Hail and welcome. I started working on an essay addressing the ongoing Israel-Hamas war shortly after fighting broke out in mid-October. I was initially hesitant to tackle the topic but it’s a compelling force in current events and I wanted to understand more about it. These essays serve as focal points and expositions of such…
Category: history
Reflections on the Eve of Insanity
On October 7th of this year, Hamas militants, in coordination with other Palestinian militias, launched a surprise attack on Israel from Gaza, planned in part by Iran (Said, Faucon, & Kalin, 8 Oct 2023), resulting in at least 800 civilian deaths and many hundreds of additional military deaths, though the exact numbers are heavily disputed….
A Tale of Two Christians
A Satanist Reads the Bible continues today with our series on the rising threat of Christian fascism in America. Today we’ll be looking at the thought of two Christians, one early 20th century German and one from our own day, respectively, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Eric Metaxas.
German Parallels to American Fascism
In this essay, we’ll see some striking and deeply troubling parallels to Germany in the 1920s, parallels which should be of grave concern to anyone who doesn’t want to see genocidal fascists take control of the most powerful economy and military in the history of the world.
The Lessons of Ancient Egypt
What can Ancient Egypt tell us about the development of religion and civilization? The answer is: a great deal, more than I could possibly fit into a single episode. As part of a broader research project into economics, I’ve been studying various histories, and the history of Ancient Egypt has been particularly fascinating and informative. One of the world’s earliest civilizations, it extends over 3000 years of history, from the Bronze Age and through the Iron Age into classical antiquity. As I mentioned in a recent episode, the Great Pyramid was more ancient to Cleopatra, the last pharaoh, than Cleopatra is to us.
The Fringes of Religion: Aum Shinrikyo and the Branch Davidians
In this episode I’ll be examining two particularly fanatical manifestations of religious belief, with discussion on Aum Shinrikyo and a look at the Branch Davidians.
A Brief History of Magic and the Western Esoteric Tradition
The questions I’m aiming to answer are one, whether there are any phenomena like electromagnetism which might be considered magic if we considered their properties independently of their realness (in other words, whether there are any other forms of type K pseudomagic beyond electromagnetism and whether there are any forms of type N pseudomagic at all); and two, if magical practices might be incorporated into personal religious belief and practice in a non-realist way (whether type P pseudomagic is viable, in other words). But first I’ll need to figure out more about what magic is.
American Mythology: Capitalism, pt. 2
In my last essay, I took a general survey of the history and philosophy of capitalism as formulated by Adam Smith in the aforementioned book, which is usually referred to by the shortened title of The Wealth of Nations. If you haven’t listened to that episode, I highly recommend checking that out before continuing with this one, in which I intend to begin looking at critiques of capitalism.
American Mythology: Capitalism
I’m continuing this week with my American Mythology series, which explores the myths present in contemporary American philosophical and political thought. My objective in my explorations of religious texts has been to demonstrate that what is said of the texts and what they actually contain are often two very different things, and my objective in these essays is essentially the same, only addressing political theory instead of sacred texts, but as I’ve described in the previous two essays in this series, political theory and religion are themselves not very distant from each other and often there’s considerable overlap. I’ve looked at the myths surrounding the way in which the Americas were first conquered and colonized and the myths about American freedom as related to the philosophical influence of John Locke on the American political sphere, and now I’m turning to the myths embedded in American capitalism.
American Mythology: John Locke and Natural Law
The 17th-century English philosopher John Locke is one of the most important names in modern philosophy. Following Descartes, he is often taken to be the second major philosopher of the modern era. Additionally, his philosophy was of particular influence on early American political thought, and he was even involved in the design of one of the colonial American governments, that of Carolina. Today, I’ll be looking at his philosophy, and to what degree contemporary America is living up to or failing to live up to his ideals, whether that’s even something we should be aiming for in the first place, and why all of this is relevant to us as Satanists and to American Satanists in particular.