Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
Since I’m on vacation this week, I was originally planning that this would be this week’s post in lieu of an actual research piece, but I ended up getting my story on Islam done early (that’ll go up Friday evening), so consider this bonus content. Just to be transparent, I’m writing this primarily because I think it will be interesting, informative, and useful content, but also because it allows me to monetize my work without having to post ads. Clicking through and buying the books is an easy way to support my work. I rely on these books a great deal and you’ll find references to most of them throughout my work. They’re worth your money to purchase and your time to read.
On Nietzsche – Georges Bataille
I want to be very clear on this: not a word of Nietzsche’s work can be understood without experiencing that dazzling dissolution into totality, without living it out. Beyond that, this philosophy is just a maze of contradictions. Or worse, the pretext for lies of omission (if, as with the Fascists, certain passages are isolated for ends disavowed by the rest of the work). I now must ask that closer attention be paid. It must have been clear how the preceding criticism masks an approval. It justifies the following definition of the entire human — human existence as the life of “unmotivated” celebration, celebration in all meanings of the word: laughter, dancing, orgy, the rejection of subordination and sacrifice that scornfully puts aside any consideration of ends, property, and morality.
Much like Kojève’s reading of Hegel, Bataille’s reading of Nietzsche should not be taken as a pure explication of Nietzsche but rather as an explication of Bataille’s ideas via Nietzsche’s. It’s a messy, disorganized, poetic book, but brilliantly written, highly entertaining, and presents a new and fascinating window into Nietzsche’s thought. Thanks to unkind edits by Nietzsche’s anti-semitic sister, Nietzsche was widely perceived as a proto-fascist, and against the backdrop of the second World War and the German occupation of France, Bataille worked to reappropriate Nietzsche from these misinterpretations. He also, in a somewhat aphoristic fashion akin to Nietzsche himself, presents his own ideas on Christianity and religion that were born out of Nietzsche’s disdain for Christianity and pronouncement of the death of God.
Theory of Religion – Georges Bataille
Something tender, secret, and painful draws out the intimacy which keeps vigil in us, extending its glimmer into that animal darkness. In the end, all that I can maintain is that such a view, which plunges me into the night and dazzles me, brings me closer to the moment when — I will no longer doubt this — the distinct clarity of consciousness will move me farthest away, finally, from that unknowable truth which, from myself to the world, appears to me only to slip away.
This is one of the first philosophical book that I purchased. I was initially disappointed to find it very short, with the margins taking up more space than the text on every page. But it took me the better part of a year to work through and the margins gave me ample space to write the myriad thoughts which came to me after each paragraph. Bataille’s language is difficult but poetic and brilliant; it’s been hard for me to avoid the bad habit of underlining over half of the text. His view of religion is very pointed and specific, so I don’t recommend this as a broad-strokes introduction to the philosophy of religion, but his ideas will connect to everything else you ever read on the topic.
The Bible – New Revised Standard Version
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
Anyone who wants to make a proper study of Christianity or Judaism is going to need a Bible, but the choice of which Bible to get can be a difficult one with so many available versions and few resources describing the differences between them. The King James Version is the undisputed classic, but I find that the archaic language, however beautifully rendered, only serves to distance one from the intended meaning of the text. The New Revised Standard Version is the academic standard, and while I still take issue with some of its choices and translations, it’s the best one I’ve seen. Additionally, each page, contains helpful translation notes and cross-references.
Gender Trouble – Judith Butler
It was and remains my view that any feminist theory that restricts the meaning of gender in the presuppositions of its own practice sets up exclusionary gender norms within feminism, often with homophobic consequences. It seemed to me, and continues to seem, that feminism ought to be careful not to idealize certain expressions of gender that, in turn, produce new forms of hierarchy and exclusion. In particular, I oppose those regimes of truth that stipulated that certain kinds of gendered expressions were found to be false or derivative, and others, true and original. The point was not to prescribe a new gendered way of life that might then serve as a model for readers of the text. Rather, the aim of the text was to open up the field of possibility for gender without dictating which kinds of possibilities out to be realized.
Judith Butler in the Preface to Gender Trouble
Gender Trouble is one of the foundational works of queer theory, which emerged from critical theory and feminism in the early 90’s primarily as a critique of gender-essentialism (the notion that there is some objective fact of the matter as to what gender a given person is). Feminism and queer theory are highly relevant to the contemporary world but I’ve found that their theoretical foundations are often ignored by their most vocal opponents. This is a difficult text and I recommend it primarily to those already familiar with feminism and poststructural criticism, but I think that it’s worth building a foundation in those areas in order to read this important text.
The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins
…I shall define the God Hypothesis more defensibly: there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us. This book will advocate an alternative view: any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution. Creative intelligences, being evolved, necessarily arrive late in the universe, and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it. God, in the sense defined, is a delusion; and, as later chapters will show, a pernicious delusion.
Dawkins is a brilliant, elegant, inspiring writer, and in total, I find it concerned more with the elevation of secular thinking, by way of demonstrating a viable alternative to religion with values like morality, wonder, and community entirely intact, than with that for which it is more well known, the deconstruction of religion itself. Not that this book isn’t highly polemical, but it acknowledges the complexity of religion and narrows itself down to specific (and especially problematic) metaphysical thinking rather than boiling all religious ideas together in a kind of reductionist stew.
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon – Daniel C. Dennett
Eventually, we must arrive at questions about ultimate values, and no factual investigation could answer them. Instead, we can do no better than to sit down and reason together, a political process of mutual persuasion and education that we can try to conduct in good faith. But in order to do that we have to know what we are choosing between, and we need to have a clear account of the reasons that can be offered for and against the different visions of the participants. Those who refuse to participate (because they already know the answers in their hearts) are, from the point of view of the rest of us, part of the problem.
Dennett is one of the so-called Four Horsemen of Atheism and the only philosopher among them. Breaking the Spell was clearly not written from the outset with the agenda of attacking religion (as were The God Delusion by Dawkins, Harris’s The End of Faith, and God Is Not Great by Hitchens), but rather only exploring its origins and nature sincerely and systematically. That such a process ultimately results in a strong critique of religion is hardly surprising, but it’s better for being the result of a process whose conclusions were not determined from the outset. Unlike Harris’s work, Dennett acknowledges the complexity of the topic and spends a great deal of time navigating the waters to chart a course, rather than reducing all of religion to a single conceptual framework and proceeding to dismiss all of it wholesale.
Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking – Daniel C. Dennett
Like all artisans, a blacksmith needs tools, but — according to an old (indeed almost extinct) observation — blacksmiths are unique in that they make their own tools. Carpenters don’t make their saws and hammers, tailors don’t make their scissors and needles, and plumbers don’t make their wrenches, but blacksmiths can make their hammers, tongs, anvils, and chisels out of their raw material, iron. What about thinking tools? Who makes them? And what are they made of? Philosophers have made some of the best of them — out of nothing but ideas, useful structures of information.
Intuition pumps are thought experiments, and the best thinkers use them regularly to explore new concepts and present new ideas, or to present old ideas in new ways. Dennett outlines some general and specific examples that you can use to be a better thinker, and many of the examples also serve the function of being effective thought experiments and provide new perspectives on difficult ideas like evolution, consciousness, and computation.
The Body and Its Symbolism – Annick de Souzenelle
We look at the world the way a child looks at a toy when it wants to take it to pieces to find out how the mechanism works. Accordingly, we have placed the world, and man, as two objects different in kind, two distinct entities, believing the knower, the “one who knows” (man) and “the object to be know” (the world) to be irreducible to each other. And when “the object to be known” is dubbed “human sciences” (humanities and social sciences), it becomes clear that man has studied man without any idea about what set of instruments he could use in attempting to know himself. This is absurd.
I’m not an expert on Kabbalah and I’m sure there are better books that would serve as an introduction to the subject. Neither am I sure whether Kabbalistic interpretations at all reflect the original intentions of biblical authors, but this book is nevertheless an interesting window into symbolic interpretation of the Bible and its relationship to the human body. For those looking to incorporate mystical religious symbolism into art, de Souzenelle’s text is valuable and inspiring.
The Rig Veda – Wendy Doniger (trans.)
The hymns are meant to puzzle, to surprise, to trouble the mind; they are often just as puzzling in Sanskrit as they are in English. When the reader finds himself at a point where the sense is unclear (as long as the language is clear), let him use his head, as the Indian commentators used theirs; the gods love riddles, as the ancient sages knew, and those who would converse with the gods must learn to live with and thrive upon paradox and enigma.
Wendy Doniger in the Introduction
The Vedas are the holiest texts in the Hindu religions, and perhaps the oldest known text still extant in its original form. I know of at least one complete translation of the Vedas into English; it’s about the size of a phone book with almost-unreadably small type, and no notes are provided to clear up contextual references which would be hopelessly obscure to anyone but a scholar of ancient Vedic religion proficient in ancient Sanskrit. Doniger’s selection of 108 of the hymns of the highest of the Vedas, the Rig Veda, provide an enticing glimpse into a fascinating religious universe that few Westerners will ever have the opportunity to know. While the hymns remain strange and difficult to interpret, I believe that Doniger’s translation has made them as clear as possible, and she provides various helpful notes as well.
The Bhagavad Gita – Eknath Easwaran (trans.)
I am time, the destroyer of all; I have come to consume the world. Even without your participation, all the warriors gathered here will die. Therefore arise, Arjuna; conquer your enemies and enjoy the glory of sovereignty. I have already slain all these warriors; you will only be my instrument.
One of the great classics of the Hindu religions, the Bhagavad Gita is set within the greater narrative of the epic poem the Mahabharata. While not the holiest text of Hinduism, it is the most widely-read by Hindus and non-Hindus alike. There are over 200 translations of the Bhagavad Gita into English. I am only familiar with Easwaran’s, but I find it both excellent and surprising. The above quote is traditionally rendered as “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” but Easwaran has provided the interesting note that the word in the original Sanskrit for “death” can also be rendered as “time.” Whatever the translation, this is one of the great classics of world literature and a fascinating window into Hindu beliefs.
Discipline and Punish – Michel Foucault
In short, [I] try to study the metamorphosis of punitive methods on the basis of a political technology of the body in which might be read a common history of power relations and object relations. Thus, by an analysis of penal leniency as a technique of power, one might understand both how man, the soul, the normal or abnormal individual have come to duplicate crime as objects of penal intervention; and in what way a specific mode of subjection was able to give birth to man as an object of knowledge for a discourse with a ‘scientific’ status.
Michel Foucault, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, worked primarily from a basis in Nietzsche to try to understand the nature of power and its manifestations in the contemporary world, all of which makes his work highly relevant to the Satanist. In this work, Foucault looks at penology (the study of the punishment of crime) in itself but also as a mode of thought that has come to shape society as a whole. It is no longer only crime that we are punishing, but deviance, and no longer only in prisons, but in schools, hospitals, and factories as well.
A Companion to Marx’s Capital – David Harvey
My aim is to get you to read a book by Karl Marx called Capital, Volume I, and to read it on Marx’s own terms.
If you trust, based on my work, that I’m capable of making sound recommendations as to what to read so as to gain a better understanding of things, then buy this and buy Capital, Volume I itself, and read them. If I don’t have that level of trust yet but you’re willing to take a small risk, buy this book alone. I’m confident that the result will be the same in the end. Harvey provides extensive notes, interpretations, historical context, and relationships between the text and the world’s current, perilous economic situation. I can’t imagine being able to fully appreciate Marx’s very important book without Harvey’s help.
The Qur’an: A New Translation – Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem (trans.)
In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy! Praise belongs to God, Lord of all words, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy, Master of the Day of Judgement. It is You we worship; it is You we ask for help. Guide us to the straight path: the path of those You have blessed, those who incur no anger and who have not gone astray.
Given the contentiousness of the question of who has the authority to interpret the Qur’an, it should come as no surprise that the matter of its translation is even more contentious. Given the linguistic distance of Arabic from English and the Qur’an’s unusual literary style, translations can substantially misrepresent the meaning of the text. Furthermore, a poor translation would make the task of interpreting this difficult text all the more challenging. Haleem’s translation may not represent the poetic elements of the text as well as some other translation (Sardar says that Khalidi’s translation is especially appropriate for that purpose), but the writing is exceptionally clear, with helpful references that clarify to whom the different verses are being addressed.
The Phenomenology of Spirit – G.W.F. Hegel
The Phenomenology of Spirit, first published in 1807, is a work seen by Hegel as a necessary forepiece to his philosophical system… but it is meant to be a forepiece that can be dropped and discarded once the student, through deep immersion in its contents, has advanced through confusions and misunderstanding to the properly philosophical point of view. Its task is to run through, in a scientifically purged order, the stages in the mind’s necessary progress from immediate sense-consciousness to the position of a scientific philosophy, showing thereby that this position is the only one that the mind can take, when it comes to the end of the intellectual and spiritual adventures described in the book.
J.N. Findlay in the Foreword
I don’t recommend this work without reservation. For all that it is one of the most influential books in the history of philosophy and still very relevant today, it is also one of the most infamously impenetrable books ever written. Elsewhere in the Foreword, Findlay comments on Hegel’s style, “which makes one at times only sure that he is saying something immeasurably profound and important, but not exactly what it is.” Unlike some of the poststructuralists, who I think were at times deliberately obscure, I believe that Hegel was a brilliant person with brilliant ideas who simply wasn’t especially good at making those ideas clear. Reading Hegel is a valuable and rewarding exercise but also a great challenge.
The Varieties of Religious Experience – William James
Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.
Reading this book for the first time in 2009, as part of a class on the philosophy of religion, planted the seed which, nine years later, became this blog. It was the first book to elucidate for me that religion was not the strawman that Harris had made of it. For anyone interested in religion as a general topic at all, and especially for anyone interested in the philosophy of religion, this book is mandatory reading. Even philosophers like Dennett who have taken a somewhat antagonistic stance on religion give James and his book due deference. If you were only to purchase and read one book from this entire list, this is the one that I would recommend.
The Nationalist Revival – John B. Judis
The argument of this book is that national identity is not just a product of where a person is born or emigrated to, but of deeply held sentiments that are usually acquired during childhood. Nationalism is not simply a political ideology, or a set of ideas, but a social psychology. Nationalist sentiment is an essential ingredient of a democracy, which is based on the assumption of a common identity, and of a welfare state, which is based on the acceptance by citizens of their financial responsibility for people whom they may not know at all, and who may have widely different backgrounds from theirs.
Being a contemporary political analysis, this is a bit different than my usual reading. But this is a topic that I had been wanting to understand better for some time, probably since 2015 and the run-up to the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. I heard an interview with the author on a podcast on the absolutely indispensable Lawfare blog and knew that this was the place to get answers. I was right. Judis’s book presents a very clear but also very nuanced look at an exceptionally complex situation. I don’t believe that anyone anywhere on the political spectrum will find much to disagree with, but I think that at the same time everyone will find out something factual that makes them a bit uncomfortable and concerned.
Fear and Trembling – Søren Kierkegaard
Philosophy cannot and should not give us an account of faith, but should understand itself and know just what it has indeed to offer, without taking anything away, least of all cheating people out of something by making them think it is nothing… I have seen horror face to face, I do not flee it in fear but know very well that, however bravely I face it, my courage is not that of faith and not at all to be compared with it. I cannot close my eyes and hurl myself trustingly into the absurd, for me it is impossible but I do not praise myself on that account. I am convinced that God is love; this thought has for me a pristine lyrical validity. When it is present to me I am unspeakably happy, when it is absent I yearn for it more intensely than the lover for the beloved; but I do not have faith; this courage I lack. God’s love is for me, both in a direct and inverse sense, incommensurable with the whole of reality.
One of the great classics of philosophy and of existential philosophy in particular, Kierkegaard’s enigmatic work is an honest and searching exploration of what faith must mean in the context of the story of Abraham and Isaac. Like The Dynamics of Faith, Fear and Trembling is the real arena for the anti-religious to wrestle with a Christian perspective that is actually challenging and thought-provoking, and for the rest of us it presents an entirely new way of understanding religion that is at the same time almost obvious in necessity.
Introduction to the Reading of Hegel – Alexandre Kojève
For Hegel, the real object of religious thought is Man himself: every theology is necessarily an anthropology… While in fact talking about himself, religious Man believes that he is talking about a God.
Hegel’s work is brilliant and profoundly influential, but also written in an obscure style that makes it near-impenetrable. Kojève’s take on it is his own and should not be taken purely as an explication of Hegel’s intent, but his ideas about Hegel’s work are brilliant and he is especially helpful in clarifying the relationship between Hegel’s work and Marx. Kojève was also a significant source for Georges Bataille and the seeds of many of Bataille’s ideas can be found within this text. The book itself is quite beautiful, with a striking cover and solid, well-proportioned print.
One-Dimensional Man – Herbert Marcuse
A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress. Indeed, what could be more rational than the suppression of individuality in the mechanization of socially necessary but painful performances; the concentration of individual enterprises in more effective, more productive corporations; the regulation of free competition among unequally equipped economic subjects; the curtailment of prerogatives and national sovereignties which impede the international organization of resources. That this technological order also involves a political and intellectual coordination may be a regrettable and yet promising development.
Marx’s Capital was prescient and his ideas remain highly relevant to the contemporary world, but many of his predictions about the future of capitalism have not come to fruition. In One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse describes how capitalism circumvented many of Marx’s predictions by transforming, ostensibly fixing many of Marx’s concerns but at the same time generating a comfortable dystopia in which opposing ideas are flattened into just another part of the spectrum of advanced capitalist society. Marcuse is prescient as well, especially with regards to automation and the increasing role that social media networks play in our lives.
In Capital, Marx’s fundamental aim was to lay bare the laws of motion which govern the origins, the rise, the development, the decline and the disappearance of a given social form of economic organization: the capitalist mode of production.
Ernest Mandel in the introduction
It was hard to find a quote to use in this one; it’s quite dry, and Marx abstains from anything pithy or general, preferring to let his systematic analysis of the capitalist mode of production speak for itself. Regardless, this is an important book to read for anyone wanting a better understanding of the present state of the world, and despite it’s dryness, it’s quite interesting once one gets into the flow of it. And as well, it’s a good demonstration of the dialectic process in philosophy, a process which can be applied to any problem and is not restricted to economics. My recommendation is that you buy this book after buying David Harvey’s A Companion to Marx’s Capital and reading the first few chapters. He’ll do a better job of convincing you to read Marx than I ever will.
Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the tread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.
McCarthy’s novel is one of the best written in the English language, and as well features some of the best English that has ever been written. It is the story of the kid, who abandons his home in the American south of the late 19th century and sets out “to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man’s will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.” The character of the judge, who is quoted above, seems to have read a great deal of Nietzsche, who I am sure was one of the major inspirations for this work.
Hail, horrors! hail,
Infernal World! and thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor — one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
This story is of such central importance to the Satanist or Luciferian that I wrote an entire piece on it. Using some of the greatest English that has ever been set to paper, Milton describes the fall of Satan from Heaven with Satan as his noble protagonist.
Basic Writings of Nietzsche – Friedrich Nietzsche
The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity — and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.
This is the other of the two volumes covering the bulk of Nietzsche’s output. Included, along with more of his aphorisms, are The Birth of Tragedy (which, excepting Nietzsche’s own prefatory criticism of the work, can be safely skipped), Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Case of Wagner, and Ecce Homo.
The Gay Science – Friedrich Nietzsche
I keep having the same experience and keep resisting it every time. I do not want to believe it although it is palpable: the great majority of people lacks an intellectual conscience. Indeed, it has often seemed to me as if anyone calling for an intellectual conscience were as lonely in the most densely populated cities as if he were in a desert. Everybody looks at you with strange eyes and goes right on handling his scales, calling this good and that evil. Nobody even blushes when you intimate that their weights are underweight; nor do people feel outraged; they merely laugh at your doubts. I mean: the great majority of people does not consider it contemptible to believe this or that and to live accordingly, without first having given themselves an account of the final and most certain reasons pro and con, and without even troubling themselves about such reasons afterward.
This is the last of Nietzsche’s aphoristic works, in which he writes succinctly and cuttingly on a variety of topics. It is my favorite among his books and one of my favorite books in general, and also, I think, the best introduction to Nietzsche’s work. While nothing is as rigorously explicated as the subject matter is in his more traditionally-philosophical works like On the Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil, all his ideas are here and are beautifully expressed. I cannot imagine reading Nietzsche in any translation other than Kaufmann’s, and the translator’s notes are especially helpful in making connections between Nietzsche’s many ideas and clearing up the many misconceptions about him and his work.
The Portable Nietzsche – Friedrich Nietzsche
In the ages of crude primeval culture man believed that in dreams he got to know another real world; here is the origin of all metaphysics. Without the dream one would have found no occasion for a division of the world. The separation of body and soul, too, is related to the most ancient conception of the dream; also the assumption of a quasi-body of the soul, which is the origin of all belief in spirits and probably also of the belief in gods. “The dead live on; for they appear to the living in dreams”; this inference went unchallenged for many thousands of years.
Nietzsche was a prolific author. Fortunately, one can cover a great deal of his work, all in their best translations, by purchasing only two volumes (though I recommend the complete The Gay Science as well; this volume includes a selection of its aphorisms, but it’s such a brilliant work in its entirety that the purchase would be well worth it). This volume contains Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, Nietzsche contra Wagner, selections from his aphoristic works, and some letters and miscellanea.
The Upanishads – Valerie J. Roebuck (trans.)
One, unmoving, swifter than mind,
The gods cannot catch it, as it goes before:
Standing still, it outruns others that are running
Matarisvan sets the waters in it.It moves, it does not move;
It is far and near likewise.
It is inside all this:
It is outside all thisWhoever sees
All beings in the self
And the self in all beings
Does not shrink away from it.For the one who knows,
In whom all beings have become self,
How can there be delusion or grief
When he sees oneness?
The Upanishads are core sacred texts of the Hindu religions. The Vedas have a higher status in the Hindu canon, but consist largely of devotional and ritual poetry, whereas the Upanishads are philosophical explications concerning the core ideas upon which the various Hindu religions are based. Roebuck’s translation of these, the Principal Upanishads, is quite beautiful and moving, and provides extensive and helpful notes.
Reading the Qur’an – Ziauddin Sardar
The Qur’an addresses all humanity, in particular ‘people who think’. It describes itself as a book of guidance for all humanity, even though many of its verses specifically address ‘those who believe’. It admonishes those who believe blindly; and asks its readers, again and again, to observe, reflect, question. In other words it is a book that demands critical thought of all readers.
The proper interpretation of the Qur’an, and the question of who has the authority to interpret it at all, are contentious issues. Religious scholars in the Muslim world have long held that they, and only they, can properly interpret this important book. In Sardar’s deeply personal exposition of the Qur’an, he breaks with tradition by interpreting it for himself. His writing conveys his deep love for the text but also his anger at its misrepresentation and misuse. He is consistently entertaining, informative, and poignant, and this book is among my highest recommendations for secondary literature on religion.
The Dynamics of Faith – Paul Tillich
Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. The content matters infinitely for the life of the believer, but it does not matter for the formal definition of faith. And this is the first step we have to make in order to understand the dynamics of faith.
Why is a Satanist recommending a book by a Christian existentialist? Because it’s brilliant and indispensable for gaining a broad and nuanced picture of what religion really is. Tillich has taken on the Satanic task of creating religion for himself, and the result is something that will almost certainly change your perspective on religion and Christianity. And for the atheists and anti-religious who want to wrestle with these ideas in their most complex and challenging forms, this is the place to do it.
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism – Chögyam Trungpa
Inasmuch as no one is going to save us, to the extent that no one is going magically to enlighten us, the path we are discussing is called “the hard way.”
Among those in the 20th century who came to Europe and America from the East and introduced the West to Buddhism was Chögyam Trungpa. He was a revered and accomplished rinpoche in Tibet before his exile due to the Chinese invasion, after which he studied philosophy and religion at Oxford, before finally coming to the United States and founding a new Buddhist sect, which he called Shambhala Buddhism. The objective was to fuse his native Vajrayana Buddhism with Zen and with Western philosophical thought. He remains a revered teacher of secular Buddhism, but also in some ways resembles a charismatic cult leader. His drinking and womanizing — including relationships with students — were legendary, and the former eventually killed him. But I’ve heard many say that they felt seen by him in a way that they had not felt seen before, and his teachings remain inspirational and influential despite the life he lived. A Zen teacher of mine once said, “The purest waters of the dharma can flow even from a rusty pipe. And Chögyam Trungpa was a very rusty pipe.”
Trungpa’s book explicates his concept of “spiritual materialism,” the tendency for one to use spiritual teachings and practice as a way of propping up delusions rather than, to use his words, cutting through them and seeing the truth of things. It’s widely regarded as his best work, and as it concerns the individual spiritual path, it abounds with valuable material for the Satanist.