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Dark Is Not Evil / Myths & Religion
aka: Mythology And Religion

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  • Chinese Mythology:
    • The Yin principle from Taoism. Meaning literally "darkness"/"shadow", not only is it vital for existence (and for medicine: a healthy mind and body need equal amounts of Yin and Yang), but it is arguably better than its light counterpart, Yang, as it symbolizes calmness and peace (as opposed to aggression and war).
    • Chinese superstitions also see bats as symbols of good fortune. (Mainly because the Chinese word for "bat" sounds identical to the Chinese word for "fortune").
    • Averted with owls, which are seen by the Chinese as harbingers of death.
    • The Chinese Zodiac has the Snake as one of it's animals. Obviously with the dubious reputation, Snakes get commonly thrown into the villain line-up. However for the Chinese, they are seen as very intelligent, intuitive and opportunistic (considering the Snake cheated in its race against the Horse.)
  • Ereshkigal is the ruler of the underworld in Mesopotamian Mythology, a place of darkness and dust. However, in Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld she weeps for the dead and feels sorry about their plights.
  • Many of the protagonists of the various branches of the Mabinogion are the Welsh gods of Darkness.
  • Classical Mythology:
    • Hades. Even though he is portrayed as a Satan analogue nowadays, in the original myths he was described as grim and stern, but not evil. Ancient Greeks were wary him more because of the natural fear of death and unknown, rather than him being particularly malicious. Hades was actually one of the few gods that didn't harm mankind directly, even proving willing to work with people, who ventured into his kingdom demanding something from him. He was also the giver of earthly wealth - both precious stones and metals and seeds. The worst thing he ever did was kidnap Persephone, which is rather mild compared to the exploits of his brothers, and he didn't even do it in some stories. Even then he and Persephone actually have a happy and loving marriage, which was very rare in the Greek pantheon.
    • Hecate (goddess of witches and ghosts) helped Demeter search for Persephone lending the former one of her torches, transformed the Trojan queen Hecuba into her dog after she drowned, and when Hera turned a slave-girl of Heracles' mother into a polecat for sabotaging her attempt to prevent Heracles' birth, Hecate adopted the polecatnote . She's also usually depicted with one or two burning torches up to being considered a bringer of light by some because of that, in Classical period was often described as wearing saffron robes (with some modern artwork even depicting her clad in white instead of black because of such association with light), her many associations include to protect children and women in childbirth, and is even considered to be a compassionate and much nicer deity to mortals than most others of the same mythos.
    • Pan swings between playing this trope straight and subverting it. He's a goat-like guy who is usually happy to play a pipe and dance in the woods at night, but then he also has a tendency to get moody and shriek at people who disturb him (this is where "panic" comes from - it's what people felt when they heard his cries). Still, he never hurt anyone.
  • Anubis, Nephthys, and Osiris from Egyptian Mythology are all righteous death-related deities. In terms of straight-up colour, Ancient Egypt associated darkness with the Nile valley's fertile black soil, and light with the harsh sun and lifeless desert sand.
  • Christianity
    • While it usually uses light as a metaphor for good and dark as a metaphor for evil, lots of cathedrals, especially old Gothic and Eastern Orthodox ones, are pretty grim, dark, and gloomy inside. Furthermore, priests and nuns tend to dress in black, but uphold God's principles.
    • Due to age and the windows not being cleaned, clean stained glass dims light but does not dull it. One of the major reasons people began to use stained glass was to make churches more aesthetically pleasing; In other words, they darken ordinary light precisely to make it and the sacred space it fills holier and more beautiful.
    • Cathedrals are also adorned with gargoyles, which look like token demons of the highest rank, but they are actually supposed to scare demons away from the building, thus protecting the people inside.
    • The Sedlec Ossuary is a church made of bones, yet it is just as sacred as any other church.
    • Dark is not always used as a metaphor for evil, as God is described as providing shade and night to comfort people in the Psalms, being the source of both light and darkness in Isaiah 45:7, as well as manifesting in darkness before He punishes evil by King David. He also puts Abram/Abraham to sleep and shrouds the surrounding area in darkness before performing the ritual to establish His covenant. In fact, God Himself is described in one Bible verse (1 Kings 8:12) as "dwelling in thick darkness".
    • While true angels look Lovecraftian enough to qualify as Eldritch Abominations, they're still wise and benevolent. However, while still held to the standard of being holier than humans, they're not perfect, as Job alludes to them being capable of committing follies.
    • In a more symbolic sense, consider that the most common symbol for Christianity, a cross, represents what was originally an instrument of torture, ultimate humiliation and execution. This gets even thicker if you're Catholic or Orthodox and grew up with crucifixes in your churches.
    • The Angel Of Death pops up in the Bible several times, and is often depicted as The Grim Reaper with skeletal wings, a sword, and no visible face, or a black, sword-wielding angel. Although his job is to kill people, he only harms God's enemies and does so very quickly.
    • Hell, as defined in The Bible, isn't Satan's base of operations. Rather, it's the place for eternal punishment against all who ever sinned against God, including Satan and his fellow demons. If anything, Hell would be ran by God Himself and His angels, not by demons as with the very common misconception of Hell — though it is a Place for Punishment rather than a non-evil being. Satan, in this analogy, would be the scariest inmate in a prison, but he's in no way the leader or king.
  • In Jewish mythology, Satan himself. The original Satan is not a "fallen angel," but a prosecuting angel. During the Days of Awe and on Yom Kippur (the Day of Repentance), his job is to prove to God that humanity is too sinful to continue to survive, while the humans' job is to acknowledge and repent of all their sins so that God would forgive them. Therefore Satan isn't actually evil — he is just doing his job. Although, as time went on, his character became embellished with stories of his deliberately tempting humans into sin to gather evidence against them, and over time he gained a reputation as a shady business dealer, which eventually got him conflated with the Devil. Many Jews today still see him as more of a prosecuting attorney in the Divine Court than a bad guy.
    • The Witch of Endor is a necromancer, a practitioner of dark arts forbidden by YHVH Himself. She's also portrayed as a kindly old woman, making sure King Saul has something to eat when the spirit she summons - the prophet Samuel, whom one assumes can be counted on for accuracy - prophecies his death.
  • Hinduism has several entities that are associated with destruction but are not directly evil; Kali is such an example, even if she is mostly demonized nowadays, much like Hades. Its last reforms spawned more confusion.
    • Shiva as well: although he's a god of destruction, he's also a god of fertility (this is why his symbol is the distinctly phallic lingam is his symbol. As Shiv and the Grasshopper (The Second Jungle Book) says:
      Shiv, who poured the harvest and made the winds to blow...
    • And Yama. Seriously he is the coolest guy ever, very neutral righteous. Also, he has made mankind, so show some respect! He was degraded from a king to a judge, isn't that bad enough for him already?
    • Even Rakshasa and other demons - who usually are pretty nasty, it's true - are capable of reforming, or at least working with gods and humans on occasion. What's more, their evil doesn't tend to be anything special compared to human evil. The scale may be grander, but in the end, they're brutish thugs and tyrannical conquerors, not destroyers of worlds or stealers of souls.
    • A similar case can be said about Buddhism's Wrathful Deities, many of them thought to be inspired by Hindu deities. The Fierce or Wrathful Deities are Buddhas taking the form of monstrous entities to protect practicioners. Yamantaka, for example, that looks like a multi-arm blood-soaked Buffalo and his name means "defier of death (Yama)".
  • In the Lusitanian Mythology:
    • Ataegina, who presided over Spring, night, and seasonality. Her name may be derived from an etymological root for "night".
    • Endovelicus was the god of the Underworld and his name may be derived from a proto-Basque root for "black". That said, he wasn't really favoured until Roman times.
  • Santa Muerte. Almost unbelievable since she's considered a Catholic saint by a community in Mexico. True, Catholicism as a whole does not accept her canonically, but enough venerate her that the movement is a de facto religious sect, more popular precisely because she feels more relatable than the Catholic saints to most people (and spiting evangelical missionaries helps). Subverted in that a few of her followers use her to impose death on their enemies, though this is negligible minority when the vast majority simply pray for her for protection against criminals and corrupt officials, protection for family, protection for LGBT individuals and love. She seems to be derived from pre-colonial death gods like Mictecacihuatl, who is the joyous guardian of the dead.
  • The Minoan Snake Goddess represents fertility and eternal life, as reflected by her serpentine imagery. She also averts the Reptiles Are Abhorrent and Snakes Are Sinister tropes.
  • In Celtic Mythology, the children of the god of death were believed to have come from the underworld to claim this one, driving out the Tuatha De Danaan in the process. They were also the first humans.
    • The terms Seelie and Unseelie divide the Fey into two sides, one of summer and light, one of winter and darkness. But the Seelie might be pranksters who are happy tormenting people, while the Unseelie may view favorite people as pets to protect from harm.
  • Many occult members who worship Satan believe that the devil and his demons do not necessarily represent evil.
    • Modern Satanism simply tries to free people from the power of symbols - to perceive that a dark room doesn't contain any more evil than a well-lit one and that a halo doesn't make a creature more good than horns. Classic demon-summoning occultists in turn were almost always under the opinion that they were using demons with God's power to do God's work, a belief-system based on the Biblical account under which God gave King Solomon the power over all demons to do good with.
    • Do notice, however, that Lucifer means "light bringer", although many experts in theology claim that he is a different entity from Satan. Also, some demons like Moloch were originally solar deities before Christianity took over.
  • In Lakota mythology, darkness is simply that which is irrational, contrasting to the light of reason. Inktomi is the embodiment of darkness in this sense, but he occasionally does heroic things, albeit always through trickery and deception.
  • Merlin, who technically was a half-demon and considered a good magic-user in a time when everything that people considered magic was associated with Satan.
  • In Islam, quite a lot of emphasis is put on the night. One ayah even describes the night as a soothing blanket. Israa al-Miraaj was a journey that took place during the night, from Mecca to Jerusalem to the seventh heaven. Qiyam al-Layl is a night prayer, and is the optional prayer with the most rewards. Similarly, Laylat al-Qadr ("Night of Power") is a night during the last third of Ramadan in which, if one prays during this night, it is better than if they had prayed for 1000 months. In the Islamic calendar, sundown marks the beginning of a new day, and not sunrise. During Ramadan, no food or water can be consumed by daylight; eating and drinking is only allowed at night. The association between the night and good things come naturally to desert people, as the daytime is a scorching-hot torture, but the night brings cool winds.
  • Hel from Norse Mythology. She is the ruler of Helheim and Niflheim, and she takes care of the souls of those who died outside of combat, most notably Baldr. These lands are described as cold; filled with fog and dark.
  • Demons/daemons were not necessarily considered evil until around maybe as late as a thousand years ago. Before then, the general idea was that they were just fear-and-awe-inspiring beings of greater power than ordinary men could imagine, essentially somewhere between demi-gods and gods in power and often in the service of gods and other divine beings. Summoning a demon to perform a task was, at a basic level, no different than calling for a servant the king had given you authority over to ask them to do you a favor. Also, at one time, angels and demons were both daemons, the only distinction being that some were good and some were bad.
  • In Filipino Mythology monsters are usually Always Chaotic Evil, but there are exceptions; The Kapre, for example, is a sasquatch like creature that usually only reveals itself to people because it wants to be their friend (or more) and will follow them throughout life afterward, implicitly protecting the people they like. The Alan, meanwhile, is a deformed, mischievous bird-like creature with backwards facing hands and feet, that steals drops of menstrual blood, miscarried fetuses, afterbirth and other reproductive waste... and turns them into human babies that they raise lovingly as their own.
  • Played with by the black dogs of British folklore. On one hand a lot of them are supposedly malevolent but just as many are neutral or even benevolent. All three varieties are usually described as being extremely large, powerfully built dogs with red eyes and shaggy black fur (some accounts state that the fur is actually black in the 'absorbs all light' sense rather than normal glossy black dog fur) Additionally most of the supposed real-life sightings involve the black dog in question either ignoring the human present altogether, being friendly, or at least non-aggressive. Even the more hostile encounters usually only involve someone getting a bad fright and/or being chased for a bit.
  • Voudoun has Baron Samedi, a death loa who dresses in black tails and top hat and has a Skull for a Head. But he's friendly and fun-loving, and the religion's practitioners frequently ask him for intercession in grievous injuries and illnesses.
  • Japanese folklore:
    • The Haradashi, a lesser known Youkai, is a strange being that has a face on its belly and looks pretty monstrous, but is actually a friendly creature that seeks out to cheer up lonely and sad people, and will perform a hilarious belly dance to brighten your day if you offer it some sake.
    • Originally, Yuki-Onna were depicted as nothing more than evil, deceitful snow spirits. However, as their popularity grew, in more modern retellings these beautiful women gained a demure, romantic nature. Now instead of purposely leading strangers to their doom, Yuki-Onna are now more likely to become your lovely snow waifu, longing to be loved.
  • Scorpio of the Western Zodiac inherit perhaps the darkest Zodiac Sign. But among their more positive traits are determination, bravery, loyalty and honesty. Though it's also quite true for actual scorpions, who'd prefer snuggling under a rock in the shade, than attacking humans... such lovely creatures.
  • Baphomet as is currently most pictured (a winged, satyr-like, entity with a goat's head and a torch between the horns) is actually a symbol of oneness and a dualistic figure of binary opposites, totally unrelated to Satan despite its looks.

Alternative Title(s): Mythology And Religion

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