Understanding the Devil (A Psychological Exploration of Satan)

About this event

THE SYMBOLIC ANATOMY OF THE DEVIL What Our Image of Evil Reveals About the Unconscious Why do we imagine the Devil with horns, red skin, goat legs, bat wings, claws, a tail, and a pitchfork? The Bible never actually describes Satan this way. The familiar image was assembled over centuries from biblical monsters, ancient mythology, medieval art, folklore, and theater. But each feature eventually acquired a powerful psychological meaning: • Horns: pride, domination, and untamed power • Red skin: rage, blood, violence, and hellfire • Goat features: appetite, carnality, and animal instinct • Bat wings: spiritual power that has become corrupted • Tail: bestiality and connection with the serpent and dragon • Claws: predation and the desire to consume • Forked tongue: deception, slander, and divided speech • Pitchfork: punishment and authority through suffering Taken together, the Devil represents something more disturbing than a simple animal or monster: Intelligence and spiritual power placed in the service of appetite, pride, deception, and destruction. In this session, we will explore the Devil as a symbolic construction of the human unconscious. We will consider why cultures give evil an animal body, why fallen angels are portrayed with distorted wings, and why our most frightening monsters are often partly human. We will also ask: • Is the Devil an external enemy, or an image of disowned human capacities? • Why do we project unwanted impulses into monsters? • What happens when aggression, desire, envy, pride, and resentment are repressed rather than consciously confronted? • Does denying the shadow make us better, or merely make the shadow less visible? • Why is evil often portrayed as an inversion of the proper order, with intelligence serving instinct rather than governing it? This is not a religious service, and you do not need to believe in a literal Devil. We will approach the subject through psychology, symbolism, mythology, religion, art, and the study of the unconscious. No previous knowledge is required. Bring your curiosity and your willingness to examine the darker, stranger parts of the human imagination. About the Host Dillon Freed holds a B.A. in Psychology and an M.S. in Cognitive Neuroscience. He has taught psychology and neuroscience at Baruch College and John Jay College and has led more than 100 seminars and guided sessions exploring emotion, consciousness, the unconscious, symbolism, spirituality, and personal transformation. He is also the founder of the Letting Go Center in New York City, where he develops experiential approaches for helping people observe, understand, and release unconscious emotional patterns. His work brings together neuroscience, depth psychology, philosophy, mythology, religious symbolism, literature, and direct emotional experience. The goal is not to impose a single interpretation, but to examine what our most enduring images reveal about the hidden structure of the human mind.