Sunday, December 27, 2020

Krampus, COVID, and coping with "dark nature"

Since my last entry mentioned Krampus, this struck me as not a bad time to write something I’ve been meaning to write for awhile, not about Krampus in folklore and the holiday per se, but about the 2015 Krampus film.  I’ve long found that film “stuck with me” in a way that goes far beyond what one would expect or was surely intended with a random PG-13 holiday-horror film.  The train of thought it leads me down also touches on certain aspects of 2020 in an interesting way, and upon how I’ve come to interpret Satanism differently over time due to certain philosophical and political things that I’ve been grappling with in recent years.

Now, upon trying to actually write this entry, I’ve discovered that no way is the full trajectory I’d envisioned do-able in any kind of manageable length, mostly because the “COVID rant” part of this got rather lengthy (go figure, LOL).  Nonetheless, what follow are some thoughts to share on what I’ll call “the dark force of nature,” or “dark nature” for short, subdivided as follows:

Obviously this will entail spoilers about the Krampus film - FYI if anyone hasn’t seen it and wants to.  

* * *

Monday, November 30, 2020

Marking the seasons as a Satanist

As this is a busy time for me, for this month’s blog I’ll just share a few brief random thoughts I have about seasonal observances for Satanism.

Having had a brief Wiccan / Neopagan phase in my teens prior to deciding it wasn’t for me, I’ve long had some familiarity with the concept of the “wheel of the year.”  I’ve then found in recent years, having become significantly more “in touch” with nature especially after relatively-recent spiritual awakenings, that I have the desire to observe something along these lines.  On the other hand though, not everything pertaining to the Neopagan conceptions of these holidays necessarily speaks to me - partly because I’m not of that tradition and am instead of the Satanic one, and partly because some of the associated folk traditions strike me as not localizing well, e.g. they revolve around specific plants or vegetation changes or etc. that are not actually relevant to my part of the world, or etc.

Nonetheless, my thoughts on seasonal observances fall into the following three categories:

* * *

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Thinking harder: defund the pleasure police, pt 3

The series of posts that continues here constitutes a sequel to a previous entry I wrote about the LaVeyan principle of “Indulgence, not abstinence.”  Similarly to that entry, it too is about the further implications of that principle - specifically, the idea that the free pursuit of pleasure, defined in whatever manner suits the individual, is a fundamental good of life that therefore ought to deserve more respect than it sometimes gets.

The central argument of this series of posts is that inasmuch as indulgence is of the significance that it is, people ought not to police pleasure unless engaging in it is causing a clear-and-present identifiable harm.  Among the things this specifically means are:

  1. Do not police pleasure on the basis of accusations of falsity.
  2. Do not police pleasure on the basis of supposed awkwardness.
  3. Do not police pleasure on the basis of it allegedly revealing something one ought to feel guilt or shame over.

Observing these rules re: not judging other peoples’ pleasure makes life a more pleasurable experience for everyone.  Doing the opposite creates situations in which people are garbage toward one another for no good reason, all-too-often toward the end (whether intended or not) of promoting herd conformity.  The overarching sentiment can be summed up briefly as "just let people like what they fucking like."

This series is already-written-and-complete, but is being split into three entries spaced over several months, because i) it’s long and ii) then I don’t have to put my blog on hiatus due to being busy.  Editing it after the fact, I'm realizing that some of it is toward the extra-bitchy end of stuff that I post on this blog, but that's how it goes sometimes: I have opinions, and you can enjoy them... or not. ;)

This particular entry is especially on the longer and bitchier side, but you folks who actually like hearing me rant about politics should at least enjoy it.

* * *

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Thinking harder: defund the pleasure police, pt 2

The series of posts that continues here constitutes a sequel to a previous entry I wrote about the LaVeyan principle of “Indulgence, not abstinence.”  Similarly to that entry, it too is about the further implications of that principle - specifically, the idea that the free pursuit of pleasure, defined in whatever manner suits the individual, is a fundamental good of life that therefore ought to deserve more respect than it sometimes gets.

The central argument of this series of posts is that inasmuch as indulgence is of the significance that it is, people ought not to police pleasure unless engaging in it is causing a clear-and-present identifiable harm.  Among the things this specifically means are:

  1. Do not police pleasure on the basis of accusations of falsity.
  2. Do not police pleasure on the basis of supposed awkwardness.
  3. Do not police pleasure on the basis of it allegedly revealing something one ought to feel guilt or shame over.

Observing these rules re: not judging other peoples’ pleasure makes life a more pleasurable experience for everyone.  Doing the opposite creates situations in which people are garbage toward one another for no good reason, all-too-often toward the end (whether intended or not) of promoting herd conformity.  The overarching sentiment can be summed up briefly as "just let people like what they fucking like."

This series is already-written-and-complete, but is being split into three entries spaced over several months, because i) it’s long and ii) then I don’t have to put my blog on hiatus due to being busy.  Editing it after the fact, I'm realizing that some of it is toward the extra-bitchy end of stuff that I post on this blog, but that's how it goes sometimes: I have opinions, and you can enjoy them... or not. ;)

* * *

Sunday, August 30, 2020

Thinking harder: defund the pleasure police, pt 1

The series of posts that begins here constitutes a sequel to a previous entry I wrote about the LaVeyan principle of “Indulgence, not abstinence.”  Similarly to that entry, it too is about the further implications of that principle - specifically, the idea that the free pursuit of pleasure, defined in whatever manner suits the individual, is a fundamental good of life that therefore ought to deserve more respect than it sometimes gets.

The central argument of this post is that inasmuch as indulgence is of the significance that it is, people ought not to police pleasure unless engaging in it is causing a clear-and-present identifiable harm.  Among the things this specifically means are:

  1. Do not police pleasure on the basis of accusations of falsity.
  2. Do not police pleasure on the basis of supposed awkwardness.
  3. Do not police pleasure on the basis of it allegedly revealing something one ought to feel guilt or shame over.

Observing these rules re: not judging other peoples’ pleasure makes life a more pleasurable experience for everyone.  Doing the opposite creates situations in which people are garbage toward one another for no good reason, all-too-often toward the end (whether intended or not) of promoting herd conformity.

This entry is already-written-and-complete as of today, but I’m going to split it into three entries spaced over the next few months, because i) it’s long and ii) then I don’t have to put my blog on hiatus due to being busy.  

Today is thus merely part 1 of my extended “just let people like what they fucking like” rant. ;)

* * *

Friday, July 31, 2020

Ritual magic addendum: magical equipment

I’m increasingly thinking I may have to put this blog on hiatus for a few months or longer, as I’ve started a new project that draws on the same pool of mental energy as writing these blog entries draws on.  The amount of writing thereby being produced, while definitely good in-and-of-itself, is barely sustainable now while I’m on holidays, and thus clearly unsustainable once I go back to work in the fall.  I’ll likely still write a few more entries yet, though.

The current entry is an addendum to the previous sorcery lesson, which was in turn a concrete example of principles discussed in the greater magic entry.  Very likely there will be more than one of these addendums coming up, so as to further elaborate on previously-posted stuff.  

This particular addendum is about magical “equipment,” as while the banishing ritual I described was intended to demonstrate that there is very little equipment that ritual magic actually “requires,” there are also various reasons why one may want to get “fancier” and I thus wanted to discuss some nuances of that here.

This entry is divided into three parts:
* * *

Tuesday, June 23, 2020

On behalf of my fellow "leave me the fuck alone" -type people...

I’ve been struggling with blogging a bit for the last while, partly due to the demands of other newly-initiated projects and partly due to what might be called unfortunate and unwanted re-arising and lingering of certain past personal issues.  

The related thought that I’d like to share this month - “once a month” having been about the maximum manageable for the last while, blogging-wise - is about one of Satanic Temple’s tenets:

One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.

Two further implications that I myself take as following from this tenet are:
  1. A person is within their rights to act in whatever manner they consider necessary to secure their own bodily safety, provided that they do not thereby violate the bodily inviolability of other people.

  2. In the absence of supernatural beliefs about the soul and so forth, the mind is plausibly framed as an extension of the body; thus, any claim to a right to bodily sovereignty and privacy implicitly entails a right to sovereignty and privacy of the mind also.
In connection with world events over the last few months, I have some thoughts about 1, 2 and both together (3) to share in the entry below.

* * *

Sunday, May 31, 2020

On becoming a Satanist...

The question of wanting to become a Satanist - i.e. how does this occur to anyone as a life path to begin with? - has come up in a few recent conversations and inquiries I’ve gotten the last while.  This struck me as a good, manageable topic for a blog written in the busiest part of the current semester for me, so that’s what I will be discussing below.

Possibly the question may seem like a stupid / obvious / patronizing one to a portion of this blog’s audience, who may take the very asking of it as an offensive questioning of one’s life choices.  I think though that it’s important to try to help people who think differently from one another reach an understanding.  Toward that end here, I see three questions to answer:


* * *

Thursday, April 23, 2020

Energy meditations for bored self-isolators with no occult experience

Continuing in the spirit of my previous entry, here’s another one in the “stuff for the bored-and-anxious folks stuck at home to try” category.

The practices described here actually fall a ways outside of what most folks call ‘Satanism,’ i.e. this sort of thing is not typical either of LaVeyan or Satanic Temple practices.  Having read books in which Luciferians describe doing practices like these, frame it as if they speak as “typical” Satanists, and thereby put forward misleading impressions of what most Satanists actually believe, I would rather not be guilty of the same.

Where the meditation practices described below instead come from is an amalgamation of spiritual traditions drawn upon by diverse authors.  I find it interesting, on this front, that regardless of whether a given “New Age” author is influenced by yoga, qi gong, Westernized conceptions of “energy work” or etc., one finds similar practices, principles and visualizations described again and again.

An orthodox LaVeyan would typically be dismissive of this kind of thing, inasmuch as wishful thinking and practitioner attempts at self-elevation via snake-oil selling are always a potential concern.  And I would argue that inasmuch as the fifth Satanic Temple Tenet references the importance of beliefs having a scientific grounding, the default in that denomination too would appear to exclude practices of this kind.  As a heterodox practitioner and chaos magician myself though, I find that conceptions pertaining to what other spiritual folks often call “energy” can be of use, if kept within their proper context - as I’ll explain more below.

This entry has three sections:

* * *

Saturday, March 21, 2020

Ritual magic for bored self-isolators with no occult experience

I was just starting to dredge up some time to write something on here before everything went crazy with the pandemic and I suddenly had 10x extra work.  But since I’ve currently got it down to a much more manageable 9x extra work (ha, ha, ha…), I’d like to take some time here to fulfill a favor to a close friend who has asked me if I could provide more detail about how to do ritual workings.

What follows are instructions on how to do a banishing ritual.  This is a good kind of ritual to “practice” with because it’s meant to reset and refresh, and hence if one was so inclined, one could probably do it every day and get some benefit out of it - especially now, perhaps? I had mentioned previously in my entry about Satanic ritual practice that this kind of ritual is handy for people who struggle with “work coming home with me” or with separating themselves from negativity on social media.  Please note though that this is not to make any kind of objective/scientifically-researchable claims about benefits - subjectively, you might feel better after is all I’m saying.

This entry is divided into the following subsections:


I advise reading it to the end before attempting anything.

* * *

Saturday, February 8, 2020

Doing the Dark Lord's work on the dance floor

I got a lot of positive feedback for the DJ set I played at Friends of Satanic Temple's event at Broken City on Fri Feb 7, so it seemed worthwhile to post a playlist. 

Usually when I DJ I don't plan anything ahead of time - DJing is noteworthy as being one of the only activities I enjoy that has this degree of spontaneity to it.  In this instance, however, I saw a lot to be said for extensive pre-planning, as I wanted to make sure I made the best use of the opportunity to present some songs with lyrics that I thought really speak to either the aesthetic of Satanism generally or the political activism of Satanic Temple more in particular.  I'm very happy with what resulted, and hope the attendees were as well!

* * *

Sicut Superius Et Inferius - Jinx's Playlist

Ghost - Year Zero
Nine Inch Nails - Heresy
Harsh R - In League With Satan
Ghost Twin - Mystic Sabbath
Pop Will Eat Itself - Ich Bin Ein Auslander
Stromkern - Heretic III (Revolution)
Helium Vola - Omnis Mundi Creatura
Rotersand - You Know Nothing
Laibach - Tanz Mit Laibach
Die Krupps - Fatherland (Sisters of Mercy Rmx)
VnV Nation - Epicentre
Imperative Reaction - Functional
God Module - Rituals
Uberbyte - Under the Cross
Noisuf-X - Toccata Del Terrore
Electric Hellfire Club - Unholy Roller
Santa Hates You - Scum
PreEmptive Strike 0.1 - Hubris (Infinite)
Ashbury Heights - Bare Your Teeth
X-RX - Hard Bass, Hard Soundz
Killing Miranda - Discotheque Necronomicon
Rammstein - Links 2 3 4
Rotting Christ - Grandis Spiritus Diavolos
Dissection - Black Dragon

* * *

By far my favorite part of this endeavor was getting an actual dance floor for those last two songs, as that is not something one normally expects to see for black metal.  Then again though, as multiple people pointed out to me, "I have never heard Dissection played a club before," and so, one doesn't know if one doesn't try.  I had anticipated via checking the BPM that there was at least a possibility, so I am glad others appeared to agree.

Now, personally, I think a LaVeyan Satanist DJ playing a 218-Current-band's song at a Satanic Temple event is a beautiful illustration of Satanic ecumenism, but maybe that's just me. ;)  At minimum though, doing something like that is illustrative of why, though I often refer to the LaVeyan framework in explaining myself (since it's been 25 years of that now for me), I increasingly tend to identify as a "heterodox" Satanist. 

As I said to a few folks at the event, "I believe in everything that Satanic Temple stands for... it's just that I also believe in some other things." 

And so, if any new readers happening by are interested in details of just how into that "black dragon" I am, I recommend taking a look at the entry I wrote awhile back about Azerate and the other related entries linked from that one, as I do think that series was probably the most "heterodox" thing I've written thus far.

Anyway though, the bottom line is, I'm glad the event did so well and I look forward to the possibility of being involved in more like it in the future.

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Pride vs. humility

A couple of reasons for writing today’s entry about pride vs. humility:

1) On the surface level, the endorsement of pride and rejection of humility seem like an obvious front on which LaVeyan Satanism may appear to be strongly at odds with traditional religious values, and/or dysfunctional in the values it espouses.  

I like to think the negative impression is weaker than in the past as far as the pride part goes, inasmuch as there are positive social movements with “pride” in the name these days - i.e. I get the impression that most people understand pride as a thing that is bad in excess rather than bad-as-such, which is then what LaVeyan Satanism itself says anyhow.  The humility part is worth addressing though, as while there are aspects of humility that I think LaVey does make valid points against, I would ultimately contend that the resulting anti-humility stance does not amount to anti-questioning-yourself, anti-admitting-you-are-fallible or etc.

2) Pride and humility are actually both more complex concepts than one may initially think.  I would thus argue that often when there is an apparent clash of values between two different religions on this front - e.g. between LaVeyan Satanism and Christianity - it is possible to at least partially reconcile this clash by recognizing that in fact the two parties mean different things via some of the words they are using, and thereby end up talking past one another.

My contention then would be that beneath the way each religion talks about pride and humility, whether as good or bad, there is fundamental agreement about what makes for a good human life, vs. the surface argument merely reflects different views about what is the most worrisome way to go astray from this vision of the good.

This entry is divided into three sections:
  1. Some examples of apparent clashes
  2. Complexities of pride and humility
  3. Reconciling apparent clashes
* * *