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I was watching a program on ancient Persia last night, and while they were explaining Zoroastrianism, used the name Ahriman to describe Angra Mainyu, the pre-Christian proto-Satan. I had only ever heard this deity referred to as Angra Mainyu.

I like it!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahriman

Ahriman in-universe's role is that of the anti-satan, ironically.

His whole schtick is that he's looking for the Black Library so he can rise up and overthrow Tzeentch.

Rising up to overthrow your Lord does fit the heroic Satan narrative...Paradise Lost especially comes to mind. However, in this case, obviously the lord in question is of quite a different nature.


(P.S. In case anyone religious looks at my pic and gets the wrong idea, all I mean by "heroic" is the literary genre type meaning, rather than "worthy of emulation, admirable" or something like that.)

I thought Abandon (the arm-less)'s name ment something like that.

 Engine of War wrote:
I thought Abandon (the arm-less)'s name ment something like that.

Well look at that.

The Hebrew term Abaddon (Hebrew: אֲבַדּוֹן‎, 'Ǎḇaddōn), and its Greek equivalent Apollyon (Greek: Ἀπολλύων, Apollyon), appear in the Bible as a place of destruction and an angel, respectively. In the Hebrew Bible, abaddon is used with reference to a bottomless pit, often appearing alongside the place שאול (sheol), meaning the land of the dead. In the New Testament Book of Revelation, an angel called Abaddon is written as the king of an army of locusts; his name is first transcribed in Greek (Revelation 9:11 – "whose name in Hebrew Abaddon" (Ἀβαδδὼν)), and then translated ("which in Greek means the Destroyer" (Ἀπολλύων, Apollyon)). The Latin Vulgate, as well as the Douay Rheims Bible, has an additional note (not present in the Greek text), "in Latin Exterminans", exterminans being the Latin word for "destroyer".


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abaddon

Yes, the Horus Heresy is a parallel to the Biblical War in Heaven (not the one involving Necrons), and Abbadon is the Lucifer-figure.... favored son, gets everything, yadda yadda, then betrays his father.

Interestingly, good ole Abby's believed by different sects to be Satan, the antichrist, an angel of Satan, an angel of God, and Jesus.

Horus would be Lucifer, Abaddon would be the anti-Christ. But valid view point just the same.

Oh, indeed... and I meant to say Horus, not Abaddon... was thinking 40K mythology and RL mythology and got my brain flipped around.

Almost all of the Dark Angels loyalist leaders have names of fallen Angels/Demons in Christian mythology. The Blood Angels Homeworld Baal is the name of a god considered the enemy of the Israelites throughout the old testament.
I don't think that many of the names actually link in with the person's character, GW is just using cool sounding references to real world mythology.

 KorPhaeron77 wrote:
The Blood Angels Homeworld Baal is the name of a god considered the enemy of the Israelites throughout the old testament.

Baal is just a title, meaning "Master" or "Lord" (even lord of your own house). It's also used for many different gods since it was often forbidden or unlucky to mention the name of a god. Any god of the citystates the Israelites knew about could be a Baal, and I guess they didn't care to write down the proper name too often. Everyone knew which Baal they worshipped in Tyre, right? So the Baal of Tyre is quite enough information when they write about it.

 jasper76 wrote:
I was watching a program on ancient Persia last night, and while they were explaining Zoroastrianism, used the name Ahriman to describe Angra Mainyu, the pre-Christian proto-Satan. I had only ever heard this deity referred to as Angra Mainyu.

I like it!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahriman

Yeah, I did some deep research into the Thousand Sons a couple months ago and found that out. His Brother's name means "good" by the way, so they are like the two sides of a coin, kind of. Except one side of the coin is dead.

I actually prefer that Ahriman is named after Satan instead of God for reasons that I probably shouldn't mention for the sake of avoiding a religious war.

Most of the Heresy characters are based on religious themes. This is intentional, it was designed to be a myth of Biblical proportions.