On Faith

My friend Buffy ( http://gaytheistagenda.lavenderliberal.com/ ) recently emailed my a rather amusing assumption about Satanists. What's worrying is not this particular display of non-joined-up thinking but that people still seem to have these ideas so let's go through some of the myths about Satanists.

(UPDATE: Two corrections: The first is that, while I have heard followers of the Temple of Set refered to as "Setites" (although never by members of the Temple), the correct term is actually "Setians". Secondly, I have been informed that members of the Temple do not consider themselves Satanists. To save me rewriting this whole article and because people (including me) often think that they do, I'm leaving the article as is but let's remember that in future. Apologies and thanks to Magister Robert Adams for those corrections)

Satanists worship the Devil - Both true and false. This depends on which denomination of Satanists you're talking about. The LaVeyans (followers of Anton LaVey) don't believe in a devil and don't worship anything (except, possibly, the self). The Temple of Set (aka Setites or Setians) don't worship but do seek to emulate Set (Satan) as a model of philosophical enlightenment. Luciferians (the denomination I follow) [i]do[/i] worship Lucifer (Satan) whom we see as the kinder, fairer deity. The remaining catch-all category (which has a dozen names, mostly derogatory but which I call "Dabblers") of teen posers, shock rock musicians and the mentally unstable have a wide variety of beliefs.

Satanists sacrifice animals - Categorically false, at least with regard to the three main denominations. While animal sacrifices do happen on occasion, they are invariably linked to teen posers with no real understanding of the belief system or stoned rock muscians (Ozzy Osbourne will never live that down). In my adult lifetime, I have owned one rat and four cats. The rat died of old age. One of the cats died of conplications from FIV, which she already had when we took her in. Another died of a massive heart attack caused by a heart deformity. The other two, Sandy & Suki, are still with us and spend most of their time snoozing by the fire, eating, playing and being pampered.

Satanists sacrifice/molest babies - Again, completely untrue. Amid the Satanic Panics of the 1980s, this was often alleged but not one of the charges was ever confirmed. Even in the famous McMartin primary school case, there was not one shred of physical evidence and the stories of the children were frequently self-contradictory. It has also been alleged that Satanists keep women as "breeders" and sacrifice their offspring. Problem here, even leaving ethics aside, is that repeated pregnancies without long gaps between will cause severe internal damage to a woman's plumbing. Also, psychologically, people just don't work that way. While it is possible to brainwash someone into allowing their own child to be killed, it can't be done consistently and repeatedly. It requires close supervision and constant reinforcement, both of which would be noticed by anyone observing the woman. The saying "death to the world" which Luciferians sometimes use is not a directive to mass murder but a shorthand way of expressing a continuing process of turning away from the physical and selfish world and toward a world of spirit and service.

Satanists sacrifice something - The only things sacrificed are pinches of herbs and suchlike. They're symbolic. Lord Lucifer, to secure free will and moral self-determination for humans, sacrificed his good name, rank, place in heaven and human trust. We sacrifice a few pinches of dried herbs to remind us of that sacrifice.

Satanists hold orgies - They're recreational and entirely optional, not a required part of the faith.

Satanists have no morals - Again, completely untrue. Actually, we have a moral code which is often more exacting than those of conventional faiths because ours is not derived from a book or a preacher but arrived at through deep thought and experiance. What we do not have are sins, at least not in the conventional sense. LaVeyans don't have sins at all but they do have quite strong codes of conduct. Setites have a whole philosophy on this that I confess to not fully understanding. Luciferians have only one sin (treating another as a thing, a tool for your own gratification or glory). That is not unforgiveable but it is a big strike against you. Likewise, we don't have Holy Books in the normal sense. Conventionally, a Holy Book is treated as the final answer and discussion is limited to how to interpret it. Among Satanists, the Satanic Bible (for example) is regarded as simply the respected opinion of one man added to the discussion.

Satanists don't believe in Hell - Depends on the denomination. LaVeyans don't, Setites have their own thoughts. Luciferians believe that, although hell is ruled by Lord Lucifer, there is a corner set aside for the truly irredemable. In that corner, those who are judged to be beyond redemption will experiance the lives of everyone they have ever affected. For example, if you're Jerry Falwell, you will experiance the life of a gay man, a gay woman, a pagan, a woman in desperate need of an abortion; and you will experiance those lives over and over and over again until finally, at the end of time, you will understand fully the consequences of your actions and what they have meant. Then, perhaps, maybe, you will be able to realise why your actions were wrong.

Satanists take drugs - No more so than the congregants of any other faith. The Dabblers often do but they're teenagers who don't understand the belief system but adopt the signs and sayings because they "look cool", not because they understand what they mean.This is akin to judging Christianity by the rock stars who wear fashion crosses.

Satanists hate Christians/Muslims/Jews - Not really. We often hate their god (although some are resolved to simply ignore him) but the individual believers, we generally view as misled and misinformed, not necessarily bad (and perhaps the kinder ones would say the same of us). Nor do we "hate you for your Christ", an absurd little bit of self-serving pablum that serves to avoid responsibility for one's own actions. If we hate you, it is because of something you have done or something we have done (we are no more immune to having assholes in our ranks than any other faith). Opinions about Jesus are divided. Some believe he never existed. Personally, I think a man called Jesus lived in the area around Galilee in the early part of the first century. He was a good man with a good message of peace, love and tolerance who was eventually killed for it (as such people tend to be), was buried and remains buried still. But I do not believe he was divine. And I think the insistence that he must have been divine does a tremendous disservice to the potential for good within the human spirit.

Satanists have a vast clandestine conspiracy - Have you ever actually met a Satanist? We tend to be individualistic, argumentative people. Getting us to agree on anything is like herding cats. We can't even agree on what to call ourselves, let alone on acting in concert and in secret for years.Also, consider the sheer numbers required to pull this off. Conspiracies sometimes happen in the real world but the ones that remain secret for very long are the ones with very few people in on the secret. JFK could have been assassinated by a team of perhaps half-a-dozen and so, it's just about possible that could have been done and kept quiet. A vast conspiracy of hundreds of individuals could not be kept secret for very long.

Satanists practice magick - This one's true, after a fashion. Without wishing to write a whole dialectic on the nature of magick, it can be thought of as a way of harnessing the inate power of the human spirit to tilt probabilities very slightly toward one's objective. It is unreliable, draining and often doesn't work. When it does work, the most it can do is affect things very slightly. It cannot violate the laws of nature. We can't hurl fireballs down main street, glamour nubile young things into bed and no amount of magick can bring back the dead. If you ask for anything very much, it's going to fail. The very most you can do is very gently place your thumb on the scales of fate and if the probability is very much against what you want happening, forget it. No-one has that much power. In general, trying to do anything real by magick is going to be a pointless excercise in futility but, if you're desperate enough, sometimes it's worth a try. Even here, the ethic of reciprocity (aka the Golden Rule) holds sway. No-one but the psychopaths go around trying to level death curses on others just for the hell of it (pun intended). Oh, and the additional "K" is purely to distinguish it from the conjurer's craft of illusion, there's no spiritual or historical reason for it.

Satanists don't believe in god/spirit X - Entirely down to the individual. Some believe in no deities but Satan and Jehovah, others believe in whole hosts of them. Personally, I believe that other deities may or may not exist but this one is sacred to me.

Satanists don't help others - This is untrue. We have as many individuals of charitable intent in our ranks as any other faith. The Devil's Apocrypha (a novel which acts as a good primer to Luciferian thought) contains the line "if the lot of man is to improve, the seer must be the doer". What that means is that, if faced with injustice or suffering, it is not enough to pray about it or moan about how awful it is; get up off your knees and do something about it. So we have many charitable persons in our fold. What we do not do is talk about it. There are four reasons for that. The first is that, knowing charity came from a Satanist might disincline them from taking it. The second is that charity should not be given for plaudits. It should be something you do for it's own sake, not so that others will tell you how wonderful you are. Thirdly, knowing that charity came from a particular person (and this applies only to individuals, not to charitable bodies or governments) would create a sense of obligation to that person. The receipiant is likely to see it as a favour that must be repaid and that goes against the spirit of charity. However, if the recipient simply receives a stroke of good luck or good will, they can go on with their lives, self-sufficient and owing nothing. Finally, disclosing such charity could lead into a compteition of who is most charitable. It's not a contest.

Satanists proselytise the young - Satanists don't proselytise anyone. It is (not "commandment", that's the wrong word) strongly suggested that we not proselytise to anyone, ever. We can talk about our faith, answer questions or correct misperceptions (such as I'm doing here) but we cannot suggest someone else try it out. The whole point of Lucifer's rebellion was free will and moral self-determination. To foist our faith upon another would violate their right to make their own moral choices. That's not to say we can't intervene to prevent harm. For example, no-one is going to quibble with the Satanist who tackles an axe-weilding psycho but we cannot press our faith upon others. Each of us has their own spiritual path to walk and we learn as much, if not more, by the journey as we do by the destination. If your journey leads you to us, great. If not, that's fine too. It is your journey and no-one can walk it for you.

Satanists have wild sex - Jealous?

How do you know Satan will win? - We don't. Winning or losing the great celestial war is not the point. First off, one must realise that this is not a battle in the sense that we think of one. We're not talking here of squads of cavalry charging across plains. It's closer to trying to win the hearts and minds of a populace stuck in the middle. But whether we win or lose doesn't really matter. I like to explain by analogy: There was a time during World War II, before the Americans joined in, when Britain stood virtually alone in Europe against the Nazis. Defeat seemed certain. Should the British have surrendered? Of course not. We should have, and did, fight with every breath in our bodies for as long as we could hold out because it was morally right to do so. We hold God to be the worst dictator, the greatest monster that ever existed. Worse than Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot ever dreamed of being. Should we bend knee to a being like that? No, he is not worthy of worship, worthy of nothing except to be fought and so, we fight. Because tyrants must be fought, because it is morally right to do so. We willingly choose to damn ourselves because we cannot and will not give even nominal approval to a monster. Eternity is a very long time to live with yourself and even if we have no hope of winning, we will always know that we did what was right.

Dude, Where's My Religious Rights?

I am a man of faith. I am a Luciferian Satanist. In extremely simplified terms, that means I believe that Satan (whom we call Lucifer) exists and is best described as a noble rebel against an unjust and tyrannical God. That's extremely simplistic as I don't wish to bore you by explaining the theology but those are my beliefs. It's an unorthodox faith, certainly, but faith all the same. A friend once described it as similar to the internal struggle at Disney. Roy Disney (playing Lucifer here), while remaining loyal to the ideals and dream of Disney, became dissatisfied with the direction Michael Eisner (God) was taking the company and attempted to organise a revolt of stockholders (the rest of us). It's a good analogy and, for the most part, it works. Lord Lucifer is not some medieval loanshark stalking New England offering to exchange souls for material wealth. He (and the masculine is used purely for convienience) is former upper-management attempting to organise resistence to the regime of the existing CEO. Yes, He is also a general but this war will not be fought on the plains of Israel but in the hearts and minds of all of us.

I explain this not because I'm trying to convert you (actively seeking to convert others is not allowed) but so that you have some idea of where I'm coming from and don't fall prey to the common misconceptions of my faith. The right like to talk a great deal about their religious freedoms, usually when they're not under threat. The argument is near-constantly made that the legality of same-sex marriage in some states or abortion is an attack on their religious liberties. Naturally, that's not only wrong but ridiculously wrong. The simple existence of something you disapprove of doesn't threaten your rights but, to take their argument at face value, what about my religious rights?

See, your Constitution (and Article 9 of the ECHR which the UK is a signatory to) makes no distinction between religions. It says that your faith (or lack thereof, and the ECHR makes that part explicit) is on exactly the same level as my own. Your religious rights do not trump mine, regardless of our respective numbers. The documents do not say "all religions except Satanism". If you believe your religious freedoms must be legally respected, you have to respect mine as well and the disproportionate numbers of Christianity make precisely no difference. The ECHR also explicitly guarantees the right to freedom from religion and to freedom to change one's religion. Those rights are implicit in the First Amendment to the Constitution but they are not codified (that is, made explicit by being written down).. So, we're on equal grounds, right?

In which case, why should your religious rights trump mine with regard to same-sex marriage. My faith says that, in the wild dance of creation, some will love the opposite sex and some will love the same sex and it's all good. Love, real love, is a merging of souls and the love shared between two men or two women is exactly the same in quality as the love shared between a husband and wife so why should we take issue with two people's love because the bodies their souls currently reside in share the same configuration of genitals? My faith says that love should be preserved wherever possible. I hold a minister's license and I will happily marry any two people who want to be married (due to the UK laws, it won't carry any legal weight until registered though). Since the only arguement against same-sex marriage is religious (and it is, the other arguments can be disposed of in a matter of seconds), why should your religious objections to same-sex marriage trump my own religious beliefs which says that same-sex marriage is just as laudable as hetero marriage? Do you only respect that faith which agrees with you? Well, probably you do because if you're arguing against same-sex marriage, you're probably a militant fundie and the hallmark of militant fundies (of any stripe, both theist and atheist) is the utter belief in their own rightness.

In fact, that's true generally. In the US (and almost uniquely in the US), the populace impose their own religious test on public officials. With a very few exceptions, non-Christians cannot get elected. In coded language, the argument is often made that you can't trust them because they're not Christian. Can you imagine if there was ever any kind of similar whisper campaign against a Christian candidate? Can you imagine if there was robocalls saying "Senator Bachman worships a sadistic sky-god who sacrificed himself to himself to appease himself"? Bill O'Lielly wouldn't shut up about it for a year. See, we believe that God really does disapprove of same-sex marriage. We believe that God does that because God is a sadistic bastard who doesn't want people to be happy but I'm curious why you guys think that a benevolent God doesn't want gay people to be happy. Does your God create people with the express purpose of being abused? I think so but you guys tend to disagree.

I don't live in the USA but if I did, chances are my religious beliefs would be abused all the time. I believe it is a moral wrong to allow people to be denied healthcare but your country (or at least, the right-wing who run the country) seem to think it would be a sin to provide healthcare. I believe it is a moral wrong to deny gay people the chance to be happily married and a significant portion of your nation wants to enshrine that moral wrong in law. Would my religious rights be infringed by a law which I consider to enshrine a sin? If not, then your religious rights are also not being infringed by recognising same-sex marriage. If so, then our faiths are considered to be legally equal so why are my religious rights being trumped by yours?

Faith can be a great thing for some people. Some of us find peace, purpose or wisdom in a faith. Others find them in a philosophy or in the works of great minds and that's all good (my faith is the right one for me, whether it is right for you is a decision you have to make on your own). Some find the inspiration in their faith to do great things, such as the Rev Martin Luther King or Dr Barnado. But when religion becomes not a matter of faith and introspection but a matter of dogma, when it becomes a case not of faith in the deity or the teachings but in the institution and rules, it becomes a tool for evil. When the institution of a faith views itself as a tool for shaping law, then that institution will act to preserve the world as it wishes the world to be. Faith is about the search for the self, it isn't (or shouldn't be) an excuse for forcing others to live your way.

I've read the Bible, many times. Jesus had some admirable things to say and his teachings stand by themselves. Assuming we take the Bible as an accurate record (I don't but many do), Jesus spoke at great length and with eloquence about the plight of the poor, about social justice, about equality and tolerance and the need for good people to aid others. Granted, it's been a while but I don't remember anywhere where he says "QUEERS NOT INCLUDED".

An Immoral Society

No, I'm not talking about abortion.

Most of the USA describe themselves as Christian. I'm not Christian but I am a man of faith and yet, I have to wonder if those calling themselves Christian have actually read the words of Jesus. Mahatma Gandhi once said something to the effect that he would love Christians if he'd ever actually met one. While the right likes to mouth pieties like a drunken televangelist, how many have actually compared their actions to the teachings of Jesus?

For example, Jesus, like many religious figures, had a lot to say about poverty. He said that the poor would always be with us but also that alleviating poverty was a noble calling. Jesus didn't have much to say about economics but what he did say is closest to a form of proto-socialism. So how come so many Americans revile the poor and resent the state making any provision for them? Poverty is a moral issue but while the right seems to interpret that to mean that the poor are poor due to some moral failing, the left tends to interpret it as being our moral duty to help the poverty stricken. So many American Christians seem to believe that the Bible condemns socialism or communism. This proves that not only do they not understand the meaning of the words, they don't understand their own Bible very well either. The Bible doesn't say word one about either (unsurprisingly) but it's very much in favour of sharing one's wealth and goods with the poor.

Or take gay rights. Yes, yes, there's a couple of clobber verses which can be read to apply to homosexuality but none of them come from Jesus, they all come from the Old Testament or Paul. Jesus hung out with moneychangers and hookers, does anyone sane really think he'd have a problem with committed same-sex couples being given some legal rights? And if so, no-one is offering to legislate my religion.

Which brings us onto another point: The frightening number of Christians who honestly believe that the USA is a Christian nation. Firstly, the Founders said pretty much the exact opposite but more to the point of this article, Jesus warned you not to do this! "Render unto Caesar" wasn't just a snappy comeback, it was an endorsement of the separation of church and state. Jesus lived (assuming he existed, naturally) in a society which had no such separation and he personally saw the mess that resulted. He told you not to pray in public as well but you ignore that.

Why do so many Christians disregard the teachings of their founder in favour of ultra-right politics? Because for many, they are not Christians. They follow a religion which may be described as the "Cultus Americanus". A religion which grew out of but is distinct from Christianity in the same way as Mormonism. A religion which exists purely to provide divine blessing to ultra-right politics. In Crazy For God, Frank Schaeffer talks candidly about the swift mutation of the Religious Right that he helped create from a religious movement to an extension of the ultra-right wing of the Republican party (Schaeffer now regrets and is trying to make amends for most of what he did during that period). The Cultus Americanus pays lip service to the teachings of Jesus but places the teachings of Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh on much the same level. They have their own high priests (Bill O'Lielly, Rush, Grover Norquist); their own devil figure (Clinton although Obama is getting there) and their own set of values. For example, the poor should be left to starve, lying is perfectly acceptable in the service of the faith, blind obedience is preferable to examined faith and it has the same cultish brainwashing tendencies as Scientology.

As a student of history and religion, the emergent faith is fascinating to observe. As someone who has to share the planet with these lunatics, it's terrifying.