Matters of personal will, independence, and autonomy are central to Satanic thought. The central principle of Satanism is opposition, and, in my interpretation, opposition to hegemony, which often entails opposition to presumed authority.
Tag: nietzsche
A Satanist Responds to the Coronavirus Pandemic
This situation has forced me to consider why I’m doing the whole Satanist Reads the Bible project in the first place. I’ve never really had to think about it before because it’s always been fun, interesting, and meaningful work, but very rapidly over the last couple weeks, my sense of meaning and purpose in the world has fallen out from under me, and I’ve had to adjust to that with regards to everything that I do, including this podcast.
On the Matter of Becoming a Fucking God: Satanism, Philosophy, and Theater
One of the ways I pay the rent is by working as a composer and musician for theater and dance productions. It’s something I’ve been taking time off from since before I started the whole Satanist Reads the Bible project—I had had a busy year and got burned out on it—but back in December I got an email from one of my music mentors asking if I wanted to join in as a musician on a production of a piece of musical theater called Shockheaded Peter. It’s based on a German children’s book of cautionary tales called Der Struwwelpeter in which various misbehaviors on the part of the children result in disaster and death. I played a drum kit made partially out of garbage along with an upright bassist and an accordionist, and it’s been a highlight of my career and one of the great privileges and joys of my life. I’ve been training as a musician for about 25 years now and have performed hundreds of shows, and this show has both demanded and demonstrated my highest capabilities as a musician, performer, and human being. It’s been difficult work that’s pushed me to my limits but I’ve loved every second of it—it’s one of those experiences that has made the Eternal Return worth it for me—and it’s brought up some questions regarding philosophy and theater, some of which I’ll be exploring here.
Satanism, Mental Health, and the Search for Happiness
Not everyone has had to struggle this much to attain some measure of happiness in their lives, and many people have had to struggle a great deal more, but I’d venture to say that almost no one in this life shows up and gets a free pass at happiness
Nietzsche and the Dionysian
A few weeks before going completely insane, and even in seeming premonition of that occurrence, Friedrich Nietzsche completed the final revisions to what would be his last original book, Ecce Homo, a brilliant retrospective of his life and work, completed in 1888 but not published for another ten years. He signed it, “Dionysus versus the Crucified,” thus affirming the centrality of the Dionysian to his life’s work, a notion that appeared in his first book and which would recur in some form in everything he ever wrote.
Why I Am Not a LaVeyan Satanist
I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed to find that LaVey was no Satan-worshipper at all. Rather, his Satanism took the form of an atheist religious stance combined with a particular reading of Nietzsche and Ayn Rand along with Satanic aesthetics and symbolism…
Evil
My own initial position on morality is that there are no moral facts. Nothing is inherently good, and neither is good some objective thing, and the same applies to evil.
Satanism, the Self, and Ego Death
What is the ego? What is the self? How is it that we can gratify, intensify, or encourage the self without knowing and understanding what it is?
Lovecraft, Nietzsche, and the Satanism of Cosmic Horror
A mistake to which I think that I am especially prone is that I anthropomorphize the universe, turning its grandeur into something altogether human.
Satanic Meditations on Nietzsche
In this series, I’ll be looking at selections from Nietzsche’s extensive body of writing and considering them in the context of modern Satanism.