Where in the Hell did the Devil come from? If you really have to know, stop reading now and go to the Devil on-line at Wikipedia, where most of this article was looted.

Particularly in the medieval period, Satan was often depicted as having horns and a goat's hindquarters. It has also been depicted as having a pitchfork and a forked tail. None of these images seem to be based on Biblical materials, because Satan's physical appearance is never described in the Bible or any other religious text.

The image is apparently based on pagan horned gods, common to many mythologies, such as Pan (a Greek god connected to fertility) and Dionysus (the Greek god of wine).

Pan in particular looks a lot like the images of the medieval Satan, although some are also based on Baphomet, who first appeared in trial transcripts during the Inquisition of the Knights Templar in the early 1300s.

The most popular image was drawn in 1854 by Eliphas Lévi: a seated, winged, bearded creature with piercing eyes, exaggerated curved horns, a woman's breasts, and large hindquarters; an upright, metal ornament in his lap is suggestive.

Satanists use Lévi's Baphomet as the image of Satan in Satanic worship. Neo-pagans and others allege that this image was chosen specifically to discredit the horned gods of ancient paganism in order to convert them to Christianity.

The Devil has been identified with pre-Christian Gnostics, who believed humans were divine souls trapped in a material world created by an imperfect god, and Platonism that drew religious and mystical beliefs from the Greek philosopher Plato.

Earlier sects believed the Old Testament Yahweh was, in fact, the devil, as based partially on ethical interpretations of the Bible and partially on the beliefs of earlier Gnostic sects who regarded the god of the Old Testament as evil.

Today, people still speak of the Devil's "glamour," sort of a low-tech cloaking device enabling the Devil to assume any form that the beholder wants to believe, and that should scare the Hell out of you.