The Devourer

   The idea of a "devourer" is not overly important to Western Metaphysics or religion. The term "devourer" as something that has an agency appears only once in Malachai. Malachai says that God will protect the Hebrews from "the devourer". Essentially, God promises to "rebuke the devourer" and protect mankind.

And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts.

Basically, this is an offer of protection against pestilence. So, another clean sweep like the great flood would never occur even though the Hebrews had continually violated their covenant with God. So, Western people inherit a tradition in which they have a divine insurance policy against a second cataclysm. This is the only sense we have that the devouring principle is demonic. 

Why? Classical representations of punishment are more likely to include consumption than later examples of Christian punishment. Proserpina, Hades, and Cerberus are three examples of soul-consuming gods. So, with the rediscovery of the Classical world, you get Bosch's depictions of souls being eaten by demons.

The idea of becoming food is unpleasant. It makes us see ourselves as objects in one of the most unpleasant ways. Hence, why it remains a popular motif of horror. There is something primally revolting about one human subjecting another to consumption. So, when we talk about the devourer in the Western tradition, we're only talking about a punisher or an agency that God has promised to protect us from.

Culturally, this is a blind spot. We have a hand on our shoulder telling us everything is going to be okay, regardless of our conduct, regardless of whether or not the environment can sustain our conduct. 

Now, just because I don't believe the biblical narrative of reality, it doesn't mean I don't feel like it's true. And it certainly doesn't mean that it's not more comforting to believe it's true. So, we can justify the comfort, perhaps using better logic and the feeling persists if not the rationale. The feeling may not be entirely under your control, and let's face it, our lives are stressful. We'll defer non-immediate stress as a matter of course.

Nonetheless, this figure of the Devourer or Satan-as-Devourer is not fully realized in Western reckoning as it has become apparent. Systems of indefinite growth aren't going to work in a finite environment. Not unless we think about "growth" differently. Such a simple thing could radically alter our intentions. But it's naive to think that the work is that easy or that the process would be that simple. Ultimately, the motion of the whole is processional and like a Newtonian object, will continue in whatever direction it's headed unless acted on by a greater force. 

Creating a devourer image that works with modern politics

The fear with a thing like this is that you're either fat shaming, which we really don't want, or conditioning some kind of eating disorder by associating consumption with extinction. For that reason, I want to steer clear of any depictions of human food with the devourer.

So, here are some selected images of the Devourer that I made with the help of Stable Diffusion. For input, I relied heavily on "The Devourer" but added elements like "teeth", "gnashing", "chewing" for effect. In each case, there's only one devourer figure in the image which can be readily identified. I chose a variety of artists for this including Salvador Dali, Picasso, Tamara de Lempicka, Odilon Redon, and of course, Bosch. We also wove in Norman Rockwell, Grant Wood, and Andrew Wyeth. 

The culled results are below:

Here, the devourer stands separate and above, hovering over a barren landscape.

Here, the devourer menaces a taco-shaped enclosure where unsuspecting humans gather.

Here, the devourer has mostly human features except for its mouth

.

Here, the devourer has four mouths.

The devourer is depicted with mostly human features and inhuman mouth.

The devourer is a monolith consuming another monolith.

The devourer hearkens back to Dali's The Face of War. Note their expressions.

Devourer as a kind of geophysical entity—part of the landscape.

A la Hans Memling, devourer has face in stomach.

The devourer as a supplement for God.

With these images, I wanted to give the sense that the devourer was something that stood in place (alternatively) for either man or god, degraded images of either. It is definitely a threat, it is definitely a part of us, and it definitely colors our motivations. Ultimately, the Devourer is our psychic addiction and fear of change that is keeping us on a path toward our own extinction. 

This is a metaphor I'd like to explore further.