Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

118 Humor
stopped, and threatened to destroy the three
worlds before the appointed time of the apocalypse.
Brahma therefore transformed the fire into a
fire-breathing mare. The mare’s fire, which is inextinguishable,
is held in check until the endtime by
her residence at the bottom of the ocean.
While consuming the three worlds of Hindu
cosmology, first with fire and then with water,
Shiva dances the Tandava dance in his familiar
form as Nataraja, “Lord of the Dance.” In the
words of the Kurma Purana:
When all the gods are consumed by fire, the
mountain-born goddess Parvati [Shiva’s
consort] stands alone [and] the supreme lord
looks at the goddess as he dances the Tandava
dance. This goddess of supernal felicity in
turn drinks in the nectar of the dance of her
husband while she herself, abiding in Yoga,
enters the body of the trident-wielding god.
Quitting his Tandava dance as he pleases, the
blessed Pinaka-bearer [Shiva] whose nature is
light burns up the orb of the egg of Brahma
[i.e., the manifested cosmos]. Then, while the
Gods Brahma, Vishnu and the Pinaka-bearer
alone remain, the earth, with all her
properties, dissolves into the waters. (Dimmitt
and van Buitenen 1978, 44)
Finally, the air fills with great clouds that rain
down a ferocious deluge until the world perishes
in watery darkness. To cite Heinrich Zimmer’s
evocative description from his classic Myths and
Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, “The ultimate
elements melt into the undifferentiated fluid
out of which they once arose. The moon, the
stars, dissolve. The mounting tide becomes a
limitless sheet of water. This is the interval of a
night of Brahma” (Zimmer 1946, 3). The universe
is reabsorbed into the ultimate divinity (Vishnu
in the puranic texts), who withdraws into inactivity.
The deity’s static state is traditionally symbolized
by the image of Vishnu asleep on the coils of
a giant serpent, who floats like a raft on the
surface of the primordial waters. At the beginning
of the next “day,” Brahma then emerges from a
lotus flower that sprouts from Vishnu’s navel and
recreates the cosmos.
See also Asuras; Indo-Europeans
For Further Reading:
Basham, Arthur L. The Origins and Developments of
Classical Hinduism. Boston, MA: Beacon Press,
1989.
Dimmitt, Cornelia, and J. A. B. van Buitenen.
Classical Hindu Mythology: A Reader in the
Sanskrit Puranas. Philadelphia, PA: Temple
University Press, 1978.
Flood, Gavin. An Introduction to Hinduism.
London: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Kinsley, David R. Hinduism: A Cultural Perspective.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993.
Klostermaier, Klaus K. A Survey of Hinduism.
Albany: State University of New York Press,
1989.
Zimmer, Heinrich. Myths and Symbols in Indian Art
and Civilization. New York: Bollingen, 1946.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974.
———. Philosophies of India. New York: Bollingen,
1951. New York: Macmillan, 1987.
Humor
The infernal is a seemingly endless source of
humor. Although it may at first strike one as odd
that such a dark subject should so often be a topic
of levity, it is quite common for human beings to
joke about the matters that cause us the most
anxiety. This is why, to take some alternate examples,
there is so much humor about sex, religion,
politics, and lawyers.
Sometimes anxiety-producing topics are
blended together. In one popular joke, for example,
St. Peter wakes up one morning, looks down the
hill toward hell, and notices that the fence separating
the two realms has been moved uphill several
hundred yards. Upset, he walks downhill, knocks
on the door of hell, and demands to speak with the
Devil. When Satan comes out, he explains that he
had decided to move the fence because, after all,
heaven is receiving only a very few new residents,
while people are standing in line to get into hell. St.
Peter, however, refuses to accept this line of reasoning,
pointing out to the Prince of Darkness that
altering the boundary is against the rules. The
exchange then heats up. Finally, with the Devil still
refusing to budge, St. Peter storms out the door,
exclaiming, “O.K. then! I’ll see you in court!”
Whereupon Satan laughs and retorts, “Where are
you going to find a lawyer!”—implying, of course,