I saw a special on Vlad the Impaler, the real Dracula the other night on History.
He could probably give those folks a run for their money in the evil department.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler
He was mostly seen as a hero. His bad press came from the Ottomans and the boyers. He was a member of the Order of the Dragon which was an organization to stop the spread of Islam from the Ottoman empire into Eastern Europe.
Of course, compared to today, even people like Henry VIII could be seen as evil. Cruel little boys playing God. Many people today have this romantic notion of the past but the truth is now is the best time to be alive, ever. And it has been this way for a long time.
There is no Golden Age. No Eden. Such stories reflect a longing for a reunion with God. But the separation never happened, except in our imagination and we are all still safe at home. Evil is a sort of fiction that has no actual substance, much like a vampire cannot cast a reflection, because they don't actually exist. Or like in Parsifal, because Parsifal knew no guilt, he was able to catch the Spear of Destiny and banish Klingsor's kingdom because, not suffering from unconscious guilt, Parsifal could project nothing to sustain Klingsor's kingdom, which is a kingdom that can only be sustained if we judge ourselves. A kingdom of imagined guilt and fear of punishment. This is also the reason that Amfortas could not heal. There was no real wound, there never was any real wound at all but Amfortas thought there was and he thought he had failed the Grail Knights but no such failure is possible.
"Be whole, absolved and atoned! For I now will perform your task. O blessed be your suffering, that gave pity's mighty power and purest wisdom's might to the timorous fool!"
The reason Parsifal was a fool was because he didn't buy into the world of forms and therefore he couldn't be fooled.
So, much like beauty, the embodiment of evil is also much in the eye of the beholder. And the zeitgeist of the beholder.
So for me, today, that guy who cut off the head of his fellow passenger is the embodiment of evil. You can look back at Henry VIII and Ghengis Kahn and Vlad Tepes and put them and their actions into context and divine some reason for their evils. This guy up in Canada is the total embodiment of shadow. A monster right out of the sticky depths of the tar pits of the id. Most of the people on Ptarmy's list, you know who they are. If you live in their land you can try to escape. You know who the bad guy is. This bus thing is so random and chaotic that "evil" is the only word that seems to apply.
