about Satanism

Many of us have already been sold into slavery to an idea or so. These ideas could be so sublime that we forget they are there. An aunt said, “You are too stupid to go to school.” A cousin, “You can’t hold a note in a bucket.” A pastor has admonished, “You will go to Hell if ….” So now, at the prime of your life, you are still too ugly, too fat, too flat, and too worthless. So, what do you do? You bought that banjo, that pencil, that haircut. You practice in the shower, in your dreams, in the hallows of Massacre Canyon on a rainy day.

Alone, you have a dream. Alone, you have a drive. Alone, you have a road block. You have worked that flute until the holes are worn and splintery. Yet, the moment someone suggests a recital, you run and hide (yet, he sounded so nice from the other room).

The Devil knows a good thing when he sees it … and now you see it too. And you have a new master, a merchant, and you are his trade, his disciple. And you are his slave. And now you are worth something.

When a slave is sold, his loyalties are part of the package. There are two parts to this truth.

You must never serve your old masters, none of them. They sold you out, washed you out, left you out for a reason. The only way they could feel powerful was by making you at least feel powerless (American rules of slavery).

That is not the way of the Devil. The Devil will shine you up, help you find your fire.

For centuries the pact with the devil has signified humanity’s desire to surpass the limits of human knowledge and power. The legend of the devil’s pact continues to be useful for exploring our fascination with forbidden powers, and the depths of our souls, psyche, and personal empowerment. The Sons of God looked upon the Daughters of Humanity with favor. They married, had children, and settled down. They taught their children agriculture, music, mathematics, and the skills to build and preserve civilization.

The Devil- or Demon-worshiper has a ritual that honors and cultivates a personal or divine relationship with what they believe is a real Daimonic person or persons.

There are Satanists who think of Daimons as a process of mind or nature, and not a real person at all, and then there are some who see Daimons as real persons. I see Demons as an office that any number of personalities, Spiritual, living, or otherwise can hold. Often, they are revenant gods whom the Church could not tame to their liking.

Simply, a Devil-Worshiper is a person who has a very personal relationship with a devil or Daimon to whom they feel some intimacy with. In the process of developing this intimacy, the worshiper accumulates qualities that they find attracts them to that particular god or daimon at that particular time. Just as individuals within any relationship will soon become more alike, the worshiper and the worshiped become alike. (This is why many parents are concerned about the quality of friends their children play with.)

It might be that the worshiper sees him or herself as inferior to the subject of worship, though the subject need not reciprocate the feeling. What I mean is, one may worship a god or Daimon, and feel some degree of inferiority to that god or Daimon: whether that is the inferiority of parent-child (Kali-ma), master-student (Woden, Hermes, Set), or master-slave, human-pet. Yet the god or Daimon would not necessarily feel superior to the faithful. In fact, the god might even see the relationship as being equal, at least to the same degree that a parent feels equal to their adult child.

What about that baby murderer with the Hebrew, Christian, or Islamic Bible in his room? I ask you, what is the real difference between the two? That baby murderer with the Satanic Bible in his room is just as appalling to most practicing Satanists or organized Satanic Groups as the baby murderer with the Christian Bible in her room. No matter how encouraging the book might have been, the book didn’t do the crime.

Satanists are passionate about life, and are often disappointed when a baby is aborted (though we still grant the mother the privilege of choosing, even if we would rather she had more choices before her). The Satanic Bible, Rock, Blues or Swing music, or wearing a non-Christian symbol will not make a person murder anyone. Do we blame the alcohol for murder by a drunk driver who simply got behind the wheel before he was sober? Or, being intoxicated, do we incarcerate the methamphetamine for hitting a child too hard when a mother was too hot to stop and think like a human? What of the girl who used her rosary to strangle her mother because mom wouldn’t let her go out with her boyfriend? Do we call it a Christian Crime when there is Christian literature that actually condones such activity? No, we restrain the person, and charge them with the crime.

Someone who murders in the name of Satan creates two problems. First, there is the generalized fear that murder of anyone, enhanced by the innocence of the child, generates in a community. For the Satanist, this fear is automatically converted into anger, and action is taken by the more bold among us. Blaming this murder on a Satanist or a Demonist, however, creates the risk of further crimes. When fear such as this is unrequited in a community, it can lash out at anything to assuage that fear. Eleanor Roosevelt observed that mobs are monsters with many heads and no brains. Well, that isn’t always true. When a brain such as R^ev D. James Kennedy reaches the mob, the mob can become a terrible weapon. So, there was a murder. The killer killed a child. There was a Satanic Bible, possibly some Satanic looking material and symbols near by. The media gets hold of that little piece of information; a careless investigator works with their prejudices. And now even the Goth-Christian fears to go out at night … or even in the day. So, the mob lynches a couple of people, and then we find out none of the victims of the lynching were guilty. So a genuine Satanist is beaten nearly to death, or maybe he was just queer. Or, maybe a student is so verbally abused that she finds suicide the only way out.

So what do we do? If the murderer had a Christian Bible and Crucifix on hand, would Christians be afraid to come out at night? Of public places? Of the courts? If that murderer had actually read the Satanic Bible, he would know that Children and Animals are sacred to many Satanists. The same cannot be said of the Hebrew, Christian, or Islamic Testaments. Children and animals are the models of what we seek for ourselves: naked, innocent, wise enough to open heart and mind; true fears and no assumptions, scientific or philosophical. How could we possibly learn such glories by destroying in them what we want to learn, or by killing them? Yes, many have killed and said, “The Devil made me do it.” Then again, many more have said, “God told me to do it.” And not all of either have been roasted nuts. If Satanism is about a positive or favorable relationship with Satan, how is murder in his name a favorable or positive representation?

This Pentacle represents many things to many people. Many Pagans wear a five-pointed star with a point to the heavens to represent, among other things, a covenant with those heavens. Some may wear it with one point to the Earth to represent those same covenants with the Earth. Some have different sorts of Talismans about their bodies, reminding them of something special, just as the Cross reminds the Christian of that special covenant you contract with the Christ. Satanists wear a similar talisman, a pentacle with one point to the Earth to represent that Humanity is just another animal, no better, often worse than our kindred. No talisman belongs to any one Culture of Faith.

A Group may adopt a symbol, and supply that symbol with meaning, and feel liberated by such. Yet, to claim some privileged use is to distort that covenant … that meaning. The Cross is older than Christianity, seen in Paleolithic art, and even in neolithic Celtic places of worship. Any who wish can claim the Star, it is at least as old as human religion. It represented the five wounds of Christ to the Knights Templar. It represents the force of Mercy added to the justice of ha-Shem in the Qabala. It was the badge of blessing to both Druidic and Khemetic Priest.

Only those of us who readily confess to and self-define as such, even if it is in the privacy of our own heart.

Few Pagans are likely to call themselves a “Satanist.” Satanism is as difficult to define as Paganism, and any attempt to do so for either should be from honest, personal reflection. Many Pagans will incorrectly and prejudicially apply the same Hammer to Satanism that we don’t want applied to us. That Hammer was developed by and for the Catholic Church to provide an enemy so the members would feel holy, or be frightened into submission. Then again, the Church has been in the habit of calling “Satanic” any practice or person it disagrees with, or who threatens its power or financial base. Some would accuse Satanism of being focused on evil; this is as silly and wrong as calling a Witch, Muslim, or Christian evil, and is based on all the same prejudices.

First, what do you mean by the Devil?

In the first wave of the Christian evolution pagans readily converted and brought with them the traditions with which they grew up. We were like two friends, Pagans and Christians conditioned each other in the ways of their gods. The eternal present of the Pagans became dressed in Christian garments, and the Sorcerers of the Pagans became the monks and priests of the Church. The Druids recognized the message of Saint Columbia as having value, and through them the Celts greedily drank up the Gospel. This conversion included the gods who, because of their association with the hunt, we saw them with antlers and horns of the animals we hunted.

There was a second wave, destructive and savage. The Roman Empire was crumbling and the Bishop of Rome was ordering the Celestial authority under his belt. The world became a thing to be owned and exploited. There grew a very sharp distinction between what the Church approved of and what the Christianized Pagans brought with them. Politicians know that to have a stable society, you must either have a single faction, or at least 20. The Bishops of Rome did not like competition, so they demonized the gods of the Pagans and made them into the source of all evil. This act even continued until the Great Surrender and beyond, and the African religions adapted to the slave conditions of the New World. The Devils that Christians have feared for over seventeen-hundred years are not the gods of the Pagans, nor even the Satan of the Jews. They are pale idols of Christian imagining, falsely attributed to real beings.

Today, Pagans are struggling to reclaim, or at least clean off, the gods of antiquity and make them meaningful to us. The Church has taught us that human sacrifices are unnecessary, and that the best response to our relationship with the gods is to be honest and fair. We also want to thank the Church for preserving our gods. You see, many of our gods refused to die when they were demonized. So, the Church canonized them as Saints. Among these Christian gods are Saint Brigit (Brio-sioned), Santa Lucia (Lucifer), Saint Ann (Summerian goddess of the sun), and the list may continue.

So, no, that is not the Devil we worship. That is a Reclaimed god, Green or aged, at whose feet we sit and learn the wisdom of ages long forgotten. For many of us, that god is our own true self, whom we have lost in the literalist hustle and dogmatic bustle. With that, Nature restores us to our humanity, and we find faith, hope, and meaning in our lives, such as they are. Then, there is the very real possibility that those gods are our divine ancestors, people who lived so long ago, we have forgotten who they really are. Yet, because of the benefits they bestowed on humanity, and for their heroic virtue, we have elevated them to the status of gods by subsequent generations. Before you say, “That is Necromancy,” did not the Christ say that the Eternal One was the God of the Living, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the divine ancestors of the Jew, and of Jesus himself?

We have heard the voice of the Eternal One throughout the Earth. Pagans have heard it in our own language, dressed it in our clothes, and habits. You may say that the voice heard in the Testaments of the Christian and Jew is the clearest of the revelations. I say, I have heard that voice for myself, and am clear on what it says. It says, “Be self controlled, Be charitable, Be compassionate.”

Life is rather short, and what comes after can last an awful long time. We all die, soon, alone, and for a long time. Death will come, however, no use in fussing about that. Who are you, however, to place yourself as the Judge at the end of My World?

The first thing I think of when someone says something like that is Hel, daughter of the Spider and night hunter, Loki. She is mother and keeper of all that happens between sleep and awakening, death and life. She is the raven, the vulture, the condor who devours the dead to carry their souls to Nifleheim (a Norse Other World a place of absolute cold, hence the term, “cold as hell”). She is also the care-taker of lost souls, dreams, and the things that go “Bump” under a child’s bed at night. Through all this she teaches us to embrace our impermanence as a gift, and not to waste our lives on vanity and insignificance.

The next thing that travels through my thinker is that Hell as a place of punishment is as rare as a mule’s foal. Most think of Hell as a grave, a place of decomposure, of rendering bodies for use by other beings. It is natural to dislike death. It can be both painful and embarrassing, and disappointing should it come when you are busy. come she will, however, no use in fussing about that. You’ll only shame yourself, and most likely live very long enough after the fuss to regret it.

The Holy Church would have us fear Hell. Why, pray tell? Is it for the same reason Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as He has kept it in business all these years! [LaVey, 1969]. The Holy Church has sent so many souls into the grave without ever sharing the Gospel with them in the name of greed that of course The Holy Church is afraid of Hell. All those souls there, pining for vengeance …, I’d be scared o’ Grandma-Death too.

To me, Hell is a state of mind that grows from a feeling of having nothing left. Some of us feel we have nothing left and simply fade away like a wraith before S^t. Lucifer’s light. Some of us feel we have nothing left and boldly go where we’ve secretly always wanted to go. We demand that raise, take that holiday, protest that ol’ Jim Crow. I ain’t got not’in’; they take that from me, I guess I get’s somet’in’.

So, to answer your question, “Aren’t you afraid you are going to Hell?” No, in fact I have coffee with her every Thursday.