‘Let’s begin with a simple metaphysical proposition: Satan exists. In order to determine what we can say about this proposition—whether it’s true or false, whether it’s knowable or unknowable—it’s hardly surprising that we have to determine exactly what is meant by the word “Satan;” perhaps more surprising that we also have to determine exactly what is meant by the word “exists.” In the immortal words of former U.S. President Bill Clinton, it depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.’
Tag: plato
Socrates
I thought the best way to get back to work would be to get back to my roots, and indeed to the roots of all Western philosophy, that being the ancient Athenian philosophers Socrates and Plato, whose work is of central relevance to Satanism, as I’ll be exploring in this essay.
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.
Why I Might Be Wrong
The gap between what we’re able to achieve as a species and how wrong we’re capable of going in our thinking never ceases to amaze me. On the one hand, we’ve put people on the moon, and on the other–well, a quick look at the political climate in my own country, the United States, is certainly evidence of how much trouble we have thinking clearly and critically.
Dialectics
I’m going to start delving back into the theoretical underpinnings of my Satanic philosophy, but I need to do it better than the last time I attempted such a thing, and that will require laying some groundwork. When I started this project last year, I dove right into the philosophy, but didn’t spend much time at all covering the underlying concepts, and the result was some obscure, muddy writing. So I’m going to spend a few weeks here and there covering some of the foundational concepts upon which my philosophy is grounded. I’ve already covered Nietzsche at length, so at least that’s out of the way. Here, I’ll be exploring the nature of dialectics, and the Hegelian approach to dialectics in particular.