The Bible has its own narrative of the origin of language, or at least the origin of its diversity, and it paints a problematic picture both of God and of language.
The Tragedy of Christian Science
Sometime when I was very young, my mother began bringing me to church. The church was of the Christian Science denomination, in which she herself had been raised. She did not adopt the doctrine of the religion wholesale, but rather maintained a loose and abstract belief in God and Jesus. She told me many years later that she was not trying to indoctrinate me into the religion, but rather only to expose me to religion in general and to give me some moral grounding
The Great Flood
What’s interesting to me is that the story of a great flood is one that many people have been telling for a very long time. But in many traditions, and in the Abrahamic tradition in particular, there is an aspect to the story that is particularly troubling: God became displeased with us. So They murdered almost the entire world.
Summa: A Satanist Reads the Nicene Creed
Summa is a choral setting of the Latin translation of the Nicene Creed, composed by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt in 1977. He later arranged it for strings, and that rendition is perhaps the more popular, but I have never been able to appreciate the music apart from the text. It is one of my favorite works of music, but I can’t listen to it without hearing the ideological dissonance within it. The music seems to be expressing something to which the text is antithetical.
Cain Murders Abel
What were Cain and Abel told by their parents in their childhood? All children wish to know about the world, and inevitably ask questions to that effect. Parents, in response, tell stories that signify their knowledge thereof. Did Adam and Eve tell them about their life in the Garden of Eden, how they sought knowledge and were for that reason exiled from paradise?
Satanism, Christmas, and the Birth of Christ Jesus
I despise Christmas. For a duration fast approaching an entire sixth of the year, the worst aspects of capitalism, religion, music, and human social culture combine and worm their way into individual lives in a way that cannot be avoided if one wishes to participate in society at all, and all under the auspices of a holiday for a religion that is not mine but that nevertheless infuriates me because of the degree to which it’s been appropriated and corrupted. It’s a striking example of the way the Hegemon cannibalizes what it ostensibly holds sacred and distorts the meaning of what it claims are the foundations of Truth so as to serve its own ends.
On the Mystical Experience of the Sacred
Skeptics of all stripes will rightly scoff at the word “sacred.” It has often been used over the course of history as a hollow justification for the rationally unjustifiable. But taken in its proper context, its reality and relevance to our lives is unavoidable.
Another Account of the Creation
As mentioned in the previous essay on the Book of Genesis, there are two distinct creation narratives present at the beginning of the book, both well-known in popular culture. The second continues from the first—-starting in the middle of chapter 2, verse 4—-but immediately distinguishes itself from the first in several ways:
Satan the Accuser and the Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness
When Satan came to Jesus in the wilderness, was he the Adversary or the Accuser?
Satan the Accuser
Much of Satanic symbolism is oriented around an archetype of Satan that I refer to as Satan the Adversary. This is Satan as the Rebel Angel, whose rebellion against God and subsequent fall from heaven is described in Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. As compelling and inspiring as I find this archetype, my own philosophy is predicated upon another: Satan the Accuser.