So, a contrary view to my post yesterday (because I am literally a Devil’s Advocate, haha):

Skepticism is not that helpful when you’re actually doing magic. I mean, you want to use discernment, but sitting there doubting that magic is real at all will get you a self-fulfilling lack of results. At least, in my experience, and in most magic philosophies I have encountered. In other words, magical thinking really is magical. 

Skepticism can’t give me the inner reserve of emotional strength that faith can. Feeling the presence of Lucifer, and even more importantly of my Inner Power, can keep me going in even the hardest of situations.

It might be right and helpful to doubt Lucifer at times, but there is no good reason to ever doubt myself. Sure, when I fail to call upon my Inner Power I can be weak, malicious, impulsive, and make bad choices. But when I keep in close contact with it, I have been astounded at how much braver, more patient, and compassionate I can be. Calling upon my own better nature has kept me sober for five plus years. It has allowed me to do things that terrify me. It has helped me be kind and restrained with even the most difficult people, a thing which, since I work in customer service, is very much to my benefit on a daily basis. Best of all, it has allowed me to heal relationships I thought I had completely destroyed during my addiction. 

I guess it’s possible to look at my Inner Power from an agnostic or even atheistic perspective. From that perspective, prayer and meditation are merely useful tools, tricks of the mind that for some reason allow me to access parts of myself that I can’t get at through pure logic or conscious thought.

But honestly, prayer and meditation, like magic, may not be the best places for skepticism. For this “trick of the mind” to really work, it may be helpful to imagine a spiritual dimension, whether that’s real or not. 

So I am torn, essentially, between the skeptical instinct to find “what is true” and the spiritual/practical drive to find “what works anyway, true or not.” And being torn is probably good, as long as it keeps me growing rather than in stasis. 

Also also also: in The Luminous Stone (which I have been citing way too frequently but hey, it’s the first and so far only book I actually have read which is entirely devoted to Lucifer as a deity), I encountered the idea that Luciferian revelation and gnosis is maybe NOT confined to the rational. Luciferian gnosis is not purely Apollonian, but also Dionysian, in other words. (Hell, I am pretty sure Apollo is not purely Apollonian in that sense, I mean, what’s all that stuff about the Oracle got to do with pure rationality?) I think that’s a very powerful idea to keep in mind. 

I really don’t want to get mired down in some dry, academic, empiricist approach to knowledge. I already know, from many personal experiences, that gut instinct and intuition can give me really important information that my conscious mind has not figured out yet. I’m talking about life-saving information, actually. I think it would be really dangerously stupid to discard truths that come from seemingly “irrational” sources, just as stupid as it would be to throw rationality out entirely. 

As hilariously paradoxical as this is (I’m a Luciferian, I’m used to paradox), I want to ask Lucifer, if he is real and if he is there, to guide my skepticism. Help me dose it properly. Help me with discernment. 

Rudolph Steiner, that fucker, would say I am torn between Luciferic mystical impulses and Arimahnic materialistic ones, and that I need Christ to mediate between the two. I think he’s got that trinity all mixed up, but nevermind. (Dammit, I am gonna have to write a post on anthroposophy soon, aren’t I?) 

I seek a Luciferian blend of spirituality with rationality (and sensuality). I want to blend the doubt and curiosity of Eve with the rational/sexual/spiritual revelation and apotheosis she gained by eating the apple. (Another note to self– write a piece analyzing Genesis 3.) 

May the path never get easier. May every revelation contain the seeds of its own debunking. May all of it always serve me well.