8 : 28 And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gadarenes, there met him two possessed with demons, coming forth out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man could pass by that way.
8 : 29 And behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time?
8 : 30 Now there was afar off from them a herd of many swine feeding.
8 : 31 And the demons besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, send us away into the herd of swine.
8 : 32 And he said unto them, Go. And they came out, and went into the swine: and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep into the sea, and perished in the waters.
-- Matthew 8, America Standard Version

Perspectives

Kenneth Grant has elaborated upon this in his Nightside of Eden …"The Genii of the 22 Scales of the Serpent and of the Qliphoth," speaking of "the Tunnels of Set", "a network of dream cells in the subconscious mind", the "backside" of the Tree of Life: the 'Nightside' of consciousness as opposed to "Dayside" reality. Thus we begin to integrate these archaic atavisms, the world of the Nightside of the Tree, world of the Shadow, with emerging adumbrations of whom or what we as humans might become … (1)

In the past, the [Roman Church believed] that every newborn was possessed by an indwelling demon because of its intimate contact with its mother's birth canal. The church routinely exorcised each newborn at the time of baptism with the following ritual:
"I exorcise you unclean spirit in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Come out and leave this servant of God [infant's name]. Accursed and damned spirit, hear the command of God himself, he who walked upon the sea and extended his right hand to Peter as he was sinking. Therefore, accursed devil, acknowledge your condemnation... and depart from this servant of God [infant's name]...Never dare, accursed devil, to violate the sign of the holy cross which we place upon his/her forehead. Through Christ our Lord."
"Lesser" exorcisms at baptisms, at blessings of holy water, blessings of a home or other location etc. are still performed. (2)

There can be little doubt that the predominant view of the world, indeed the entirety of the universe, in the West during the last 2000 years can be charecterized as dualistic, to one degree or another. This attitude had some foundation in Post-exihilic (2nd Temple) Judaism but was always tempered by the recognition that Monotheism, as it developed, required at least permission, or allowance, by God as can be seen in the somewhat puzzling Book of Job*. The "Problem of Evil" is one of the fundamental philosophical questions and the answer that each questioner, be it an individual or theological school, will color and limit the possible answers to any questions that arise thereafter. Therefore, it is a question that must be asked, whether or not we are comfortable with the possbile answers that humanity has so far posited to resolve the issue.

In the Chrisitan West,
(t)he fifth century theologian Augustine of Hippo mounted what has become one of the most popular defences of the existence of God against the Epicurean paradox. He maintained that evil was only privatio boni, or a privation of good. An evil thing can only be referred to as a negative form of a good thing, such as discord, injustice, and loss of life or liberty. If a being is not totally pure, evil will fill in any gaps in that being's purity. This is commonly called the Contrast Theodicy — that evil only exists as a "contrast" with good. However, the Contrast Theodicy relies on a metaphysical view of morality which few people, even theologians, agree with (that good and evil are not moral judgments). In On Free Choice of the Will, Augustine also argued that Epicurus had ignored the potential benefits of suffering in the world. However, it is pointed out that an omnipotent God could give the world any benefits derived from suffering without those in the world having to suffer. -- Wikipedia, "Problem of Evil"

The Augustinian answer is largely disgarded in the modern world and this has resulted in the limiting of Evil to a moralistic "choice" pair. While this is not wholly without its use, we are after all continually confronted with choices and it is natural, even required for the existence of any kind of structured society, that the acceptable choices in any given situation be codified, it does not offer much in the way of understanding the nature of existence. It provides nothing more than a child's view of the world, where "right and wrong" are merely the compliance (or not) with the edicts of his parents, simply replacing "Mommy" with God. This is also the root of the slavering fundamentalists who describe with glee the torments of Hell for those who don't do what "God" wants, though there is always the subtext of thier own recognition that Hell is thier preferred home as they no doubt sense thier Hylic state and understand, subconsciously, that they are Spiritually dead. Hell would be horrible, but it would be preferable to non-existence (the Second Death)(3) as, Dante not withstanding, there would at least be hope for salvation.

In any case, this is not what concerns us here. While it is certainly true that moral catagories are naturally assigned to Nature, the source of this "instinct" is the reuslt of evolution and, therefore, biology. The birth of a child is of no import to the universe at large and neither is the death of one. Yet such great joy at a birth is exceeded only in the sorrow of the (untimely) death of a baby or young child. These emotions occur spontaneously and are a part of the survival instinct as much as "fight-or-flight" behavior. While we do accept the natural order of things to some extent, death being the so-called "great equalizer", it is also true that much of 'civilization' is a result of the awareness of death and the attempt to, if not defeat it, then at least hold it at bay. It s certinly possible to construct an argument for the "ultimate" goodness of death, provided it is in relation to a greater cosmology in which it is contextualized in the greater scheme, but this also is not our concern.

As the quote from Linda Falorio points out, an understanding of Evil, or rather, of the Negative aspects of the Ontological continuum, should lead us to recognize these forces as inherant in the structure of the universe. In fact this is one of the primary tasks of any theology; for the understanding of the forces of destruction, decay and death, which is to say, entropy, is a foundaton stone in any universal philosophy. As discussed, the primary view of the West is, implicitly at any rate, the assumption of Error in the formation or evolution of the universe which gave birth to Evil. This, however, is contrary to many of the ancient Mythologies such as the Sumerian which holds that the Negative aspects of existence are in fact the older or primal orders of reality. This position is reiterated in many esoteric systems, as we shall see. The rejection of this doctrine, I would argue, is the result of the democritization of theology which occured in the early Christian period, as the multitude found this position, along with others such as initiation and Spiritual progress, unpalatable and forced the Church to accept the doctrine of instant salvation, which has been taken to its logically absurd extreme in the protestant "theologies" of post reformation Europe. The quote from Religious Tolerannce.org demonstrates that "evil" was seen as something that could be washed away or destroyed like refuse, which no doubt has played a part in the hideous atrocities that have been perpetrated in Europe since the Middle Ages. Unable to resolve the issue, the European West has adopted an attitude toward religion that is, at best, bizarre.

We shall, therefore, attempt to set the record straight and consider the implications of the universe and our relation to it if we accept, against the grain, so to speak, that what we call Evil (in the Existential sense) is an inherant and fundamental part of the universe. As the Christianity of the contemorary church has rejected this in favor of infantile 'literalism' we will, as mentioned, turn to the streams of the esoteric which may be called, as they are popularly if not accuratly, the Gnosis.