Huh. Never heard of that before, either: Urban Dictionary: yonic
Not biblical, but Milton in Paradise Lost says it is Beelzebub:
He soon discerns, and weltring by his side
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
Long after known in PALESTINE, and nam’d
BEELZEBUB. To whom th’ Arch-Enemy,
And thence in Heav’n call’d Satan, with bold words
Breaking the horrid silence thus began.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
And I, for one, would like to know Sauron’s motivations.
But Pippen and Gollum never really saw much of Sauron, as I recall, and they don’t provide very detailed descriptions of him anyway. “The Dunwich Horror” gives two pretty detailed descriptions of the main monsters - don’t forget the detailed description of Wilbur Whateley’s corpse after he’s killed by the dogs guarding the Miskatonic library.
“Pickman’s Model” also gives a pretty clear description of the monster:
“It was a colossal and nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it held in bony claws a thing that had been a man, gnawing at the head as a child nibbles at a stick of candy. Its position was a kind of crouch, and as one looked one felt that at any moment it might drop its present prey and seek a juicier morsel. But damn it all, it wasn’t even the fiendish subject that made it such an immortal fountain-head of all panic—not that, nor the dog face with its pointed ears, bloodshot eyes, flat nose, and drooling lips. It wasn’t the scaly claws nor the mould-caked body nor the half-hooved feet—none of these, though any one of them might well have driven an excitable man to madness.”
Granted, the reader (and the narrator) never “sees” the monster directly, just a picture of it, but the imagery is very distinct nonetheless.
He also gives a very clinical description of the dead Elder Thing found in “At the Mountains of Madness,” and even has a go at describing a malevolent color that doesn’t exist in our spectrum, in “The Colour Out of Space.” “The Haunter in the Dark” is about the only major story of his I can think of off the top of my head where the monster isn’t described much at all, beyond possessing a “three-lobed burning eye,” which is a pretty close parallel to Sauron (finally bringing this post back on topic), but for the most part, Lovecraft wasn’t much of a practitioner of the “don’t show the monster” school of writing.
Well, arguably the snake is not Satan, the thing in the book of Revelations is not Satan - both allegories and symbols. Definitively perhaps in Job that is Satan (but mostly God), and a little less definitively in Jesus’ account. That’s four different stories about 4 different cultural and situational entities… not all the same thing. And I suppose Sauron is another piecemeal Satan, metaphorically.
God’s betting partner in Job is definitely Satan; he is not, however, the Devil, or at least he does not seem to be an implacable enemy of the Almighty. He works for God. He is clearly among the lieutenants reporting on the status of things on Earth to Yahweh. Nobody says anything unusual when he gives his report with the rest.
One more time I want to flog “Letters From The Earth” by Mark Twain as the best Satan stuff I have ever read or seen. Much better than Milton. Piss your pants funny.
Satan (Jason Sudeikis) makes periodic appearances on SNL’s “Weekend Update” these days, commenting on current events, and is almost always funny.
Also, a fox.
I think Lord of the Rings is stronger with Sauron be off stage. Reading it, I never felt like I needed to see what was going on in Mordor. It was pretty clear the orcs and the Nazgul took their orders from Mordor. In fact, I don’t think it’s really that common in literature to see the enemy plotting. That seems more like a Hollywood convention that anything.
Oh, is that what that was? Thanks for the loss of emotional connection to my former name, Rhymer, geez.