Ever since I transitioned this project from being primarily a blog to being primarily a podcast, I’ve been using the tagline, “Exploring the Bible, Christianity, and other religions and sacred texts through the lens of Satanism in order to reinvent religion for myself.” Aside from some of the early creative and constructive work, I’ve mostly emphasized the exploration part of that tagline, but this episode and the next will be focusing more on the invention aspect. My intention here is to construct a sketch of a Satanic theology, and to that end, I’ll be discussing what theology means, both in general and in relation to the specific source I’ll be drawing from; discussing some of the potential qualities that a Satanic theology would have; and offering some preliminary results. A proper and complete Satanic theology would be better suited to something the length of a book, and perhaps that’s a book that I’ll write one day, but given the space available to me here, I’ll have to confine myself to a more limited collection of ideas. I’ll also be introducing the approach I’ll be taking next episode, which will likewise be a theology, but a very different one and much more experimental in character.
Tag: satan
A Satanist Observes Ramadan
I’m not certain where I first arrived at the idea of observing the Ramadan fast, although it likely came up during my research over the past couple years. Primarily, it was a simple matter of curiosity, as is the case with many things in my life, so I approached it as a sort of spiritual experiment. I didn’t have any specific outcomes in mind, but I thought that it might serve as a means of structuring my life and imposing order on a world that presently seems more chaotic than usual, and as well, an opportunity to take a break from some of my favorite indulgences.
Satan As a Moral Exemplar
What is the ethical standpoint of Satanism? Being that Satanism is generally less codified than other religions and exists in several different forms, there are many possibilities. My goal here is to explore a few of them and to arrive at a possible ethical framework that naturally follows from Satanism in general, as well as from my own particular satanic theory.
Satanism and Fascism
Let’s start with Karl Popper and the Paradox of Tolerance. This is something that has vexed me ever since I found out about it. The idea is this: think of society as having a sliding scale between tolerance and intolerance, with regard to people, with regard to ideas, politics, religion, race, sexual and gender identity, and so forth. The more the scale tips toward tolerance, the more intolerant ideas are sanctioned, so both tolerance and intolerance result in intolerance. Intolerance prevails either way. And the only way around this is to embrace intolerance, and then the question becomes, what kind of intolerance do we truly wish to prevail?
Satan in the Qur’an
My aspiration for religion is that it be a reflection both of who we are and of our highest aspirations for ourselves as humans, but in terms of morality, traditional religion seems to fail at this.
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…
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.
Apocalypse
The New Testament Book of Revelation is one of the most distinct and bizarre books of the entire Bible, and I think that its writer was saying the same things about what was to come that I had learned from both my Christians teachers and from history.
Paradise Lost as a Sacred Text
Should Paradise Lost, John Milton’s 17th-century epic poem concerning the fall of Satan from Heaven, be considered a sacred text, especially with regard to the Satanist?
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.