Maddie

My primary source was actually Mantak Chia which probably isn't that reliable, but the practice predates him.

That's an interesting opinion but he never explicitly says that.

We don't know who wrote most of the books of the New testament lol

Revelation 12:9 "And the great dragon was cast out — that serpent of old called the Devil and Satan, who deceiveth the whole world. He was cast out onto the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." -KJV

Your question was about the snake being equated to Satan which is what my answer was in reference to.

In the Hebrew bible no. In the Christian New Testament yes.

The party that claims they want government out of people's lives basically took parents right to govern the healthcare of their child away.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/texas-supreme-court-upholds-ban-gender-affirming-care-trans-youths-rcna159496 This is unfortunate 😔 🏳️‍⚧️

If I had to take a guess based upon what I understand about human nature maybe one group switched them to distinguish themselves from the other? But like I said that is just a guess on my part.

I don't know, but that is a completely different topic lol.

I already stated those about the Christian version, the Jewish version, and the scholarly understanding of where the concept came from earlier in the post.

if the question had been "what is evil" then that would be a bit more encompassing.

No, "Satan" is the name of a very specific being in various (mostly) Abrahamic literature.

Again are we talking about "Satan" specifically, or just any perceived "evil spirit" in general?

Even the Jewish and Christian Satan are quite different. The Jewish version is more like the official tester designed by God to see if you are going to do right. Whereas in Christianity he rebelled against God and is in direct opposition to him.

The original question is "who or what is Satan". My question would be "who's Satan are we talking about"? Different traditions have different versions of Satan.

I noticed that even though the topic is about Satan, there is a lot of talk about witches. I thought I would point out that witchcraft and satanism are not the same thing.

That's because Christianity is dualistic and exclusive.

It's believed that "Satan" the adversary came about when the Jews were in exile in Persia and came into contact with Zoroastrianism with the dual good and evils gods.

Maybe it takes apple hormones? 🤭

That's very interesting! 🤔 Thank you

I think I might have vaguely heard about this before, but if you would like to elaborate I would be interested to hear about it.

This is a good question and I have actually put some thought into it and one of the things I thought of is that Thailand is almost all Buddhist and Buddhism unlike Abrahamic religions is not judgmental about things like being trans. So my assumption is that Thailand has about as many trans people as everywhere else but they are more free to come out and present as their true gender.

There is one from what I hear but a. I work a lot and don't really have time for that, and b. to be honest I'm not really that interested. I did choose to talk about it here, but these kinds of trans groups tend to talk about their gender all the time and I would rather not obsess over my gender and just live life.