momentarily as the embodiment of the devil, an echo of the earlier repartee with her about the healthy qualities of
diabolism. He also here resembles the infamous and powerful crocodile that terrorized the populace in the land of the God Thoth, a creature that Frazer describes as receiving a special and often celebrated respect ("the principle of lex talionis" 601) in rites of idolatry and worship.
They were people without clear ties to the historical purview of biblical thinking, without obvious linkage to the sphere of "human history." And unlike Europe's Jews, their religions (to the degree that they were believed to have any) could be mapped only through
diabolism. What manner of people is this?
Adopting Derridean terminology, they call this the "prosthetic" model of reading practiced by Oedipa: "[R]eading, to refer back to the demon, would involve a sort of perpetual motion between sensitivity and
diabolism in which animate connects with inanimate to produce, or constitute sense.
This points to the sociocultural climate of the late-Middle Ages of European society as the single most important factor feeding into the early-modern witch hunt, this despite the concept of
diabolism triggered by various natural disasters, including the Black Death and the Little Ice Age, (23) and despite the legal facilitation of torture, which served only as a means to an end of persecution.
The glory as well as the fund-raising of the missions were in direct proportion to the degradation and
diabolism of the heathen.
(8.) Fernando Cervantes, The Devil in the New World: The Impact of
Diabolism in New Spain (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994), 54.
(However, the border between 'heresy' and '
diabolism' would have been highly subjective and dictated by church authorities.) Conspiracy theories involve, in many cases, broadly accepting society's norms--though these theories can of course be found amongst subgroups and so on--but believing that the devil is essentially winning the battle and running the world.
Sara Melzer's examination of how the colonial 'savage' was conceptualized by the French elite is more informative about the role of magic, as represented by
diabolism, in cultural negotiation and social transformation.
Nathan Johnstone argues that the development of the understanding of
diabolism within the period following the Reformation focused on the idea of an internal struggle with the devil, which manifested itself in the temptations commonly experienced by Christians.
