Saint Germain explains the meaning of Satan, evil and the serpent in the garden of Eden:
The gross misunderstanding of what Satan and evil really mean is appalling. Many names have been given to this so called majestic presence of evil, but I assure you that that majestic presence is but a myth. The words “devil,” or “sheol,” both really came from the word “Satan”; and the root of this word, its true underlying meaning, is “to turn away from that which is inharmonious.” The human side of mankind, so to speak, which is never ready to face the truth of its own being, had to produce some concoction on which to lay the blame of its own creation. The word “Satan” came forth as a single explanation, telling humanity that they had better turn away from their own creations of inharmony, and this turning would enable them to find God ever active in their midst.
Then again there came a time when they wanted still something else to blame for their own wrong creations, and they brought the defenseless serpent into the garden. The serpent but represents a wrong use of the solar energy from the Great Central Sun within mankind. This solar energy is a most dynamic power and is always active.
Again let us repeat that mankind, having free will, are commanded to choose how they shall direct this energy. If they do not direct it consciously for some good, constructive purpose, it will act in some manner – often through the suggestion of the environment or individuals, because energy is always subject to suggestion. The great mass of mankind who have joined themselves to the orthodox idea, as we term it, have thought to cast upon God, a Being in the skies, their problems or creations. Yet they are foolish enough to think they can go on creating inharmony and not experience its discordant effects.
Thus we see how mankind has held over its own head this cloud of ignorance through the centuries. Human beings might have recognized their freedom as children of God and become conscious of the fact that they had free will. They would then have realized that they were the only creators of good and evil, so-called. They would have learned that they had the power to dissipate any wrong or inharmonious creation that they had ignorantly or willfully brought forth.
One of the reason why the idea of a devil was conceived, was that in every period or cycle of human embodiment, there have been those individuals who were very dynamic in the use of this energy; they were misdirecting it and producing this so-called evil. Besides this, they were creating such powerfully charged thought-forms that vicious, ignorant, disembodied intelligences seized upon them or, as it were, entered into these thought-forms. These forms were being energized by their creator who were still embodied, giving these vicious, ignorant entities tremendous power and activity. Before the time of Jesus, these entities were often able to appear visibly, often in very grotesque forms. Thus, this was the idea of a devil, which I assure you never was and never will exist outside of man’s own discordant creation.
SGP#04 – Ascended Master Instruction, Discourse V, p. 37
