left-hand-path-notes:

1. Who is Lucifer/Satan (or your Luciferian figure) and who are they to you? Feel free to include multiple answers if you have multiple figures.

I mean, literally, Lucifer. The Fallen Angel of Christianity. When I say I’m a theistic Satanist, I mean that exactly. The whole shebang, with the witchcraft and the Adversary and the demon worship. All dat.

As to who he is to me, he’s the great liberator. I recently saw a long discussion on whether or not Lucifer is a Promethean figure, but to me he is. I identify Lucifer with the serpent in the garden, and see him as being responsible for offering humanity the gift of knowledge that was withheld from us by TBUT. He gathers the fallen and the outcast to himself, offering a place for those who can’t or won’t abide by the conflicting and arbitrary rules of a mad god. He’s a wonderful power that whispers to me that I cna be whole and worthy without amputating massive portions of myself.

He is Lucifer, Master of Hell, Prince of the Power of the Air, Satan, the Great Adversary, the Beast, King of Earth, and I love him and want to make love to him, and be possessed by him and live in his light. I’m a little crazy about my faith.

2. Are you atheist, agnostic, or theist, and why?

I am a theist. All my life, I’ve felt the presence of deities and spirits. I’m felt the close, suffocating intensity of TBUT. I’ve felt the bro-ish, casual amusement and self aggrandizement of Jeebus. I’ve felt the laughter and mischief of Eris. I’ve felt the silent, alien regard of what I call wraiths. And I’ve felt the pressure of shouting ghosts and echoes on Samhain, when the veils are thin and the dead wish to communicate so badly that the silent chorus gives me migraines if I’m not protected well enough.

There’s every chance I’m crazy. I’m certainly medicated. But, I choose for myself to believe that there’s something more and that I can communicate with it.

3. What drew you to this path? How long have you been on it?
4. What was your religion/belief before this? How has it influenced you as a Luciferian/Satanist?

I’ll answer these together, as it’s the same answer for both, mostly. Directly before, I was a lackadaisical Hellenic pagan. I rarely talked to deity and deity rarely talked back. It was a quiet, tired sort of “well, there must be something, so I guess I’ll just pick one” sort of faith. But before that, I was mystic catholic, and that’s where my journey starts. It’s a simultaneously pantheistic and monotheistic faith. One the one hand, there is only one true god. On the other, we venerated countless saints, angels and holy figures, and “asked them to intercede for us” which is a careful way of avoiding that we prayed to them as though they were mini gods.

Each one had a purview, and you chose to venerate the saints that could help you most in your daily life. There’s a patron for everything. My mother venerates St. Anthony, who finds lost things, St. Jude, who aids in lost causes, and the Blessed Mother, who is basically the Goddess of Catholicism (although if you call her that, they get huffy.) As a child, I venerated her patrons too, as well as St. John Vianney, patron of parish priests (because his gift was humility and I was led to believe my sin was pride.)

But yanno who tiny Mara really wanted to hang with? Demons. Here’s these minigods, and they’re all…super fucking boring. And Jesus preaches love and hate is done in his name, and TBUT is just a fucking dick. Mary is cool as shit, tho, ngl, but her big party trick is sidestepping and saying worship the dickholes, so I can’t be down with her.

But, demons. Here’s these mysterious forces that give permission to do the things that whispered in my ear. To look at beautiful boys and girls and not be ashamed for wanting to touch their skin and kiss them. To feel proud of myself without feeling guilty for stealing god’s glory. To eat without being sickened by gluttony. To want to be beautiful and feminine and loved without feeling freakish and sick and sinful.

As a child, I had the christian bastard god on one shoulder telling me I was masculine, and a sinner, and my greatest gift would be to be a vessel of grace, to lead by example in accepting my self-loathing and suffering, and the devil on the other shoulder saying “fuck that guy. You can be who you want to, do what you want to, live how you want to. Be pretty, love as many people as you want however you can, eat and know that your body is fine as it is, love yourself for you, not as a way of praising the god that demands your pain.”

And I was told that that voice of love and acceptance was evil, and the voice of pain and suffering was good and loving, and I hated myself. I hated myself intensely, passionately, self-effacingly, blindly. Because I was a sinner who wanted desperately to flee god and frolic in hell with the demons.

So I prayed harder. I leaned on the mystic side of my faith, worked energy, prayed the right incantations, but…it just felt empty. So I left. And I drifted. And I talked with Eris for a while, and gave veneration to the Hellenic pantheon, because they were kinda cool, and kinda ok with me.

But the whole time, my brain kept slipping back to demons. They fascinated me. They called to me. They offered knowledge and power and strength and acceptance and love. The devil was always close to my thoughts, and I wondered…could I take that last step, the ultimate betrayal of everything I’d been raised to believe? Could I worship the whispers in the dark, the beings that had leapt from heaven to live free in hell? Could I give myself to the only forces that had ever told me they loved me as I was?

A few weeks ago, I saw a poem on Tumblr about how Lucifer loves and accepts trans folk. And it clicked. I wasn’t alone. Others felt love from Lucifer too. Others saw the beauty in the infernal host.

I could do this. I would do this. Fuck TBUT, fuck his son-self, and with apologies to a cool ass lady, fuck his mother too. I was finally at a place where I loved myself enough to accept love from a power, and I was going to. So, now I venerate demons and talk to Lucifer.

5. How do you feel about veneration/genuflection? If you do honor Lucifer/Satan what kind of offerings you do? Why?

I think veneration is a wonderful, important part of who I am. Call me a ditz, but I believe I need to have someone bigger than me to look up to and say flowery shit to in order to feel whole. It’s part of why I’m a submissive, and part of why I feel empty without a deity in my life. That said, I’m hearing from a looooot of theistic luciferians that Lu ain’t like that, and he don’t like that. I’m not sure how to approach a power that doesn’t want worship, so I’m still working that out. Probably I’m going to end up politely worshipping him anyway, just low key and respectful like.

I’m working on a series of 13 rituals off and on right now, and one of them will be the Way of Worship, and once I get it worked out, I’ll use it to venerate Lucifer. But until then, I just talk to him a little, thank him for what he does for me, and try to find the place we’re both comfortable with.

6. Do you meditate?

Yes and no. I do a lot of breathing exercises, but I don’t “meditate” per se. I should. I could use the balance and the stillness and the self study. But I hate being in my own head for very long, so I’ve never gotten around to it. The closest I come to meditation is meditative prayer, and it’s been a while since I’ve had prayers to say. Again, working on that, but until I figure out what I want to say and how to say it, I’ll not be meditating.

7. Have you given an oath to Lucifer/Devil…why or why not?

I have not yet. I reeeeeeally want to, as it’s one of the traditional ways of revoking catholic baptism.

Part of the reason I have not is that unlearning a lifetime of fear takes time, and there’s that tiny voice whispering that “what if Mom’s right and this is all a lie?” I’m still working on overcoming it, but I have a way to go.

The other reason I haven’t yet is that most of the rituals I’ve come across either are incomplete or bind me to the land I take the oath on, and I’ll be damned (ha!) if I’m going to bind to Oklafuckinghoma if I can help it. I’m planning at the moment to modify and mix rituals so I can do a perversion of catholic baptism and dedicate myself to Lucifer. My therapist suggests doing it soon as a way of distancing myself from my birth name, while my husband suggests holding off until I change my name legally so I can have it as a rebirth celebration. I’m torn between the two, but I know that at some point I want to be oathbound to Lucifer.

8. Do you practice witchcraft? Why/why not? Is it “Devil” or “Lucifer” (a reference to Light Bringer/Bearer) involved? Why or why not?

I do practice witchcraft. I’ve been some flavor of witch for as long as I can remember, even back when I believed witches were evil and what I did was different because my deity was better than any other deity so that made it all right for me to do it. Yeah, mystic catholicism is fucking weird.

I practice because I couldn’t imagine not glaring an evil eye at someone abusing a waiter, or laying hands on friends who are in pain, or praying when I’m in need, or practicing my divination when I want to know something. I’ve always used energy work for a shit ton of stuff and sometimes I’ll pull and move energy just to feel it move, just for the comfort of knowing there’s something more. I practice quietly, and I’ve fallen mostly into an advisory role for a long time now, having fet that I’m…useless, worthless, weak, and small. I’m intrigued by the idea of apotheostic witchcraft, calling on my inner adversary to power spells, and I’ve had a little success with it so far.

I’m working more Lucifer and demons into my practice even as my witchy soul wakes back up and gets back in the swing of things. But for the moment, I’m a mostly eclectic/occultist/ritual witch who has fallen out of the habit of practicing regularly.