Contributor
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Sorry, didn't cite the name. here.
It's the name in the Torah; 'nahash' is a Hebrew word which is one of the synonyms used for snake.Okay, thanks for that. Though from what you're saying, that just means the snake's name is "snake."
("Snake? Snake! SNAAAAAAAAKE!")
Well, it's used as a proper name for this particular serpent, implicitly the first of her kind. The name literally means "whisperer." But by analogy, it's used elsewhere in Biblical Hebrew for snakes; the snake from Moses' staff was a "nahash" as well.
Okay, thanks for that. Though from what you're saying, that just means the snake's name is "Snake."
("Snake? Snake! SNAAAAAAAAKE!")
He prefers when you call him Plisken !! ^_^
I think a lot of the misogyny of hell is a result of women being weaker than men. Please don't kill me for saying that.
Asmodeus is all about power, and men are physically stronger than women, so he views them as superior. The fertility aspect really doesn't factor into his view of power as he existed before reproduction was a thing. Also, he hates souls and doesn't want anymore to created. It's why he and Ithys went to war in the first place.
In sum, women are weak soul-spawners mucking up his nice multi-verse
I think a lot of the misogyny of hell is a result of women being weaker than men. Please don't kill me for saying that.
Asmodeus is all about power, and men are physically stronger than women, so he views them as superior. The fertility aspect really doesn't factor into his view of power as he existed before reproduction was a thing. Also, he hates souls and doesn't want anymore to created. It's why he and Ithys went to war in the first place.
In sum, women are weak soul-spawners mucking up his nice multi-verse
Devils are much less about physical dominance and more about manipulation. Might makes right strikes me as more demon territory, so I would guess that devil might be more concerned with cleverness than strength.
I definitely get the "Abyss is female" from reading campaign setting materials, but I think Hell = male is more an artifact of trying to polarize the two planes. I never got a strong sense of Hell being particularly masculine, other than the archdevils tend to be male.
Devils might seem that way, but the background material in Book of the Damned—Volume 1: Princes of Darkness makes that it clear that Asmodeus is entirely about might=right. Hell is organized because it is more efficient/convenient for him. The Princes of Hell is above such petty concerns as good-evil, order-chaos. He is of the old-school and waits for the universe to return to its proper state.
Devils are concerned with power, whether physical strength, magical ability, or inter-personal skills. A devil's authority extends only as far as their ability to enforce that claim. If any weakness is shone, subordinates will quickly exploit and depose their leader. Until then, they will obey. Demons can't be relied on ever, with the possible exception of when you hold a sword to their throat.
I dunno, it's their game world, they can do what they want. But something just doesn't sit right when your trying to describe what is supposed to be Hell, in all its imagined and unimagined terror, horror and evil and slapping an oh yeah and their Misogynists too on top of it like that's supposed to make it more horrifying. Whether or not Asmodeus has an imagined prejudice against woman just seems so inconsequential, petty even.
Well many misogynist inherit their attitudes from their male parental figures growing up, many gain those feelings later in life when women of authority/power threaten their way of life. Asmodeus has the latter in his back story with Sarenrae being instrumental in his "fall". I've always considered her the reason he became misogynistic. The tumultuous relationship they have since fit his m.o. Nothing in his back story before that implies misogynistic tendencies. (which really show how scary Rovagug is for them to work together)
One of the things I've always loved about Golorion's deities is how very human they are sometimes. Asmodeus is one of the most powerful and influential deities yet his lack of respect for the opposite gender will be the end of him one day, his single greatest weakness.
Another way to look at this is that a LE villainesses doesn't have to worship a LE deity. If she worships Abadar's negative traits of civilization (slavery or the destruction of nature) or Iori's self-perfection (perfecting herself to become the best at what she does, which is gaining power). Going the other way she could become an organized crime boss with Norbergor or a death cults leader of Urgothoa. And as mentioned, Zon-Kuthon, who is awesome and she couldn't go wrong with him!
That's an interesting view. I always felt that Hell was misogynistic because Asmodeus see himself has the last bastion of the old ways and shaped Hell into his image since he is the last of The First. So anything that deviates from his own image and ideals is deemed weak.
Devils might seem that way, but the background material in Book of the Damned—Volume 1: Princes of Darkness makes that it clear that Asmodeus is entirely about might=right. Hell is organized because it is more efficient/convenient for him. The Princes of Hell is above such petty concerns as good-evil, order-chaos. He is of the old-school and waits for the universe to return to its proper state.
Devils are concerned with power, whether physical strength, magical ability, or inter-personal skills. A devil's authority extends only as far as their ability to enforce that claim. If any weakness is shone, subordinates will quickly exploit and depose their leader. Until then, they will obey. Demons can't be relied on ever, with the possible exception of when you hold a sword to their throat.
Indeed. Both demons and devils hold that might makes right and that the strong should prey on the weak. For devils and Hell, they do it through order, prestige, and promotions. Demons do it by, well, strength. It's rare to see a lower devil rise up and depose a higher devil unless he plays by Hell's bureaucratic rules. For demons, it's dog eat dog and any lowly demon can try to rise up and depose a demon lord. For both fiends, though, it's usually the clever one, not the strong one, that wins the day.
Here! Here!
I do enjoy that Asmodeus is, or at least believes he is, that last being of the perfect universe, as it used to be before these... mortals started messing things up.
Referred here by a player in my Darklight Sisterhood game, which is composedeentirely of female gamers. Will respond in the am when more awake.
It's interesting to note that, while Hell is mysoginistic, the Abyss is not anti-male (mistersoginistic?).
The term you are looking for is Misandrist or Misandry. Misogyny derives from Gynos, meaning female. Misandry derives from Adros, meaning male.
Tangent (and probably a pretty pedantic one), but:
Sorry, didn't cite the name. here.
It's the name in the Torah; 'nahash' is a Hebrew word which is one of the synonyms used for snake.Okay, thanks for that. Though from what you're saying, that just means the snake's name is "Snake."
("Snake? Snake! SNAAAAAAAAKE!")
Well, it's used as a proper name for this particular serpent, implicitly the first of her kind. The name literally means "whisperer." But by analogy, it's used elsewhere in Biblical Hebrew for snakes; the snake from Moses' staff was a "nahash" as well.
Sorry, but I've gotta disagree with you there. :-) There's no clear way to determine whether it's a name versus a noun, and there's nothing contextual to suggest that it's a name. Literally, the text is:
vehanachash and the serpent
hayah was
arum cunning/smart/prudent
mikol more than all
chayat animals
hasadeh [of] the field
It's treated no differently from any other noun. "The serpent" is the same, linguistically, as "the field." (It's also a masculine noun, for what that's worth.)
<linguistic digression>:
There are people trying to justify all kinds of wacky fun interpretations of the text who use the shared root for all sorts of takes on the text (the serpent was an angel! Eve was the serpent! The term means "glowing!" The term refers to the female genitals!), but ultimately the two terms both appear to trace back to a primitive root thought to refer to hissing or whispering. (In the case of the serpent, hiss->serpent; in the case of the metal, hissing->ringing->metal.) That is, they share the same root, and may have that root meaning in common, but that doesn't mean that the meanings of "coppery/brassy/shiny/bright" and "serpent" are interchangeable.
The Bible does appear to associate the "snake" and "metal" meanings once by punning on the similarities in sound, in the brass serpent that Moses makes to cure snakebites, calling it a nachash nechoshet, but given that the narrative appears equally delighted with the sound similarity in "serpent" and "bitten" (nashak hanachash), and even "beheld" (nabat) and "pole" (hanes), one begins to wonder if the writer was just having a field day with N and S/SH sounds. (I personally like to picture him as an ancient Dr. Seuss type.)
Forms of the root appear in contexts to do with divination, enchantment, and learning (through experience or observation as opposed to study), so it also gets used (in noun form) to mean "enchanter/diviner" and in verb form to mean "to divine," as well as "to observe," and to have learned through experience. (Presumably because enchanters do hissy incantations.)
In other parts of the Bible, a different word (tanin -- which can mean "sea serpent", "snake", "dragon," "whales") is used, and even saraph (seraph) has been translated both as "fiery serpent" and "fiery angel." But those are different terms, untied to the serpent in the garden.
</linguistic digression>
All of that aside, however, the predominant term for a snake from Genesis through Micah, whether it's a statue of a snake, a snake swarm sent into the camp to make people's lives miserable, snakes and worms, etc. is nachash. These are ordinary snakes, and there is nothing to indicate that the usage of nachash in Genesis is, in that one instance, a proper name. It's just a noun that means "serpent."
Various religious sects have made additional metaphorical interpretations of the passage (the serpent was the devil, the serpent was a coded reference to a/the goddess, the serpent was an angel, the serpent was an embodiment of wisdom), but as far as the actual text goes and how the exact words are used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, it's a snake.
That said, if any of the esoteric/metaphorical interpretations of who/what the snake was inspire you creatively, more power to them and to you. :-) The fact that none of those interpretations have any more textual support than any of the others is part of what gives the passage its power to inspire them. Pretty much every religious group that cares about the Bible has felt the need to make the snake more than a snake; the absence of detail there creates a mystery that in some ways is more powerful than any of the other elements of the story.
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Contributor
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Thanks, Jessica...
The midrash for that passage suggests that the serpent is a personification of sin (not Eve's in particular, but both Adam and Eve's).
My info on the gender of the serpent in this passage seems to be mistaken. Put too much trust in old books...
Anyway. Some more digging explains the gender issue: according to one rabbinical reading, the meaning of Eve's name (Hawwa) was serpent (hiwya in Aramaic/Syrian). (see also). This was an obviously misogynistic tradition, however. Clement of Alexandria popularised the association for Christians. Hence the serpent became female in art.
I'm mostly looking for a female "devil" with some grounding in legend for game purposes, not a religious dogma, thankfully. It's playing with fire, in a manner of speaking, because of the loaded nature of this sort of thing, but if one can't interrogate culture when one games, well...
I totally like interesting interpretations, mind you, and have no religious investment in one interpretation over another. :-) I was a lit major, and love the idea of secret traditions (oh, Da Vinci Code, why couldn't you have been better?). But I do feel it's important to distinguish between literal text and glosses upon it.
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I totally like interesting interpretations, mind you, and have no religious investment in one interpretation over another. :-) I was a lit major, and love the idea of secret traditions (oh, Da Vinci Code, why couldn't you have been better?). But I do feel it's important to distinguish between literal text and glosses upon it.
Are you familiar with Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose? The movie with Sean Connery and Christian Slater (is it telling of my age that I wanted to type Will Scarlett?) is enjoyable, but the mystery is much better represented in the book.
Oh yes. Read The Name of the Rose a couple times, saw the movie, and played the board game. :-) Liked it, but thought Foucault's Pendulum was better. Wasn't as impressed with The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, and have yet to read The Prague Cemetery, but have high hopes for it.