The Chocolate-Covered Satan
or, The Mirrors of Paradise in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory
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A Bevy of Beelzebubs
He has so many names. Scratch, Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Morningstar, Son of the Dawn, Prince of Darkness, Father of Lies, Lord of Hell, master tempter, tester of the faithful, Screwtape’s Boss. Forget what you might have heard in your church, or on TV. The devil isn’t a straightforward guy (I should know, he made me write this post).1 Satan is a complicated figure in Western history—so complicated that he’s not even a single character.
He’s three.
Since our strange Satanic Trinity utterly saturates our collective consciousness, including our secular understandings of both heroism and evil, perhaps I should do a quick tour of these odd pseudo-deities before I get to the chocolate.
The Corrupter
According to the official (Catholic) story, Satan is a fallen angel who goes by the name Lucifer when he’s at home (or starring in his own TV show). He was the most beautiful and honored of the angels, God’s top dog and always the teacher’s pet. But, for one reason or another (unfettered lust for glory, probably), he decided that the universe would be infinitely better if he was running the show, so he sweet-talked almost half of the Heavenly Host into joining him in leading a coup against God.2
As punishment for his impudence, God hurled him out of heaven. Unfortunately, Lucifer had already been named as the custodian of Earth, and God isn’t the kind of boss who takes “I got stuck in Hell, so I can’t come in to work today” as a valid excuse, so Lucifer still had the Earth as his domain. He set about corrupting it in the way that a new manager might sabotage all the projects-in-progress when he takes the job, because he doesn’t want his department producing anything that doesn’t have his personal stamp on it.
Following this logic, Lucifer proceeded to take a steaming dump all over the Earth by corrupting everything and tempting everyone. He introduced Evil into the world, but the joke was on him, because he somehow didn’t believe that God might be using him as a pawn (indeed, he is thusly used in the Biblical book of Job). So, eventually, Lucifer is destined to get tossed into the trash like a toy of a petulant child-god who’s lost interest in it the day after Christmas morning.3
Where the history of mythology is concerned, this version of the Satan tradition is a marriage between the Zoroastrian Ahriman (the equal-and-opposite Evil God to the Good God Ahura Mazda) and the Hebrew tradition of Satan as a sort of lesser-god who is tasked with corrupting and tempting mankind for the purpose of testing their faith.4
In the popular arts, Satan-the-Corrupter is the archetype at the heart of mid-20th-century film epics such as Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, The Omen films, and more recent projects such as The Ninth Gate, Constantine, End of Days, and The Exorcism of Emily Rose.
The Ultimate Rebel
In the seventeenth century, English poet John Milton turned his hand towards developing a Protestant Enlightenment devil. In his epic poem Paradise Lost, Milton projects the struggles of the Enlightenment and the Reformation’s reformulation of virtue onto the life of Satan. While the plot largely follows the official Catholic line, Satan’s characterization in this version presents a more ambiguous figure—his hubris leads him to become a proto-Protestant, rejecting God’s orthodoxy on the grounds of individual conscience, famously declaring “It is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”
This ambiguous, tragic, emotionally needy, and haughty character is the version of Satan we see in more sophisticated fare such as The Devil’s Advocate and more schlocky fare such as TV’s Lucifer, itself based on The Sandman comic series which develops its lore based primarily on a strange marriage between Paradise Lost and Scientology’s secret lore.5
A more robust, heroic, and less vulnerable version of the Miltonic Satan is the titular head of Anton LeVey’s Church of Satan and its various offshoots.
The Prophet and Prosecutor
Alongside these two traditions, there is a third tradition that stretches back into antiquity, at least as far as the oldest book in the Bible:
The epic poem of Job.
In this work, Satan is revealed to be Yahweh’s attack dog and prosecutor. He appears in this role in the Synoptic Gospels as well, tempting Jesus in a story that proves Jesus’s un-corruptibility (and, thus, his worthiness for the role of Messiah).
This version is where the name “Satan” comes from—שָׂטָן, Hebrew for “The Accuser” or “The Adversary.” Crucially for understanding this Satan, he is the Accuser and Adversary of Man, not of God.
English playwright Christopher Marlowe and German master Johann Goethe both updated this version of Satan for the modern era with their versions of the tale of Faust, a man who sells his soul to the devil’s representative Mephistopheles in exchange for having the devil’s powers at his disposal during his lifetime. In the end, Faust comes to ruin after achieving worldly greatness.
While Faust is based on a German legend wrapped around a real historical figure, the Faustian Bargain as a plot device is prefigured often in ancient myth, including twice in The Bible—first in the temptation of Eve in Genesis, and then in the testing of Solomon by Yahweh.
In the first tale, The Serpent (usually, but not always, seen as Satan) offers Eve the knowledge of Good and Evil that is reserved to the gods. She accepts the offer, and receives what was promised, but at the (unadvertised) cost of paradise.
In the second tale, King Solomon is given an offer (this time by Yahweh) of any gift he could ask for. Eschewing wealth, power, long life, revenge, and fame, he instead opts for wisdom, which pleases Yahweh. Yahweh then endows him with all the other earthly gifts, which, in the end, corrupt Solomon’s legacy and doom his people to become enemies of God (Solomon’s foreign wives are blamed for the proliferation of polytheism in the wake of the Solomonic golden age).
Dr. Faust, and the Prophetic Satan with whom he dealt, are the archetypal heads of the Faustian Age6—that is, the Age of Enlightenment7 and following—where Man first became the measure of all things. Science, Humanism, technological revolution, the conquest of the earth and the prospective conquest of the cosmos are its fruit, as are the atrocities that issued forth from those who embraced the Faustian Spirit without paying heed to the Prophetic Satan (more on this in a moment).
The Prophetic Satan shows Man who he is by granting him the desires of his heart, for good or ill. This Satan’s job is to peel back the lies that humans wrap themselves in until they stand naked before the cosmic mirror, whether that mirror is the Light of God, the devastating power of natural consequences, or the horror of unflinching self-knowledge. The Prophetic Satan exposes the truth, and is happy to do so at the expense of everything else in the world—even your mortal soul.
This Satan makes regular appearances in Southern Gothic horror (such as tales from The Twilight Zone or the Ray Bradbury novel Something Wicked This Way Comes), and is especially popular in American literature and legend. This is the Satan we recognize intuitively when he shows up in stories giving gifts, selling favors, and telling you not to worry about the price. Hannibal Lecter of The Silence of the Lambs is an example of this figure in human form. The low key Canadian TV series The Booth at the End is a splendid example of this Satanic dynamic, and the otherwise Miltonesque The Devil’s Advocate also turns on the true nature of Satan as The Accuser.
And, most reliably, he makes regular appearances in children’s stories.
The Purest of Imaginings
Recently, a provocative article by Christian Substacker Imago Dad crossed my path. In it, he turns his critical-and-highly-moralistic eye onto one of the classic children’s films of the late 20th century: Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory (1971).
For those of you who haven’t seen it in a while, this lavish low-budget movie-length commercial for a line of chocolate bars (yes, that’s really why it was made) adapts Roald Dahl’s twisted and delightful8 children’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It tells the tale of five children who find golden tickets which entitle them to a tour of the candy factory run by the notoriously reclusive Willy Wonka. They are told that those on the tour will compete for a grand prize: a lifetime supply of chocolate.
After signing their souls away via comically intimidating liability releases, they are led through a bewildering surrealistic maze onto the factory floor. There, one by one, the children succumb to their pet sins—gluttony, avarice, pride, sloth, and envy9 (as this is a story for children, lust and wrath are notably absent). Each time a child succumbs, the audience is treated to a “moral of the story” song by a pack of orange-skinned Oompa Loompas, the factory’s refugee work staff.
Our protagonist Charlie, who has lived his whole life in grinding poverty that precludes such luxuries as chocolate, is the sole survivor of this macabre adventure—but, as the tour wraps up, Wonka denies him the grand prize. Charlie, it seemed, also fell to temptation and thought he had covered his tracks, but Wonka knows all.
Charlie, contrite, returns his one party favor—a prototype jawbreaker that Wonka’s competitor has put a handsome bounty on—and leaves. This contrition is enough for Wonka, who reveals that the entire tour has been a test to see who might be worthy to inherit the business after he dies. Charlie, the new heir, is then treated to a ride in Wonka’s magical glass elevator, which shoots him into the heavens and lets him fly high above the city he’s lived in all his life. He’s now the king of his own world, made worthy by the strength of his character.
But in the eyes of Imago Dad (and, to be fair, the eyes of many conservative adults I knew when I was a child), this sweet-natured tale might just be the chocolate coating that helps the cultural poison go down.
In his article, Imago Dad argues that one of the film’s musical sequences utterly undermines its value as a children’s story, setting loose a serpent in the chocolatey Eden of children’s minds.
Reading the article was an interesting experience. Intelligent, thoughtful, and obviously written in earnest, it gets so close to the heart of what makes Willy Wonka a stand-out children’s film, but it winds up missing the target by just [holds up a thumb and forefinger] that much.
Imago Dad’s beef rests entirely on the musical number that opens the factory floor. Here it is in its entirety—give it a watch.
On the surface, it’s a gentle tune celebrating the value of imagination and aspiration, not much different than what you’d find in any Disneyland theatrical extravaganza starting way back when the park was opened in the 1950s. Children’s entertainment in Post-World War 2 America has generally centered on the fanciful and fantastic, celebrating the joyous unfettered imagination that children exhibit before they grow old enough to learn about the tragedies and disappointments of life. This song—like so many others in its genre—captures that wide-eyed wonder of childhood.
But there is an interesting pair of stanzas in it that have caused occasional excitement (and are the focus of Imago Dad’s article).
The first of these is:
If you want to view paradise,
Simply look around and view it.
Anything you want to, do it.
Want to change the world?
There’s nothing to it.
To those of you who have studied 20th century occultism,10 this should sound familiar, and maybe not in a good way. It is, after all, a direct re-statement of the most infamous line from the Thelemic Book of the Law:
‘Do What Thou Wilt’ shall be the whole of the law.
Those words were penned in the early 20th century by performance artist, occultist, adventurer, madman, and self-styled “antichrist” Alister Crowley, who founded the religion of Thelema.11
Thelema prizes the integration of the person so that one’s will and drives are all oriented in the same direction, one that maximizes (I shit you not) personal responsibility and integration into the broader civilization in order to bring about personal happiness and spiritual enlightenment. In all these respects, it more-or-less just re-states Nietzschean doctrine in a deliberately provocative manner.12
Friedrich Nietzsche, in his musings on will as the central animating force of life, held in contempt both those who followed slavishly the diktats of their culture and/or religion, and those who followed slavishly the diktats of their animal instincts. Self-mastery, he held, required first knowing what was actually in your own heart (a very difficult trick, considering how good humans are at lying to themselves) and then mastering what is in your heart through will and determination. He held in equal honor those ascetics who are able to joyfully forgo life’s pleasures in the name of the purification of their spirit, and those who are willing to live fast and with gusto even if it means dying hard. On Neitzsche’s view, life is for living, and the self is for masteing.
But Wonka’s words do not stop there. He continues:
There is no life I know
To compare with pure imagination
Living there you’ll be free…
…if you truly wish to be.
To his credit, Imago Dad notes that even as Wonka sings these lines, his guests are proving themselves slaves to their desires, indulging the candy that Wonka offers them with reckless abandon. This is the type of “freedom” that Wonka champions, he supposes.
But is it?
Imago Dad further points out that “do anything you want” seems to be the default credo in our Brave New World culture, facilitated by our world of plenty. Like most conservatives, he blames the cultural decay over the past fifty years on this maxim, as if this maxim is the one that the majority of people live by.
And yet…this is just not true.
To take the cases in reverse order, how many adults do you know who are doing “what they want?” Who are happy with their jobs? Who don’t dream of something better (that they don’t have the courage to reach for)?
My bet is “damn few.”
That’s because “doing what you want to” is a lot more difficult, and heroic, than doing what you’re told. The people who reach for cheap-and-easy vice don’t do it because they “want to.” They do it because it’s a substitute for what they want.
Almost everyone wants a spouse. A family. A community. A satisfying career. Good friends. Great sex. Delicious and healthy food. A meaningful life filled with exciting experiences, and that leaves a legacy.
And far too many of that “almost everyone” instead hide behind their computer and phone screens, living vicariously online, with few if any meaningful connections to real people. Too poor to raise kids in respectable material comfort, too afraid to buck convention and do it the hard way. Too timid to talk out problems (especially sexual problems) with their lovers, preferring to reach for a dirty video to take the edge off instead. Too busy to get enough time outside, too disorderly to cook instead of grabbing prepackaged snacks. And, as a result of all of the above, too mired in self-loathing at their own inertia and “addictions” and “mental health problems” to dare to take the risks one must take to have adventures and leave a legacy.
We are not surrounded by people who “do what they want.” We are drowning in sea of people who are not willing to do what they want.
Secondly, on the subject of children, it’s true. Children do get told (ad nauseum) “you can be anything you want,” but that’s really a ruse. I am unaware of any large-scale cultural agreement (or government program, or entertainment convention) that actually teaches children how to get…well, anything at all, beyond pats on the head.
The traditions we once had that did facilitate this—free play, mentorship, classical education, liberal arts, community groups (churches, boy scouts, fraternal orders, naturalist clubs, etc.) manual arts (such as marksmanship, basic handyman competence, etc.)—are now vanishingly rare in the middle and upper classes. Children are told “be/do anything you want” to keep them prisoners in aspiration. They’re quieter and more pliable that way.13
They’re better consumers. They’re less disruptive voters. They’re more compliant employees.
And this is not a new phenomenon. Aristotle famously observed that most people, given their druthers, will choose slavery over freedom.
Slavery may chafe, but it’s safe.
Freedom is hard.
A Fuller Context
So what’s really going on here? Is there something sinister lurking in the depths of the chocolate factory?
The descent into Willy Wonka’s domain begins with a lovely Edenic candy garden—and, like the Garden of Eden, it does have a forbidden fruit: Wonka’s chocolate river. Augustus the glutton ignores the beautiful, varied candies of every sort—the fruit that is “good to eat,” and opts instead to slurp directly from the source of all the goodness.
Wonka, of course, did not warn Augustus of either the danger or the prohibition, but he is obviously satisfied after Augustus self-eliminates from the competition by diving head-first into the chocolate river where he gets sucked up into the machinery.
Why would Wonka not warn the children?
Because, mythically speaking, it’s not his job.
Wonka, you see, entered the story limping on a cane as if he were a pathetic and crippled old man, before taking a tumble and revealing himself to be spry and full of mischief…and definitely not to be taken at face value. This isn’t just a message for the children in the story, or a setup for the audience to be “prepared for anything.” It’s also a signpost for those of us watching—it shows us who Wonka is.
And then, as if to remove any doubt, as soon as he’s dispensed with Augustus, Wonka loads the remaining children and their guardians onto a boat to depart the Edenic candy room. They enter a dark tunnel, and at the other end they disembark on the far side of the river.
They have crossed the River Styx, and entered the Underworld, where their true harrowing will begin. As they cross, Wonka sings a madman’s ditty, gleefully terrorizing his passengers while horrific, gory, phantasmagorical scenes play out on the tunnel walls.
Yes, he’s pulling these people straight into hell where their souls will be tested, and their character measured, and they will be found wanting.
Wanting in what?
Integrity? Self-control? Kindness?
Yes, of course. But also something else:
They will, one by one, reveal to themselves and to the world that they do not wish to be free.
After all is said and done, and Charlie wins through his display of character. Wonka’s Diogenes-like search for one child who is pure of heart has borne fruit. For his reward, Charlie will have a life he could only dream of.
For a child watching this film, Wonka’s description of the situation rings true:
WONKA: Charlie, never forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he ever wanted.
CHARLIE: What’s that?
WONKA: He lived happily ever after.
And for an adult watching it, who’s casting over it the jaundiced eye of experience, the thought occurs:
Charlie has just inherited a life of terrible responsibility—the entire business, and the Oompa Loompas, and Wonka’s legacy are all his, to make good on or ruin. That’s a lot of weight to bear. A lot of work to do. If one were to look this gift horse in the mouth outside the bounds of fantasy…well, maybe it’s not such a happy ending.
But, when you look around at the fruits of life with substitute pleasures, you may reconsider: perhaps a life filled with meaningful responsibility is “living happily ever after.”
And, to drive home the final point about his true identity, Wonka gives Charlie this worldly kingdom while flying high above the city, surveying all the kingdoms of the world, just as happened in the Gospel of Mark when Satan took Jesus to a high place and offered him dominion of the Earth.
But the terms of the bargain here are different:
Jesus was offered the world in exchange for selling out his principles.
Charlie, like Solomon, receives the world as a reward for sticking to his.
In a Kid’s Movie???
That’s a lot of heavy thematic weight hiding under the sugar-coating in this children’s film. Surely that’s not appropriate for children!
I don’t agree.
Whether you personally believe in a supernatural devil or not, the character of the devil is a tool of moral and spiritual reflection, as handsomely demonstrated in many of the films I’ve mentioned earlier in this article. C.S. Lewis wrote one of his finest works by donning the mask of the devil in The Screwtape Letters.
The devil isn’t just in the details, he’s a pedagogical archetype that animates childhood. The process of maturity is one of continually facing down the tests brought by the prosecutor—it is only through such testing that one grows to know oneself well enough to master one’s own life. It is only through our confrontations with the truth of our core selves that we learn who we are—and how to make of ourselves something worthwhile.
This process properly begins in the nursery.
"Everyone who wants to grow up, sooner or later sits down and has a chat with Satan. Or they never grow up."
— Amos Maple, Down From Ten by J. Daniel Sawyer
A Chocolate-Dipped Satan
Imago Dad is right when he senses something sinister in Pure Imagination.
Willy Wonka is Satan.14
Roald Dahl knew this. He was reared in the English public school system15 in an era when the occult was ascnedent among the aristocracy. He served as a spy during World War 2, part of an organization staffed with people who had a very pronounced interest in occultic thought—many of whom believed that they were soldiers in a spiritual war between Good and Evil (Sir Christopher Lee among them). He was, himself, no stranger to darkness and vice, and he knew well the difficulties of staring into the abyss—and the dangers of failing to do so.
This version of Willy Wonka is entirely consistent with Dahl’s character and ethos—it could hardly be otherwise, as Dahl himself wrote the screenplay and was involved in the production throughout.
But Willy Wonka isn’t just any Satan. He is a particular Satan. A Hebrew Satan. A Prophetic Satan. His job is to test the children, and their parents, and reveal to them the truth:
This is who you are. This is how you can be bought.
Remember those words that Wonka sings in Pure Imagination (several times over, so we get the point)?
Living there you’ll be free…
…If you truly wish to be.
This is the nature of his test. And he sets forth the conditions in the same song:
If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Want to change the world?
There’s nothing to it.
And, like all the best Prophetic Satans, he does not lie, except by omission.
The life we live here in the real world is very like the world of Wonka’s factory:
The world is your oyster.
Do What Thou Wilt…and your world will be changed, for better or worse, and irrevocably, as an automatic consequence.
There’s nothing to it.
Yes, this is a joke.
How the Smartest and Bestest Angel Evar! managed to miss the fact that God was all-powerful and thus as immune from such antics as trucks are from termites, deponents decline to state.
J.R.R. Tolkien used this story to magnificent effect in his epic prose poem Ainulindalë, collected in The Silmarillion. Morgoth plays the part of Lucifer.
There is also arguably an element of Zeus in this, as he (among other Greek gods) killed the Titans, who were the primordial deities that created the universe.
Lucifer in The Sandman comics proper, however, is much more the next sort. Read on!
So-called by Oswald Spengler in his Decline of the West. The “Faustian Spirit,” as he fancied it, was the willingness to concentrate on advancing knowledge in the physical world at the expense of attention to spiritual matters.
It is not a coincidence that Lucifer—associated in the Bible with the planet Venus—is “The Lightbringer.”
Just about everything Dahl did was twisted. All his children’s novels were also delightful. His adult fare was macabre, bawdy, dark, and utterly sublime. If you’ve yet to sample it, I recommend starting with the collection Switch Bitch or checking out the 1980s BBC series based on his stories: Tales of the Unexpected.
In order, the children corresponding to each of these sins are: Augustus, Veruca, Violet, Mike Teevee, and Charlie.
If you’re a student of history and you neglect occultism, you’re literally missing the whole story. It’s motivated most major players in history since at least Isaac Newton. Newton, Goethe, Einstein, Maxwell, Franklin, Jefferson, Kepler, Washington, Lincoln, Hegel, Kant, Marx, Smith, Eddy, Hitler, Ghandi, Jung…I could go on nearly forever. I discuss this a bit in my article Unleashing Mystery and Madness.
Thelema is a “left hand path.” In the occult, “right hand paths” are those that emphasize the emptying of self into community in order to achieve enlightenment (these include Christianity, Wicca, Druidism, Buddhism, and other such traditions). “Left hand paths” (including the Temple of Set, Thelema, Scientology, Mormonism, etc.) emphasize personal development and self-mastery in order to achieve enlightenment. The Right Hand Paths are considered “safe,” as they encourage the suppression of personal darkness, where the Left Hand Paths are considered “hazardous,” as they encourage the development of strength through wrestling with and understanding one’s own darkness. Nietzsche famously championed a left-hand approach to life, while also warning “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
George Lucas’s six-episode Star Wars series is an extended meditation on the importance of the use of both hands to bring balance and wisdom to one’s character.
Ironically, Crowley famously did not live up to this law, opting instead for a life that devolved into indulgence, excess, and dissolution. He is, not coincidentally, recorded as having an uncomfortable relationship with his Book of the Law. Crowley is typical of a certain type of transgressive intellectual whose insights and observations are often far more valuable and defensible than the person making them. Other examples of this species include V.I. Lenin, Hunter S. Thompson, and Ted Kaczynski.
In his essay, Imago Dad praises the vastly inferior Timothée Chalamet production of Wonka, specifically for recontextualizing this song and eliminating what he sees as the problematic elements of Wonka’s character. I hope you can now see why I think this is misguided—by turning Wonka into a gentle nice guy, the producers undercut the Faustian tale spun by Dahl and amplified by Gene Wilder and Mel Smith, turning it into pure saccharine of little value.
A “public school” in England is roughly analogous to an Ivy League prep school in the US.
I have long thought the average US politician, especially at the national level, were the best embodiment of Milton's Satan around. I'd argue your discussion today about the economy and what the President can do for it implicitly use that comparision.
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Chocolate Covered Satan
Band name...called it