Catechetical Lesson on Demonic Exploitation of Idols to Sanctified Use of Images in Christ (Part 1)

 

LAE Exposition of Demonic Idolatry from 'Cave of Treasures'

And Terah was seventy-five years old when he begat Abraham. And in the days of Terah, in his ninetieth year, sorcery appeared on the earth in the city of Aôr (Ur), which Horon, the son of `Abhâr, built. Now, there was in the city a certain man who was very rich, and he died at that time.

And his son made an image of him in gold [Fol. 23b, col. 2], and set it up upon his grave, and he appointed there a young man to keep guard over it. And Satan went and took up his abode in that image, and he spake to that youth (i.e. the son of the rich man) after the manner of his father.

And thieves went into [his house], and took everything that the youth possessed, and he went out to the tomb of his father weeping. And Satan spake unto him, saying, "Weep not in my presence, but go and fetch thy little son, and slay him here as a sacrifice to me, and forthwith everything which thou hast lost shall be returned to me here." 

And straightway the youth did as Satan told him, and he slew his son, and bathed in his blood. And Satan went forth immediately from that image [of gold], and entered into the youth, and taught him sorcery, and enchantments, and divination, and the lore of the Chaldeans, and [how to tell] fortunes, and [how to forecast] events, and [how to foretell] destinies. And behold, from that time the children of men began to sacrifice their sons to devils and to worship idols, for the devils entered into the images, and took up their abodes therein.

[NOTES.--According to the Book of Adam (iii. 24), the young man who ministered to the image had to sweep the ground around it, and to pour out water before it, and to burn incense. 

Idol - Latria = idol service , serving the idol as a living being. 

(Insert the Ganesha Milk Drinking Idol phenomena video)   

Ganesha Milk Miracle The ‘milk miracle’ that brought India to a standstill - BBC News

From this extract of Cave of Treasures , let us examine all closest LXX Old Testament parallels and also the closest New Testament references or allusions to this kind of idolatry.

1. Closest LXX / Old Testament Parallels

1. Demons inhabiting idols; sacrifice to demons through idols

• Psalm 105(106):37 LXX – “καὶ ἔθυσαν τοὺς υἱοὺς αὐτῶν καὶ τὰς θυγατέρας αὐτῶν τοῖς δαιμονίοις” (“They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons”).

• Deuteronomy 32:17 LXX – “ἔθυσαν δαιμονίοις καὶ οὐ θεῷ, θεοῖς οἷς οὐκ ᾔδεισαν” (“They sacrificed to demons and not to God, to gods they did not know”).

These verses give the closest verbal and conceptual match to “from that time the children of men began to sacrifice their sons to devils … for the devils entered into the images.”

2. Child sacrifice linked with idolatry

• Leviticus 18:21; 20:2–5 – prohibition of making children “pass through the fire” to Molech, directly linked to profaning God’s name and playing the harlot with idols.

• Deuteronomy 12:31; 18:10 – “they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods”; “there shall not be found among you one who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire, or practices divination… or sorcery.”

• 2 Kings 16:3; 21:6; 2 Chronicles 33:6 – kings Ahaz and Manasseh “made his son pass through the fire,” “practiced sorcery and divination,” “did much evil,” combining child sacrifice and occult practices.

• Jeremiah 7:31; 19:5; 32:35; Ezekiel 16:20–21; 20:31; 23:37 – children sacrificed in Topheth/Ben‑Hinnom “to Baal,” “to Molech,” described as “My children” given to idols.

These passages parallel both the human‑child sacrifice and the explicit demonology of the Cave narrative.[sacred-texts +2]

3. Sorcery, divination, Chaldean lore

• Deuteronomy 18:10–12 – bans “one who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire, one who practices divination, a soothsayer, an augur, a sorcerer… or one who consults the dead,” calling these abominations tied to the nations’ cults.

• 2 Kings 21:6; 2 Chronicles 33:6 – Manasseh “practiced soothsaying, used witchcraft, and consulted spiritists and mediums” in the same context as child sacrifice.[bible-knowledge +2]

• Isaiah 47:9–15 – against Babylon and its “sorceries” and “many enchantments,” very close to the Cave’s attribution of sorcery and divination to Chaldean lore.

4. Idols as inhabited by demons / powerless objects

The specific mechanism “devils entered into the images, and took up their abodes therein” is synthetic, but it combines:

• Psalm 95(96):5 LXX – “πάντες οἱ θεοὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν δαιμόνια” (“all the gods of the nations are demons”).

• Prophetic polemic about idols as “nothing,” “no gods,” yet associated with demonic powers (e.g., Isa 44; Jer 10; Baruch 6), which later Second Temple and Christian interpretation explicitly reads as demonic.

2. Closest New Testament Parallels and Allusions

1. Sacrifice to demons / idols

• 1 Corinthians 10:19–21 – “what pagans sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; and I do not want you to become partners with demons.” This is a direct NT doctrinal hinge for the Cave’s claim that sacrifice before images is really sacrifice to devils.[openbible +1]

• Revelation 9:20 – those who survive the plagues “did not repent… from worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk.” This is extremely close to your passage: worship of idols made of precious material, explicitly identified with demon‑worship.

2. Child murder and demonic/dragonic power

The NT does not narrate child sacrifice in the same cultic form, but Herod’s slaughter of the infants in Matthew 2:16–18 is often read typologically as a new Pharaoh/Molech figure under satanic influence. Combined with 1 Corinthians 10 and Revelation 9, it belongs in the same orbit of murderous power behind worldly rulers and cults.[biblehub]

3. Sorcery, divination, “lore” from evil spirits

• Acts 8:9–11 (Simon Magus), Acts 13:6–10 (Elymas the magician), Acts 16:16–18 (slave girl with a “spirit of divination” used for profit) – sorcery and divination linked explicitly with evil spirits.[bible-knowledge]

• Galatians 5:20 – “φαρμακεία” (sorcery) listed among the “works of the flesh.”[bible-knowledge]

• Revelation 9:21; 18:23; 21:8; 22:15 – “sorceries” (φαρμακεῖαι) cited as sins that continue under judgment and exclude from the New Jerusalem.[bible-knowledge]

These mirror the Cave’s pattern: demonic instruction in sorcery and enchantments accompanying idolatry and sacrifice.[wisdomlib +2]

4. Demons behind idols / images

• 1 Corinthians 8:4–6 and 10:19–21 together – idols are “nothing,” but participation in idol‑sacrifice opens communion with demons; the ontology of the object is “nothing,” the spiritual reality is demonic.

• Revelation 13–14 – worship of the beast and its image is worship of the dragon (Satan); an image animated to speak (Rev 13:14–15) is particularly close to an “inhabited” idol.

5. Broader demonology of idolatry

• Romans 1:21–25 – exchange of the glory of the incorruptible God “for an image in the likeness of corruptible man and birds and four‑footed animals and creeping things,” leading to moral collapse.

Although demons are not named, this is the classic NT description of the “fall” into idol‑worship and its cascading corruption, conceptually parallel to your Cave passage’s primal narrative of idolatry, sorcery, and child sacrifice.

Taken together, the closest LXX parallels are Deut 32:17; Ps 105(106):37; the child‑sacrifice texts in Leviticus, Kings, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel; and Deut 18:10–12 on sorcery. The closest NT parallels and allusions are 1 Cor 10:19–21; Rev 9:20; Rev 13–14; Acts 8, 13, 16 on sorcery; and Rom 1:21–25 as the theological backdrop for a “primeval” fall into demonically charged idolatry.

The Pattern of Demonization 

There is a pattern of demonic activity in LXX and LAE 

1. Demons Inhabit material creation (animate and inanimate) and take up their abode i.e. talking snakes / statues 

2. Demonic impersonation to develop a relationship with intended victim .   

3. Instigation of conversation with misleading intent and misdirection. 

4. Instigation to act / sin. Thereby giving demons rights to possess the victim. Hence why Jesus says “my burden is easy and my yoke is light”, since demons demand painful, often bloody sacrifice, which enslaves the victim in more sin.

The Pattern of Regeneration 

5.  Trinitarian Triple Baptism (Chrismation and Eucharist) in holy water according to revelation of Christ, breaks the demonic yoke, frees the victim , bestows the Holy Spirit which regenerates the soul from demonic slavery, nourishes the starving and sets aright all that had been stolen through demonization.

We are identifying a genuinely coherent, biblical–apocryphal pattern: the way demonic activity is described in the LXX, in Second Temple material like LAE, and then in the New Testament’s soteriology and sacramental praxis.

In Genesis 3 the serpent functions as a bodily creature *inhabited* or used by a hostile power, a pattern echoed in the way the Cave of Treasures and related traditions describe demons taking up residence in statues and images. This is not a modern “psychological” reading but a consistent ancient pattern: demons act through material creation, animate or inanimate, so that the talking serpent and the animated idol are parallel modes of demonic embodiment. 

From there, the narrative almost always proceeds by demonic impersonation and relationship‑building—Satan speaking “as if” the father in the idol, the serpent speaking as a would‑be spiritual guide to Eve—before moving to misdirection through conversation: half‑truths, reframing God’s commands, and promises of benefit that hide mortal danger.

Once the relationship and the false discourse are in place, the demons press for an act: eating the forbidden fruit; performing an illicit sacrifice; engaging in occult practices. That act gives them a foothold—a “right” in the moral/spiritual order—to deepen their hold, which is why scriptural and patristic tradition speak so strongly of idolatry, sorcery, and bloodshed as opening doors to deeper bondage. Against this background, Christ’s word that his “yoke is easy” and his “burden is light” (Matt 11:28–30) stands in deliberate contrast to the demonic yoke, which exacts ever more painful and bloody sacrifices in return for deceptive promises.

In the New Testament, Jesus’ ministry is marked by direct confrontation with demons who *already* possess and torment people, and his exorcisms signal the arrival of a stronger king who plunders the “strong man’s house” and ends that bondage. Baptism, in apostolic and patristic understanding, is not merely symbolic but an objective liberation: a dying and rising with Christ that transfers a person from the dominion of darkness to the kingdom of the Son, a reality the traditional exorcisms and renunciations in the baptismal liturgy make explicit. Triple immersion into the death and Resurrection of the Trinity, sealed with chrism and nourished by the Eucharist, is exactly the inverse of the demonic pattern: instead of entering into covenant with demons through bloody acts before idols, the catechumen renounces Satan, is exorcised, and is bound to Christ, receiving the Holy Spirit who regenerates the soul, heals what was damaged, and “sets aright” what sin and demonization had disordered.

Next got to Part 2 to learn the difference between an IDOL and an ICON...