Devil Worship and Theories of Reference

The Yazidi, recent targets of genocide in its most atrocious form, have sometimes been accused of devil worship by fundamentalist Christians and Muslims. Of course forced conversion and murder are not be any less moral enormities if their targets are devil worshipers than if they are Episcopalians. A libelous accusation of devil worship is, however, something religious people of most persuasions find at least offensive, and the Yazidi are no exception.

Because a little modestly technical philosophy is helpful in analyzing the accusation of devil worship, and is illustrative of turns of argument applicable in many other settings, I am going to take a closer look at the issue than its plausibility and the moral standing of the accusers warrant.

Our initial suspicion is that these charges stem from some not very expert, and even less unbiased, amateur comparative religion and anthropology. The Yazidi are monotheists, but the seven spirits, and especially the peacock angel, Tawûsê Melek, may get a little more veneration than Christians traditionally afford angels or saints, excepting, perhaps, Mary. So it is not completely irresponsible to say that the Yazidi worship Melek, and I will assume for the sake of argument that they do.

That leaves the question whether Tawûsê Melek is the devil. There is one conceivable state of reality in which, I think, the answer to this question would clearly be in the affirmative. Suppose that the devil really exists. That is, suppose that there is a rebellious angel, perhaps Lucifer, whose calling is to cause evil, suffering, and the perdition of souls. The devil did many of the things ascribed to him in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim tradition. Moreover, it is the devil that is behind what is told of Tawûsê Melek in the Yazidi tradition. That is if we trace the Yazidi stories about Tawûsê Melek to their sources, we will always find the devil as their real world protagonist. Under these circumstances Tawûsê Melek would be the devil, and the Yazidi should be said to worship the devil, even if contemporary Yazidi's believe that Tawûsê Melek is the source of good, not evil. Believing good things of the devil does not make him any less the devil.

This account of Yazidi devil worship, in addition to its admittedly extravagant assumptions, depends as well on a particular theory of the way names hook up with what they are names of. The theory I used here is due to Kripke, and is called the “causal theory” of reference. It is an attractive theory for a number of reasons and in a variety of contexts. It seems true, for example, that the morning star was the very same star as the evening star even in that dim prehistory in which everyone would have regarded “the evening star is the morning star” as trivially false. Even if a similarly ancient expression for “whale” were etymologically “big fish that spouts,” what they referred to in using the expression was a mammal not a fish – assuming that it was whales and only whales for which they used this expression when they were looking out to sea.

So, happy to apply the causal theory in the event of an existing devil, I can see how the Yazidi might be devil worshipers even if they stoutly and sincerely deny it. (Of course, on this theory of reference, it is also conceivable that orthodox Christians might be devil worshipers – on the impious assumption that it was the devil who is at end of the causal chains of our use of the word “Jesus.”)

What, however, if, as seems not wholly improbable, the devil does not exist. For the causal theory, this would be the case if tracing back the causal chains associated with the expression “the devil,” we always end up with imagination, intentional fictionalizing, or pure speculation. It would follow from this that neither the Yazidi, nor anyone else, ever see the devil, are possessed by the devil, tempted by the devil or injured by the devil. It does not, of course, follow that no one believes in the devil or worships the devil.

To understand belief or worship of non-existent things, we need to draw upon another theory of reference, associated with Russell, reference via definite descriptions. Belief in a non-existent devil would be belief in the existence of something meeting a certain description, the details of which would vary across religious traditions. The description that the Yazidi would give of Tawûsê Melek would have only the slightest overlap with the description Christians would give of the devil. There is one striking similarity between Tawûsê Melek and the Muslim Shytan, refusing to bow to Adam, but other than that the two do not seem at all alike. And the Yazidi God regarded the refusal to bow a demonstration of a proper fealty to the divine because Tawûsê Melek himself was an emanation of God whereas Adam was merely made from dust. Muslims regard Shytan's refusal to bow as the sin of pride.

Focusing on this single component in the Shytan and Tawûsê Melek stories, it was perhaps natural for Muslims of a non-scholarly and ungenerous caste of mind jump to the conclusion that the Yazidi are devil worshipers. It seems safe to conclude, however, that even if the devil exists, the expression “Tawûsê Melek” is very unlikely to trace back to the devil causally. If the devil does not exist, no fair minded examination of Yazidi theology would conclude that Tawûsê Melek is enough like the devil of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam to convict the Yazidi of devil worship.