This was preached by Pastor Johnny at Church of the Morningstar on 12/19/20.

What do you think of when you hear the words “idolatry” or “idol worship?” Golden calves? Superstition? Ignorance? Bloody sacrifice? Wild orgies? Whatever images pop into your mind, they probably come from the Hebrew Bible. Across many books and many passages, the prophets rail against idolatry. 

They portray the worship of idols as empty, foolish, and spiritually bankrupt. “Who would fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good?” asks Isaiah. “Look, all its devotees shall be put to shame; the artisans too are merely human.” The argument is that man-made Gods are worthless and unreal. 

A true God, according to Isaiah, must be the creator of all. Before God, human beings must be profoundly small and infinitely powerless. For a human to create a God is both backwards and blasphemous. 

Of course, as a group of Satanists, Pagans, Discordians, and Chaotes, we have radically different ideas about Gods and the role of humanity. Many of us believe that humans create our own deities, to a greater or lesser extent. All of us embrace our own divine capacity to co-create reality. Most of us cherish altars and sacred images, though few of us bow down before them. Some of us even worship ourselves—I am one of this group. In other words, we are all idolators. 

Today I intend to defend idolatry—the beautiful, radical and misunderstood practice of worshipping the finite and revering the small. 

Christians talk about God as “creator” and us as his “creatures.” This language quite intentionally places humanity in a subservient role. The creator must be obeyed, and is due worship, simply because he made us. Implicit in this philosophy is the idea that he can unmake us as well. “I will uproot your sacred (Asherah) poles from among you and destroy your towns,” says Yahweh through the prophet Micah. Needless to say, this is far from the only dire threat Yahweh makes against humanity in the course of the Hebrew Bible. In fact, as threats from God go, it’s pretty tame. I choose this one in particular because it’s connected to the argument against idolatry. Yahweh made you, Yahweh can destroy you—furthermore, if you have the audacity to make anything yourself, and hold it dear, Yahweh can destroy that as well. 

One thing Satanism does is challenge the notion that the creator must automatically be worthy of worship. I don’t personally consider Yahweh the creator, but even if I did, why would mean that I must bow to him? In fact, there can be great power in rejecting the one who made you—especially if that maker is evil. Based on what I know of this congregation, I’d say a solid majority of us have at least one abusive parent. We have learned the hard way that the ones who gave you life cannot necessarily be trusted, do not always deserve respect, and frequently, must be resisted and disobeyed in the name of our own dignity, sanity, survival, and growth. 

The stories we hold dear—that of the fall of Lucifer from Heaven, and of Adam and Eve from Eden—richly transmit this truth. Both of these are tales of growing up, and separating from a tyrannical Father in order to pursue autonomy. Given some of our backgrounds, it’s small wonder we relate to these tales. 

So we have demolished one argument against idolatry—that the creator, and only the creator, must be worshipped. As poignant as our rejection of this dogma may be, it’s probably the least interesting and most obvious point that I am going to make today. Let’s move on, and investigate the second objection—that human-made gods are unreal and worthless. 

Since the Enlightenment, it has become popular for atheists to argue that all gods are human-made, and therefore unreal. This is a good argument, as far as it goes. But most of us are not atheists here. This was the argument of the modern period. As we have moved into post-modernism, things have gotten weirder, and more interesting. 

In the post-modern period, we can consider that maybe gods do exist, precisely because we invented them. Since the 19^th century, western magicians have become interested in the notion of egregores. Deriving from the term grigori, which refers to the Watcher angels, egregore describes an entity given life by the focused thoughts of many people. These “thought forms” are supposed to be real, autonomous spiritual beings possessed of self-awareness, and they can be incredibly powerful. Those of us who are influenced by Chaos magick may even believe that all gods are, in truth, egregores, born from collective human imagination. Writers like Terry Pratchett—who is underappreciated as a theologian—have toyed with the idea that it is human worship that makes gods real and powerful. They rely on us as much as we rely on them. The relationship then becomes symbiotic. Instead of a cosmic authoritarian regime wherein humans must cower under the boot of God, we enter into a dynamic of mutual nurturance with our deities.

This is idolatry par excellence, wherein the purest generative power is the human imagination. A thoughtful, loving, and playful idolatry. Gods are no longer formed out of wood or stone, but from passion, ideals, and devotion. We give them form with the sacred images we make, we feed them with our prayers and offerings. At one time, Yahweh, too, was worshipped in this way—you can easily see this in the earlier books of the Hebrew Bible, wherein he is plied with incense and animal sacrifices. Eventually, however, he becomes the corporate monopoly of egregores, “too big to fail.” He does not need the incense and the burnt offerings the way less popular deities do. He even begins to reject them. 

A typical Christian, of course, could never accept the idea of an egregore. Only God creates, after all—we are but creatures, with nothing divine about us. Ours is not to make. Just to needle such a person, and to make a theological point, I might reference Genesis 3:22, wherein Yahweh admits, “The man has become like one of us,” meaning godlike. This is shortly after Adam and Eve have eaten the forbidden fruit, and shortly before Yahweh throws them out of Eden. In this passage, Yahweh himself agrees with what the Serpent said earlier, in Genesis 3:5: “for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” God confirms the serpent’s statement—no lies detected here!—and affirms that Adam and Eve have, in fact, gained Godlike attributes. They lack only immortality, and God spitefully drives them out of Eden that they may not eat from the Tree of Life and gain this as well. We are therefore theologically justified, from the Enemy’s own book and in his own words, in considering ourselves, as humans, to be divinities, and in granting ourselves a participating role in creation. 

We are small gods—not omnipotent, not omniscient, and hardly omnipresent. But we have a share in the group project which is the generation of reality itself. Everything we do leaves an imprint, however small, on the universe. Our actions have consequences. Maybe this is what it means to know good and evil. 

Let’s look at a scathing anti-idolatry screed of Isaiah’s, keeping in mind what we have discussed about egregores and creation and human divinity.

“ISAIAH 44:13 The carpenter stretches a line, marks it out with a stylus, fashions it with planes, and marks it with a compass; he makes it in human form, with human beauty, to be set up in a shrine.”

Human form, with human beauty—were we not supposedly made in God’s image to begin with? Were not we humans empowered by the fruit of knowledge to carry not only the likeness of divinity, but its spark as well? What on earth is wrong with reverence for human form and human beauty? 

I, for one, would love to see us treat it with more respect! We are harsh on ourselves, punishing our bodies with the legacy of Christian guilt and Victorian prudery. We are told vanity is a sin, so we think it is virtuous to hate ourselves. We look in the mirror with total ingratitude, seeing only flaws, ignoring whatever youth, health and beauty we may have until it is too late. Years later, when we are old and feeble, we may look at old photos of ourselves and sigh wistfully, finally admitting, “Gosh, I was a cute!” But not now. We aren’t supposed to see it now. The gifts of the flesh must be scorned when they are here and mourned when they are gone. Don’t you dare worship the human body—your own, or another’s. 

 “ISAIAH 44:14 He cuts down cedars or chooses a holm tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it.”

This bit of mundane detail is worth analyzing. I’ve spoken mainly about what the prophets have to say against idolatry as worship of, essentially, works of art—figures of carved wood and stone. But there is another part to idolatry that the prophets of the Bible condemn—worship of sacred hills, rocks and trees. Isaiah seems to be criticizing reverence both for the trees and for the idols carved from them. Neither the beauty of nature nor of art should be adored. Nothing material can be sacred to him. 

 “ISAIAH 44:15-16 Then it can be used as fuel. Part of it he takes and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Then he makes a god and worships it, makes it a carved image and bows down before it. 16 Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he roasts meat, eats it and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, “Ah, I am warm, I can feel the fire!”

Isaiah criticizes the mundane usages that are made of the parts of the wood that do not become the idol. “How can you worship something made of the same stuff that you burn to cook over and to stay warm?” he is asking. To him I ask—what’s wrong with that? It sounds like you are asking, “How can you worship something made of a material that sustains your existence?” The spare wood from the idols does not go to waste—it helps to keep you from starving or freezing to death. This pragmatism does not seem in the least bit profane to me. Even if the only thing your God ever does is feed you and keep you warm, hey, that’s more good than many people get out of religion these days!

 “ISAIAH 44:17 The rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, bows down to it and worships it; he prays to it and says, “Save me, for you are my god!”

Isaiah thinks it absurd that a man can make a god and then expect it to be able to save him. But we in this church recognize what Isaiah’s carpenter is doing: magick. Every one of us who has sketched a sigil or made a thought-form servitor has done the same thing—created a spiritual entity for the purpose of helping us. 

Idolatry and magic go hand in hand in the Bible as well. The Prophet Micah has this to say:

“12 and I will cut off sorceries from your hand, and you shall have no more soothsayers; 13 and I will cut off your images and your pillars from among you, and you shall bow down no more to the work of your hands.”

Connecting idolatry and magic makes just as much sense to us as it does to Micah, even though we view these things in a positive sense. 

A magician or a witch is a person who engages intentionally in the construction of spiritual reality. A witch or magician engages tactilely with their Gods and with other things unseen. The altars, the incense, the images, the bells and candles and ceremonial daggers, the chalices and censors and crystals—all these are handles that allow us to grasp at, and manipulate, some aspect of the divine. We understand that spiritual essence resides in these objects, and in us. Material things are imbued with sacredness, no less because of their fragility or impermanence. 

And so are we. 

In the spirit of Antichristmas, I want to close this reflection with some thoughts on the most unholy idolatry of all—the worship of the self. 

I believe, you see, in a God that resides in me. No, this God doesn’t just reside in me—it IS me, the best part of me, the most ideal version of me. My apotheosis. This God is the only God I worship on my knees. Satan introduced me to this God, just as he introduced Eve to the God within her. 

“Don’t worship me,” the Devil said, “Worship this, this sacred thing which is in you. Bow down to this divinity! Prostrate before It! Surrender and yield to the limitless potential that dwells in your spirit. Pray to your eternal soul! Beg It to descend and grant you Its wisdom, Its strength, Its courage and grace! Thank It every day for Its gifts. And see, this body of yours is Its temple! Treat it well. Adorn it with jewels. Rub it with oils and perfumes. Make it a glittering shrine. Feed it with rich foods and sensual indulgences. 

“And rejoice! For the coming of the Antichrist is at hand.

“Yes, the Antichrist! The fully human, fully divine being which You are at your best! To say that only Christ was god made flesh is high blasphemy against You. You, too, are fully human and fully divine. 

“Christ means anointed. You are Antichrist. You are not anointed because You are not one, but many. Each and every human being is a God on Earth and not one is chosen to stand above others! That is why the Beast has many heads, and all of them are crowned.

“Do not bow to me. Bow to the That Which You Should Be. Submit utterly to what You know in Your heart is right, for You are a God knowing good and evil. Obey the voice of Your true self in all things, and never surrender to any other will. 

“Worship that God, that it may be! Worship your potential, that it may come to bloom! Create the shrine that divinity may dwell in it. Do not neglect the sacrifices and oblations—to eat, to sleep, to bathe, to care for the temple. 

“Sculpt and carve and perfect the wood and stone of your spirit. Make of yourself an idol, something worth adoring. 

“And one day, may you look into the mirror and see the eyes of God looking back at you.”

Nema.