“Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul to waste.”

— Rolling Stones, “Sympathy for the Devil”

There is something about the Devil—that handsome, charming, oh-so-clever Devil who appears to us as a bewitching Romani woman (Hunchback of Notre Dame), a Martini-swilling angel (Sandman), or a wiley professor running around Moscow as in the iconic and subversive novel The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, who would have turned 125 today.

The Devil assumes so many shapes, always choosing the one that turn our heads the fastest (Hamlet).

Then he hisses in our ears what we want most: Knowledge (Bible), Power (Faust), Achievement (Devil Wears Prada), Sex (True Blood), and Strength (The Magicians). And we run after him, waving our souls in the air, begging him to take them.

Because we welcome damnation. Like the Devil, we’d rather reign in hell than serve in heaven (Paradise Lost). And, yeah, we may end up pushing boulders (Dante’s Inferno) but we also might emerge as victors (The Master and Margarita).

So we keep testing that viscous line between good and evil. We seek it out, tonguing it like a scrap of meat in our teeth, seeing if it will budge.

And Bulgakov argues we should be thankful for that tension: “Where would your good be if there were no evil, and what would the world look like without shadow?” We need the Devil. He destroys complacency, fuels our desires, and shapes our morality, casting shadow so we can see light.

So be thankful for the Devil. Without ruin, there could be no redemption.

So if you ever run across him, just remember Mick Jagger’s tribute to his favorite Russian novel and “have some courtesy, have some sympathy, and some taste.”

And give the Devil his due.