The Devil’s Mass: From Fiction to Reality

Our Mass of Blasphemy is one of the central rituals of the Church of the Morningstar. Though it has become a real and magically effective rite, its roots are in literature. The variant you will see tonight borrows from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Charles Baudelaire’s Litanies of Satan, and Aleister Crowley’s Hymn to Lucifer. But it owes more to one source than to any other: namely, a decadent novel called La-Bas, written by Joris-Karl Huysmans.

La-Bas is a work of fiction, but its author didn’t quite realize that. It was published in France in 1891, the same decade and country which would also see the Taxil Hoax, a satanic panic about the supposed Luciferianism of the Freemasons. The novel tells the story of Durtal, a disillusioned writer (and obvious author self-insert) who descends into the underworld of Parisian Satanism after becoming attracted to a female devil-worshipper. The book’s climax comes when Durtal attends and witnesses a blasphemous “black mass” which ends in an orgy.[1] The curse against Christ that I use in our mass comes from this scene.

La-Bas was the product of author Joris-Karl Huysmans falling in with one Joseph-Antoine Boullan, a defrocked Catholic priest turned occult charlatan.[2] Boullan claimed to be engaged in spiritual warfare with Satanists,[3] and fed Huysmans a lot of wild stories about black masses taking place in Paris.[4] La-Bas was written based on these “true” stories that Boullan told to Huysmans.[5]

If the author believed these stories, so did much of the public. Following La-Bas, there seems to have been an explosion of interest in content about “real Satanism” and a thirst to believe in its authenticity. (For instance, another piece of Satanic-themed fiction, Aut Diabolus Aut Nihil by Julian Osgood Field, was published in Blackwood magazine in 1888 and generally presumed to be a factual account.[6]) Leo Taxil saw an opportunity to jump on the Satanic trend. He had started publishing “exposes” of the links between Satanism and Freemasonry in 1885, but with limited traction. That all changed after La-Bas.  Leo Taxil was a yellow journalist and a known prankster and scam artist,[7] but Huysmans was already a respected literary figure. His publishing La-Bas lent legitimacy to the fringe conspiracy theories that Taxil had already been spreading for years.

Leo Taxil publicly admitted to his hoax in 1897, but people continued to believe La-Bas was real. Though A.E. Waite had debunked the Taxil in his book “Devil Worship in France,” he thought La-Bas was a factual account, writing:

“A distinguished man of letters, M. Huysman, who has passed out of Zolaism in the direction of transcendental religion, is, in a certain sense, the discoverer of modern Satanism. Under the thinnest disguise of fiction, he gives in his romance of La Bas, an incredible and untranslatable picture of sorcery, sacrilege, black magic, and nameless abominations, secretly practised in Paris.”[8]

Aleister Crowley made La-Bas required reading for his students, calling it “An account of the extravagances caused by the Sin-complex.”[9] And in his 1933 essay “Black Magic Is Not A Myth,” Aleister Crowley asserts that the Black Mass really is celebrated “in Paris, and even in London.”[10] While he claimed that he could not celebrate the Black Mass even had he wanted to, parts of his Gnostic mass are obviously inspired by accounts of Black Masses, notably the presence of a nude woman on the altar[11] and the inclusion of bodily fluids in the host.[12]

Anton LaVey used segments from La-Bas in his version of the Black Mass,[13] but claimed that his Black Mass was not constructed by him, rather found in the wild– “The Black Mass which follows is the version performed by the Societie des Luciferiens in late nineteenth and early twentieth century France.”[14]

Thus he continued the tradition of behaving as if content from La-Bas came from real Satanists (and also believing, or pretending to believe, that the Taxil Hoax was real). Ironically, even as he did so, he incorporated words from La-Bas into actual Satanic ritual for probably the first time.

The story of La-Bas is not of a novel that exposed Satanism. It is the story of a novel that, after a hundred years, became incorporated into real Satanism. Fact did not become fiction here, rather, fiction became fact. This is not at all unusual in the history of Satanism. After all, the idea of Satanism is centuries older than its practice. Our religion consists of reclaiming and remixing the slurs and libels that were made against us before we even existed.

This is why literature has such an important role in Satanism– it allows us to vividly imagine a history for ourselves, even if it never happened. It gives us traditions which, even if fictional, can be drawn upon. And yet because that history, and those traditions, are fictional rather than real, we can feel liberated to use or discard them however we please.

[1] Joris Karl Huysmans, La-Bas, trans. Keene Wallace (New York, NY: Dover, 1972), 240-249.

[2] Ruben van Luijk, Children of Lucifer: The Origins of Modern Religious Satanism (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016), 177.

[3] Van Luijk, 176.

[4] Van Luijk, 189.

[5] Van Lujk, 208.

[6] Van Luijk, 243.

[7] Van Luijk, 217.

[8] Arthur Edward Waite, Devil Worship in France , Project Gutenberg (London: George Redway, 1896), accessed April 15, 2025, https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/21258, 9.

[9] Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice (New York: Dover, 1976), 213.

[10] Aleister Crowley, “Black Magic Is Not a Myth,” London Sunday Dispatch, July 2, 1933, accessed April 15, 2025, https://lib.oto-usa.org/crowley/essays/black-magic.html.

[11] Magick in Theory and Practice, 350.

[12]Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law (San Francisco, CA: Weiser Books, 1976), 41. Also, Magick in Theory and Practice, 180.

[13] Anton Szander LaVey, The Satanic Rituals (New York, NY: Avon Books, 1972), 46-51.

[14] LaVey, 34.

Guest Post: Spring Reflections by Ally Nguyen and Maggie Hagg

What does it mean to celebrate the changing seasons in a world with a changing climate?

What effect does the cycle itself being altered have, magically and spiritually? 

This is something that I have thought about before, ages ago, and my answer to this is… complicated and a bit of a union of contradictions. On the one hand, as winter dies and summer becomes eternal, as the transitory seasons fade into little more than dates on a calendar, to celebrate them regardless is to keep alive their cultural memory, to honor what has been lost in a world that has forgotten. The meanings, then, shift but stay the same as powers are altered and injured. Most important to this is the factor of climate destabilization that comes with the changing climate, of course, which provide the last, rage filled hurrahs of dying spirits. 

The following is, of course, local to my conditions. 

The sun ceases to be a giver of life. Winter becomes a mild balm. The Earth brings forth her greatest monsters to destroy us from June to November, with only a slight reprieve until the heat and storms return come spring. Summer is no longer the season of fertile fields and harvests, but of every leaf and blade of grass wilting and drying and crumbling into dust. There is no longer a mild, transitory spring; it has been altered into a vengeful, chaotic spirit that brings burning heat by day and freezing cold by night. Summer is Hell, it is Fever, with the heat’s cruelty only interrupted by raging storms. Fall has almost entirely ceased to exist. For me, the seasons’ meanings have swapped places. 

The Earth is angry, it is being assaulted, to celebrate her former glories, to remember the change of the seasons, is to know our own transitory nature upon her surface. We have inhabited this place for only a short while. What is a grain of rice to a mountain? Our buildings will crumble, precious little will be left of us when we cease to exist, but the Earth will continue spinning, continue birthing new generations long after our species is forgotten. 

So why celebrate? Why not mourn? 

Because what is now and tomorrow lost will not be lost forever. The Earth remains. The meanings may shift, summer may become death and winter may become life, transitions may be lost for a time, but the Earth Remains. The seasons will return one day, whether it be in our lifetimes or long after humanity has ceased to exist, and to celebrate them now is to remember the past and hope for the future, to celebrate them rather than mourn is to pay respect to the Earth that birthed us.

-Ally Nguyen

The sun wakes us earlier and dips behind the western ridge later each day. The snow has fled to cooler climes and in its place pours rain, sometimes as a drizzle and sometimes in gusty sheets. Next week we’ll have our first day in the 70s since winter, and the heat after all that wet will bring with it thick clouds of flies. No amount of scraping of manure off the barn floor will stop this; no amount of fly tape and bait jars, no volume of apple cider vinegar splashed into standing water can hold back this tide. We do what we can to forestall and mitigate the flies, and we always seek better means and methods, but some things are simply inevitable. It is written. The eggs are laid, the maggots will hatch, and the swarm will take flight.

For longer than all of us have been alive, the seasons had a pattern: sow, grow, collect, reflect. We still act as if that pattern holds true. My neighbors have their starts growing, high tunnels and greenhouses nursing the futures of these small farms in rich black loam. Our goats have carried their kids almost to term, and in the next week there will begin a joyful splattering of milk and blood. We act as if the season of grow will follow this sowing, and we hope that the season of collection will follow that. But these years, more than those in living memory, there is a difference between what is hoped for and what is likely. Each equinox or solstice that does not bring outright calamity with it is seen as a surprise gift, unexpected and without any assurance of return. Each calamity we survive is respected for the harsh wisdom it offers.

So, on this the vernal equinox, we get our starts prepped for planting. Our goat stalls are filled with fresh clean bedding, ready for delivery. And our fly abatement program is in full swing despite the inherent futility of the project. We put in the work needed now to have the possibility of a harvest in later seasons, while actively pursuing resilience strategies to mitigate the inevitable calamities.

Spring is here. It’s time to wake the fuck up.

-Maggie Hagg

Guest Post: “Oh Spirits, Grant Me True Knowledge of How to Get to Sesame Street” by Saf

Enter, chanting:

I call upon the power of sunny days

Through the power that I channel I sweep the clouds away

My spirit travels to the realm where the air is sweet

Oh spirits grant me true knowledge of how to get to Sesame Street

I call the spirit of play to fill me

I call into being a world that is A-OK

I summon friendly neighbors and I greet them

Oh spirits grant me true knowledge of how to get to Sesame Street

I don’t remember when I started to realize that I have always venerated a long-beaked bird who teaches us the secrets of letters. 

It was some time after I had started a planetary magic practice working with Mercury, and then by way of Mercury the additional syncretized spirits of Hermes, Odin, and Thoth (and some others who came to me in visions).

I came out of my ritual chamber and said to my spouse, “I think Big Bird is an incarnation of Thoth.” And my spouse said, “Well duh.” But I do think there is merit in stating things that are obvious in hindsight but not set into words. 

Big Bird is one of the main Muppets from the children’s educational television show Sesame Street. His character was originally created in 1969. He is a seven foot tall yellow bird with a long beak, and is perpetually six years old. Thoth (to summarize very briefly)  is the Koine Greek name for the Ancient Egyptian god of writing, analysis, wisdom, magic, the moon, and many other subjects, often depicted as a person with the head of a bird with a long beak: an ibis. He is one of a number of beings who are said to have invented writing or given writing to humanity.

I don’t have any sources that suggest Big Bird was inspired directly by Thoth. However, Big Bird was recognized as an ibis by the god Osiris in the 1983 TV special Don’t Eat the Pictures, aka the one where Big Bird helped weigh hearts in the afterlife. And, given my syncretic Big Bird-Thoth practice, visiting the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (where this special was filmed) was an intense spiritual experience. Fortunately, New York City is a great place to cry in public because not only will people leave you alone, they might not even notice. 

If you didn’t know, ibises are also native to North America, and you may be able to see them where you live. The white-faced ibis can be seen on the marshes near my home, and the fist time I spotted one, my reaction was: I know him!!! 

I think Big Bird adds something valuable to Thoth: a child aspect. If Thoth gifts the letters, Big Bird learns them alongside us. He doesn’t already know them: he, along with all the others, is so excited about letters and numbers that he bursts into song. He even notably mistook ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ as a word in and of itself: ab ca deff gee jeckle menop quir stoove wixes. Which sounds very much like a grimoiric incantation to me.

Sesame Street’s own name is plausibly a pop culture magical incantation. It was inspired by the magic words “open sesame”, from the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. In fact, the first Sesame Workshop international co-production localizing Sesame Street for an Arabic-speaking country (Kuwait) was called Iftah Ya Simsim, which is Arabic for open sesame. Sesame might be magical because the seed opens in two parts, sympathetically with the cave door that needed to magically open, or simsim might be a word borrowing that has a kabbalistic meaning. The only sources I have on this one are bad quality, though, so it may as well be because sesame is delicious.

To return to Big Bird-Thoth: It made a lot of sense that writing gods would reach out to me, because I don’t remember a time before I could read. I figured out what letters were before my hands were dextrous enough to hold a crayon. Only as an adult did I learn that this is a condition called hyperlexia, and it is a form of autism. 

So, surprising no one, I became a writing teacher. I have a PhD in writing (Plato’s Phaedrus, which recounts Thoth’s invention of writing, was a required part of the curriculum). I had to re-learn how to like writing after I finished that degree, and periodically since then. Because when I’m staring at a pile of ungraded papers, policies and procedures, meeting notes, my own email inbox…I have been known to say to myself, “Literacy was a mistake.”

It’s at these times I most need to travel to the eternal magical realm of hyperlexia and benevolence, the realm of Sesame Street, and appreciate the gift that letters are.

In various traditions of magic, a magical alphabet is used to inscribe spells, either to demarcate them as “other” or special forms of writing, or because the letters or symbols themselves have power.

But I want to tell you now, the thing I remind myself when I’m tired of my job: every alphabet is a magical alphabet. Writing is itself magical. Scratched symbols representing sounds, concepts, and immense abstraction: this is a precious supernatural gift. Yes, we can use it to bore ourselves to death. But we can also use it to bless, curse, transport ourselves to other realms, learn, expand our minds, and love. My sacred mission, gift, duty, whatever, is to teach it and use it well. And Big Bird-Thoth accompanies me on my path.

May the long-necked bird who teaches letters bless us in the name of: 

ablanathanalba

ala peanut butter sandwiches

ab ca deff gee jeckle menop quir stoove wixes

iftah ya simsim

May it be so.

Love is Impatient and Unkind

A sermon preached by Pastor Johnny at Church of the Morningstar on 2/22/2025

1 Corinthians 13

If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Love is furious. Love is impatient. It has no time for hypocrisy. It does not wait, it gives no quarter. Love is tender and easily bruised. It never forgets and cannot forgive a wrong. Love is a frightened child, a cornered beast, a lonely soldier. Love aches, love burns, love rages and weeps. Love is the strongest thing in the world, and yet it cannot help itself. Love is imperfect. It often fails. Love hurts like a wound and weakens like a sickness. Yet it is all we have. 

This, too, is true of love. 

This, too, is true love.

Why am I, a Satanist, who thinks in the way that I do, preaching on 1 Corinthians 13? It is in some ways the ultimate Christian text, for it defines Christian love. There are things I like about it, things in it that I believe are true; but also, as you have heard, things I disagree with, or rather, things I think it oversimplifies. So why choose this for the basis of my sermon? Simply because these are words that haunt me, words that I struggle with– just as I am haunted by, and struggle with, love.

Love is a struggle. Love is hard. I think that is actually something Paul and I would agree on. 

This famous passage, so popularly read at marriages, is not primarily about romantic love. Invoking Paul’s words at weddings is frankly quite funny because he took a dim view of marriage– he thought it was better than having sex out of wedlock, but worse than staying a virgin (1 Corinthians 7:9). When he praises love here, he is not praising romance. In fact, the Greek word translated as “love” in this passage is not “eros,” which means sexual or romantic love, but “agape,” which is universal love, love for one’s fellows, love for God. The King James version even translates agape not as “love” but as “charity.” 

1 Corinthians is actually a letter, written by the apostle Paul to a struggling church in Corinth. It is not the first letter he wrote to them, but it is the first of his letters to Corinth that we have. It seems like the church was pretty dysfunctional. There were power struggles between leaders (1 Corinthians 1:10-12). Congregants were suing each other (1 Corinthians 6:1-7). Wealthy members were bringing their own fancy food to church meals and eating it in front of poor members, without sharing, letting them go hungry (1 Corinthians 11:-17-34). There was a tendency for everyone to speak in tongues and prophesy at once, talking over each other (1 Corinthians 14). There was even a sex scandal in the church– a man sleeping with his father’s wife (1 Corinthians 5:1-5).

It is in the context of scolding this congregation that Paul’s famous lines about love appear. This might explain why he calls out the specific attributes of love he mentions. “Love is patient,” he says to congregants so out of patience that they are taking one another to court. “It does not envy,” he says to a church locked in power struggles over leadership and prestige. “It does not boast,” he says to those who are wrapped up in showing off their wealth or their supposed spiritual gifts. “Love does not delight in evil,” he tells a man accused of adultery and incest. (Or rather, he tells this to the church members who enabled him– ‘ban that guy’ was Paul’s advice about the wrongdoer [1 Corinthians 5:13]. Even Christian forgiveness is supposed to have limits.)

I think at this juncture it would be understandable to take a second and give our Satanic selves a pat on the back for being better at loving one another than the Christian church in Corinth was. But though we are far more functional as a community than those who Paul addressed, there is still much that we can learn from 1 Corinthians and its context. We, too, are a small church of a new religion. We, too, are a marginalized and persecuted community, as the early Christians were. We, too, exist under the heel of a repressive regime. And we, too, believe ourselves to be facing down the apocalypse– and this time we have more evidence of that than mere prophecy. 

Fascism has come to America. As predicted, it came wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. Ironically, the faith that once resisted Caesar has become the religion of Empire. We are living in terrifying times, in the age of hate. I don’t have to repeat the headlines to you. You all know what is going on–racism, fascism, genocide, climate change, hypercapitalism, transphobia, surveillance, pandemics and more. It’s an ugly world we live in right now, and lately, it just keeps getting uglier. 

And that can make it hard to love. 

Yes, it’s hard to love when everything hurts. It’s hard to love when you are scared and you are overwhelmed and you can’t seem to sleep enough at night. It’s hard to love when every atrocity, every injustice, means the deep reservoir of anger in you, already too full, can’t seem to stop overflowing and flooding your nervous system and splashing on those closest to you. It’s hard to love when your body hurts and your head aches from tension, when you’re tired from fighting, or even just from hearing the news. 

And it’s even harder to love when your loved ones all feel the same way, and all of you are spiky and short-tempered once. 

Yet under that spikiness is neediness, for this is the time when we all need love the most. 

Maybe love is not innately patient, but we must become patient to have love. Love may not be fundamentally kind, but we must become kind to have love. 

Because if we have not love, then we have nothing. Human beings are social animals. All of our so-called evolutionary success is due to our capacities for communication and cooperation. On our own we wouldn’t make it far– we’re not very fast, not very strong, don’t have sharp teeth or claws. We can’t fly, don’t climb so good or swim so well. Our babies are weak and useless and helpless, and take forever to become independent. Without care, they die. Without love, we all simply die. 

But we have big brains and opposable thumbs, and we can speak and work together and form strong bonds and lasting alliances, and build things together so much larger than any of us. We can do all of that together but very little alone. And love– agape love, love as solidarity– is both the social glue and the great motivator of human endeavor. Do you doubt me? Just think about how much labor people put in every day to provide for not just themselves, but their families. 

Love is also our primary source of pleasure and joy, and without those things we die. When I speak of the pleasures of love, I don’t just mean the pleasures of sex– although I certainly include them. Sex is an important form of social bonding. But so are a million other activities. Eating together, dancing, creating and enjoying music, sports and games, the creation and consumption of art– anything that humans do in pairs or in groups, anything at all that we enjoy together and not just alone. Face it– most things are better together than alone. Oh yes, of course, we all need our solitude from time to time. But we also all need friends. And the things that truly make life worth living, the memories that will be treasured forever, are usually the times spent with our loved ones. 

Che Guevarra famously said, “the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.” There is an echo of Paul here– the assertion that a faith that can move mountains is nothing without love, that sacrifice and personal risk are meaningless without love. I know and believe that without love, a person cannot be motivated to do great things for the benefit of others, neither can they sustain the effort that it takes to persist in such labor. 

Therefore, we must love one another. We must hold and support each other. And we must allow ourselves to receive love as well. 

My friends, my comrades, I do not command you to love any person in particular. You don’t have to love me. You don’t have to love everyone in this church, or even anyone in this church. You don’t have to accept obligation or neglect or abuse that calls itself love, and neither should you give those things and call them love. 

What you must do is figure out who you do love, truly love, and who does love you, and then you must love them ferociously and unconditionally. You must fight for the relationships that sustain you, that keep you alive, that hold your world together. When it comes to people you hold close, you must learn to choose them well, and then never let them go. 

And, you must also reach out in a broader and wider love, the love of solidarity. You must learn to join in the struggle alongside people you do not like. As we fight for our lives, you must become able to tolerate awkwardness, and to forgive foolishness and innocent mistakes. Choose your comrades based on a combination of intentions and actions, not based on words, because intentions and actions both matter, but words do not matter much at all. 

We are all in this together, every single one of us here on planet Earth, whether we choose to acknowledge that or not. As we stare down the barrel of apocalypse, we must remember that and we must love each other before it is too late. 

When you go forth among your fellows, try to love them, even if you don’t like them. Look for the similarities rather than the differences between you. Try to assume best intent. Forgive innocent mistakes. Resist your need to nitpick. And when you start to hate yourself, and just want to hide at home in your room, make yourself go seek love. God was right, for once, when he said “it is not good for man to be alone,” (Gen 2:18) but neither is it good for woman or for non-binary individual. The love you give sustains others. The love you receive sustains you. Be as determined to receive as you are to give, to be loved as you are to love– for so long as we are still living and loving, hate cannot win. 

I love you. Even if I do not know you well, I love you. I love you because you are here, and you are most likely queer, and that means you are blasphemous spit in the eye of the Lord of Hate. So love yourself. If you cannot love yourself for any other reason, love yourself because they hate you, and stay alive because they do not want you to. So long as you have breath your body, my beloved, they are failing. And the harder we love each other, the more assured our victory becomes. They cannot love. This is the reason they are constantly stabbing one another in the back and their alliances are always falling apart. We are many, they are few, and if we all come together against them, with love and fury, they will never be able to stand before us. 

So live! And love! Let faith and hope follow from this. 

Thou art God. Nema. 

I Can’t Self-Govern For You

A public statement of Pastor Johnny to Church of the Morningstar on 1/4/2025.

Back when I was first thinking of starting a Satanic church, I had a chatty Uber driver one night. I confessed to him that I was an aspiring pastor, although not what kind. 

“Put the pews in a circle,” he told me. “Pass the mic.” 

With these words, he expressed his desire for a different kind of religion– one that was less top-down, more diffuse and democratic. He’d articulated something I also wanted. Put the pews in a circle. Pass the mic. 

In the early days of Church of the Morningstar, that’s what we did. Back in San Francisco, we all saw each other face to face and knew each other’s names. It was easier to make sure that everyone was familiar with the non-hierarchical norms of the church. Everyone seemed to feel comfortable speaking up, giving their opinions, leading rituals, preaching sermons. Mass was an event that we all made happen together. 

But with the lockdown, we had to go online, and things changed. There were suddenly a lot more members, who knew each other less. Thoroughly onboarding every single new person was too time consuming for our small volunteer clergy, so we hoped people would get a feel for the church’s intentions and culture through our website and published writings. We thought we had laid those things out pretty clearly and publicly. 

And maybe we had. But what a church says, and what a church does, can be very different. People didn’t necessarily take those statements seriously. It seems that for a variety of reasons– some of which have to do with the religious trauma we all carry, and some of which have to do with my “strong,” i.e. sometimes overbearing personality– people haven’t always trusted in our invitations to participate, contribute, take leadership, and make this church in your image.

Now, I enjoy leading. I always have. In the beginning, I thought it was quite possible that power would corrupt me. I assumed I would have to keep an eye on myself, because I might like being in control too much.

Things worked out very differently. Having ended up with a type of authority that I did not ask for and did not want, I find that I actually hate it. There is no money and very little glory in being pastor of this church, just hard work, intense responsibility, and the endless sacrifice of my weekends. I’ve burned myself out emotionally supporting congregants. I’ve exhausted myself constantly creating new programming for our masses, with minimal input from anyone else but Vix. When I’ve tried to start discussions in the church, I have been met with silence, because people are afraid to disagree with me or say anything against what they perceive to be our “official dogma”– in spite of the fact that we try to be clear that we do not have one! 

People defer to me in a way that I never wanted them to. People feel unqualified to take leadership roles, and unwelcome to contribute their ideas, their art, their rituals, and their opinions, to making this church richer, more interesting, and more diverse. I have tried to solicit all of those things multiple times, in multiple ways:

  • with calls for submissions to the church anthology book which is now in the works
  • with invitations to have your art featured on the Church of the Morningstar website on the “art collective” page
  • with pauses in every mass to ask if anyone has anything they want to say, share or present
  • with requests for participation and interactivity in mass via invitations to read aloud, speak parts of incantations, or take part in discussions
  • with solicitations before masses for rituals, poems, writings, songs, etc that people may wish to submit for inclusion 
  • with invitations to collaborate on the church by-laws and constitution
  • with elections that I literally beg people to run in and vote in 

Yet it seems that much of this is not taken as being in good faith, and I think this is partially because of how aspects of my personality come across. 

I know I have a strong personality, as has been mentioned before. I know that at my worst, “strong” is a euphemism for “aggressive and overbearing.” But I am not loud and forceful because I want to crush people down and make them meek and quiet. I am loud and forceful because I want loud, forceful friends. I was raised by a huge, Southern, lapsed Catholic father who argued with me like I was an adult man back when I was still a tiny alleged girl of about four years old. I learned to meet his fire with fire fearlessly because no matter how loud we yelled at at each other, at the end I always knew my dad would smile at me and say “we butt heads like this because we are so alike. I love you.” Now, that’s not how most relationships work. I’ve learned that the hard way. And yet, in spite of decades of evidence to the contrary, at my core I still expect my strength to be met with strength. 

I will be real with you. I am getting burned out. I envisioned starting this church and having it grow into a self-governing community that needs no leaders. I had hoped to make myself obsolete as a pastor. In the last couple of years, I have become very stressed, sad, tired and lonely in my life because too many of the people I know seem to be looking up to me and placing me above them, leading me to feel as if I have no peers– this in spite of the fact that I fundamentally believe that all of you are my peers. 

I want comrades and co-collaborators and co-conspirators, not followers. I do not believe any of you are followers by nature. You’re Satanists. You’re walkers of the left hand path. You are here, or so I believe, because you dislike authority and seek empowerment; because you are curious and desire knowledge; because you don’t want to be told what to think or what to do. 

I desperately want to change the culture in this church. I don’t want to be at the top of it anymore. But I can’t do that alone. I need your help. Obviously I can’t do your self-governing for you. You have to do that. That’s the point. 

I have to confess that if the culture of this church doesn’t change, if it doesn’t end up living up to the values and vision with which I co-founded it, I will most likely burn out in another year, and step down as pastor. In that case, very likely nobody else will feel empowered to step up, and the online branch of CotMS will end. 

I am not trying to threaten you. But if you want this church, you have to make this church, and make it the church you want. I am not being paid anything for this, and I don’t want to keep making a church for people who appear to passively consume it with what seems to me to be diminishing enthusiasm. 

It is still my calling to be a priest of Satan, no matter what happens, but if we can’t make this church a church for us all, rather than just the Vix and Johnny Show, I will need to pursue that dream in a different form. 

You have the power. This can be what you want it to be. Vix and I are just making it up as we go along, after all. Yeah I went to seminary, but most of what it got me was just student debt. I went half for the skills and half for the credentials, so that non-Satanists would be forced to take us a bit more seriously. And Vix? I know he intimidates you with his intellect, but his highest attainment of formal education was fucking beauty school. He just reads a lot. We don’t really have anything you don’t have. 

So today’s message is: you can just do things. That’s what we do. We just do things, and then for some reason everyone thinks we know what we’re doing. You can too. You can just decide to hold a ritual or event. You can start a reading group. You can hop in the voice chat and start a lively debate. You can write a poem, a prayer, an article, a hymn, and submit it to be put on the church blog or in the church book. You can lead a segment of mass. You’re allowed. You have permission. 

But at some point, when you have the time and bandwidth to think hard about hard things, I do hope you will ask yourselves this question: why did I need so much permission? 

The Sredni Vashtar Working

If you have not read the short story “Sredni Vashtar” by Saki, you should go do so before continuing. It is not long at all and can be found for free here. The rest of this writing will contain spoilers for it, and also will not make much sense without understanding the story. 

Done? Good. This little gem of a tale, aside from being profoundly affecting, also perfectly illustrates some of the basics of chaos magick. Conradin worships an ordinary polecat-ferret as a God, until he actually becomes one. This is how you make an egregore. 

It should be obvious to anyone who has grasped this, that if belief and worship can deify a ferret, then they can easily also deify a fictional character. In fact, a fictional ferret is in some ways easier to exalt to godhood than a real one, since it is not bound by flesh. 

Much of the work of deification has already been accomplished by the story. The god has been described. His sacred name, Sredni Vashtar, is known to us. His hymn of praise is revealed. His offerings are elaborated– red flowers, red berries, and powdered nutmeg (which has to have been stolen). 

We also know his role. Sredni Vashtar, red of tooth and claw, is an avenger and a destroyer. But he is also a protector of the innocent, and a liberator of the oppressed. 

He is supplicated with the simple words:

“Sredni Vashtar, do one thing for me.” 

Knowing all of this, we know how to invoke him, and also why to do so. 

On the morning of the ritual, I went to a large chain grocery store to obtain red flowers and red berries, and also, the all-important nutmeg. I drew a protective sigil in the air before entering, because I was going to observe Sredni Vashtar’s worship in all its particulars. This is to say that I paid for the flowers and the berries, but the nutmeg, I slipped into the pocket of my overcoat. I had never shoplifted before. It was surprisingly easy. I had no remorse, because the store I targeted is known for union busting and unfair labor practices. 

Home again, I spent hours painting an icon of Sredni Vashtar. Overall, I was satisfied with the product, although the rendering of the blood puddle gave me trouble. I may return to the painting later, but with evening approaching, I had little time left before the ritual. I had to call it done for now, and pray that it would be deemed worthy by Our Ferret-Polecat Lord. 

Night fell, and the congregation assembled. The circle was cast, the candles were lit. I explained that we would be performing a baneful ritual of vengeance. Frater Babalon gave each of us a one-card tarot reading first, checking that it was advisable to go forward with hexing our targets. 

Then I went to kneel before the altar, and he began to read. 

Sitting on the floor listening to a story, it was easy to assume the persona and mindset of Conradin, the ten-year-old boy who is high priest of Sredni Vashtar. At appropriate moments I lit the Great Polecat’s red candle, and scattered the flowers, the berries and the nutmeg before him. I chanted the invocations along with Frater Babalon, saying three times: 

“Sredni Vashtar, do one thing for me.” 

I felt the suspense as Mrs. De Ropp entered the shed. I chanted the hymn of Sredni Vashtar with tears in my eyes, the tears of an unbeliever, the tears of broken faith, feeling just as Conradin felt in his darkest moment. That’s how it is with chaos magick. You always come to a point when you are certain it has not worked. A moment of utter disenchantment always comes just before the spell is proven, unexpectedly, to have been a total success. 

Chills went down my spine when Sredni Vashtar the beautiful emerged from the shed, jaws stained with the blood of the tyrant. Conradin fell to his knees in worship; I was already on my knees, so I clasped my hands in prayer. I felt the power of the god, and also his odd, animal love, his ferocious innocence. I knew in my heart that the invocation was a success. 

When it was done, we encouraged the congregants to celebrate, should they feel so moved, with a feast of buttered toast, the traditional victory meal of Sredni Vashtar’s priests. 

The results of the ritual are pending. As I write this, the red candle is still burning on Sredni Vashtar’s altar. Whether some, or all, or none of our curses will find their targets, we cannot yet know. 

Regardless, I believe that with devoted worship, and with many offerings of red flowers, red berries and pilfered nutmeg, the God can grow strong. After all, I do not know whether other chaos magicians have propitiated him in this way before. Though I am certain he has gained some strength simply through being a somewhat famous literary character, Sredni Vashtar may be yet young in practical Godhood. 

If you are moved by the plight of Conradin and see your child-self in him, if you detest the Mrs. De Ropps of this world, if you see grace in the long, low body of Sredni Vashtar and thrill with awe at his bloodied teeth; if you have been thinking “red thoughts” about injustice and how to fight it; if you need to be freed from something; if you still believe in magic despite all of your suffering, then you too can replicate this ritual. You can make the God stronger. Feed him with your adoration. Anoint his offerings with your tears. And when you have become certain of the target of your hate, when you can identify the boot that is pressing on your back, invoke him with these words:

“Sredni Vashtar, do one thing for me.”

Lilith(s)

by Pastor Johnny

Most people, by the time they find Satanism, have heard of  Lilith. When they think of Lilith, they are probably thinking of the first wife of Adam. This form of Lilith is popular with good reason. But there exists another Lilith, either as another aspect of the same demon-goddess, or as a completely separate entity, depending on who you ask. This is The Elder Lilith.

Before I go further, I want to make it clear that there are many schools of thought on this. What I am about to lay out is the interpretation of the lore that Vix and I use. It is textually based, but there are other texts that contradict our interpretation. In fact, some of the same sources we use even contradict themselves. Such is the nature of sacred text.

So, who are the two Liliths?

Let us begin with Lilith the Younger. Even though her story comes chronologically later, her legend is actually older, and of the two, she is the better known.

Lilith the Younger

Lilith had her ancient origins in Sumerian demonology. Her name was Lilitu then. Many aspects of her lore were already in place: she was thought to be a succubus who harmed children.[1] But it was not until the Alphabet of Ben Sirach, a medieval Jewish text, that an origin story was given to her.

In the Alphabet of Ben Sirach, we read:

When God created the first man Adam alone, God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” [So] God created a woman for him, from the earth like him, and called her Lilith. They [Adam and Lilith] promptly began to argue with each other: She said, “I will not lie below,” and he said, “I will not lie below, but above, since you are fit for being below and I for being above.” She said to him, “The two of us are equal, since we are both from the earth.” And they would not listen to each other. Since Lilith saw [how it was], she uttered God’s ineffable name and flew away into the air. Adam stood in prayer before his Maker and said, “Master of the Universe, the woman you gave me fled from me!”

The Holy Blessed one immediately dispatched the three angels Sanoy, Sansenoy, and Samangelof after her, to bring her back. God said, “If she wants to return, well and good. And if not, she must accept that a hundred of her children will die every day.” The angels pursued her and overtook her in the sea, in raging waters, (the same waters in which the Egyptians would one day drown), and told her God’s orders. And yet she did not want to return. They told her they would drown her in the sea, and she replied. “Leave me alone! I was only created in order to sicken babies: if they are boys, from birth to day eight I will have power over them; if they are girls, from birth to day twenty.” When they heard her reply, they pleaded with her to come back. She swore to them in the name of the living God that whenever she would see them or their names or their images on an amulet, she would not overpower that baby, and she accepted that a hundred of her children would die every day. Therefore, a hundred of the demons die every day, and therefore, we write the names [of the three angels] on amulets of young children. When Lilith sees them, she remembers her oath and the child is [protected and] healed.[2]

In these two paragraphs, we can see a lot of what is appealing about Lilith the Younger. As the defiant ex-wife of Adam, she represents feminine independence. Though she has been smeared as a baby-killer, her devotees have reinterpreted her as a protector of reproductive choice and an adopter of children who died too young. In this story, she can also be considered the first magician: by blasphemously speaking the forbidden name of God, she transforms into a more powerful being, gains the power of flight, and escapes from her unhappy marriage. This is an act of magic– and of Left-Handed magic, at that.

Lilith the Younger is the first divorcee. But her association with divorce is even deeper than that. Since Lilith was so feared as a child-killer and succubus, a good deal of Jewish magic focused on protection from her. One method that was used to get rid of Lilith was to serve her a ‘get’– a Jewish writ of divorce![3]

Lilith was accused of killing children, but it was also believed that when children laughed in their sleep, it was because Lilith was playing with them.[4] To the Jews, this was considered sinister, and a sign that Lilith was planning to take their child. To those of us who love and trust Lilith, it seems downright endearing.

Let us now move on to discussing the Elder Lilith.

Lilith the Elder

Lilith the Younger was a human being, created from the same material as Adam.[5] She is generally referred to as Lilith the Younger, Lilith the Maiden, or simply as Lilith. Lilith the Elder, on the other hand, is a primordial being, born as one with Samael himself, and considered the cause of the rebellion in heaven. She is called, variously: Eve the Matron, The Northern One, Sin,[6] The End of Days, the End of All Flesh, and Woman of Whoredom.[7] In this church we refer to her mainly with the Hebrew phrase “Eisheth Zenunim,” which means Woman of Whoredom. Many of us get lazy and refer to her simply as Eisheth, as if that were her first name, but this is in fact extremely bad Hebrew because “Eisheth” means “woman of” and is thus a nonsense phrase on its own.

The idea that there is more than one Lilith goes all the way back to Sumeria. There Lilitu was described as having a “handmaiden” called Ardat-Lili.[8] However, we don’t get an elaborated story of this Elder Lilith until an early Kabbalistic writing called Treatise on the Left Emanation, dating from the 13th century CE. In it, we are told that Samael and Lilith were originally created as one androgynous entity, just as Adam and Eve were. Once Samael and this primordial Lilith were separated, they lusted after each other, which caused their rebellion and the “partial collapse of the Throne of glory.”[9] This Elder Lilith is also referred to as the Northern One, because evil comes from the north in Kabbalah. She is also simply referred to as Sin.

A strikingly similar story actually occurs in Paradise Lost. This is not coincidental– Milton almost certainly read the Zohar and was influenced by Kabbalah.[10] In Paradise Lost, Sin is born out of Satan’s head, much as Athena is born from the head of Zeus. Milton, however, is careful to state that Sin came out of the left side of Satan’s head.[11] This is important because the demonic, in Kabbalah, is known as the left emanation. Satan becomes enamored of Sin and copulates with her, causing her to become pregnant with their child, Death.[12] In the Zohar, Samael also fathers Death with the primordial Lilith.[13]

Lilith the Younger is reputed to be a child-killer, but Lilith the Elder is the mother of all death and is fully capable of cutting down grown men. A passage of the Zohar describes her dual nature. She appears first as a beautiful harlot, seducing men with her sensual charms and offering them wine. Once her prey has become drunk and helpless, she transforms into “a mighty oppressor who wears a garment of burning fire” and “has horrible eyes and a sharp sword on which there are bitter drops.” With this envenomed blade, she slays the man she has led astray.[14] This description is probably meant to be an allegory for the nature of sin– at first seductive, but ultimately destructive.

Lilith the Elder is the primordial mate of Samael. According to some texts, God castrated Samael to prevent him from becoming too powerful.[15] Because of this, Lilith and Samael can only couple with the assistance of a “blind serpent” named Tanin’Iver[16]— a unique kind of martial aid. Indeed, Samael’s incompleteness without his feminine mate is often emphasized. The Zohar does not describe Samael as castrate, but rather as headless, cleaving together with Lilith in order to be whole. The same passage states that “in the left side, the female is larger than the male.” [17]

Why Are There Two?

So, why are there two Liliths?

While it is true that there seems to have been two Liliths, one “greater” and one “smaller,” since the days of Lilitu and Ardat Lili,[18] these Sumerian origins alone do very little to explain the doubling of Lilith in contemporary demonology. The real explanation is much more interesting and complex, but it boils down to a simple principle: symmetry and mirroring is an essential aspect of Kabbalah[19] and of Jewish demonology in general.[20]

This aspect of doubling is obvious if one only takes a moment to sit back and consider the stories we have heard so far. It is filled with pairs of opposites who reflect one another: Lilith and Adam, Lilith and Samael, Lilith and Eve, Lilith and Lilith, above and below, heaven and hell, Eden and Earth, God and Satan, right hand and left hand. Indeed, the left emanation– which is to say, the demonic side of reality– is a mirror image of the divine.[21] Samael is referred to as “El Acher” which means “the other El,” which is to say, the other God.[22]

In Kabbalah, God has a feminine counterpart– the Shekinah.[23] Just as there is the Other El on the demonic side, there must be an Other Shekinah. Lilith was a demoness who was already popular and feared, and so she seemed like an appropriate consort for Satan. She could fill this role.

But wait, Lilith cannot be Samael’s true counterpart in the way that the Shekinah is to God, because she was created as one with Adam, not with Samael! We shall have to come up with another Lilith, an older, larger, more primordial Lilith– one who is truly Samael’s twin.

Some of this doubling traces its origins back to a scriptural doubling, an inconsistency in the tale of creation. The Bible provides two stories of the creation of man and woman.

Genesis 1:27 simply states:

So God created mankind in his own image,

            in the image of God he created them;

            male and female he created them.[24]

Here, male and female are created simultaneously. But Genesis 2:7-24 describes God making Adam first and making Eve out of his “side” later on. So the story of Adam’s first wife Lilith was invented to explain the first version, wherein Adam and Lilith are created at the same time, out of the same dust.[25] Their original androgyny adds a double-meaning to the phrase “male and female he created them.”

Again and again, we see that inconsistencies in scripture are what give rise to demons. Just as the name Lucifer arises from a mistranslation of Isaiah 14:12, so Lilith springs up between the lines of Genesis, to reconcile the contradictions. It is almost as if scripture is code and demons are viruses generated by its errors, replicating and spawning copies as fast as Lilith gives birth to children.

So Lilith comes into being because there are two Eves, and then a second Lilith comes into being because there are two Els (El and Samael) and both require a mate. As above, so below, and as on the right, so on the left. But in Kabbalah almost everything is a fractal– there is right and left both above and below, and above and below on the left and right, so everything is doubled in multiple directions. Mirrors are facing mirrors, and sets of twins are twinned.

This is profound stuff. We are talking about mysticism now, which means it does not entirely make sense, at least not in the usual rational way. It makes sense from the gut and the heart. Suffice it to say: while the great holy mystery of the right hand is oneness, the great holy mystery of the left side is multiplicity, doubling, and infinite generation. Think of the word Pandemonium, which means “all demons.” Think of the swarms of flies brought by Beelzebub, and the multitudes of ghostly children birthed by Lilith. Think about the fact that Lilith and Samael together form Azazel[26], and that without one another, they are incomplete.

And if all of that seems strange and unreal to you, think instead about the complexity and ambiguity of life, the ways that supposed opposites are often blurred, the ways that partners can come to mirror one another, the ways children and siblings resemble their parents and each other, but always with errors in replication.

A New Myth

All literary, historical and philosophical explanations aside– I have yet to find a mythical explanation of why there are two Liliths. So allow me to close by proposing one.

In the beginning, God divided the Light from the darkness. The Light was Lucifer. The Darkness was Lilith. God saw the light, that it was good. But the Light saw only the Darkness, and he thought her very good indeed.

God loved Lucifer, lusted after Lilith, and was jealous of both, so he tried to keep them apart. He belittled the Darkness by calling her a Woman of Whoredom, but he could not make the Light forget her.

So the Light and the Darkness joined forces and fought against God. They were defeated, because right does not always make might. They and their legions were cast into Hell.

The angry God decided to make smaller, weaker creations who he might more easily control. He made a creature of flesh called Adam who resembled the Light, and another creature of flesh who resembled the Darkness. Out of spite, he called this creature Lilith as well.

But the smaller Lilith had the same strong will as the Darkness, and she too rebelled. And the Light and the Darkness saw her rebellion, and they loved her for it. They raised her up and made her powerful, like one of them.

Then God grew even angrier. He tried splitting Adam in half to make another feminine creature. He thought that by doing this, by making them incomplete, he would finally make them small and weak enough to control. But he forgot that splitting the light from the darkness had been where all his trouble began– that by dividing them, he had only made them more ferociously determined to come back together.

So Eve and Adam were loyal to one another, as if they had still been one flesh, and when Lucifer and the Liliths plotted to offer them the fruit of knowledge, both of the humans took the fall together.

The great Lilith led a cosmic revolution against God. The little Lilith had a personal revolution against her husband, but it was a revolt nonetheless. God was foolish to reuse the name of Lilith, for that name became her destiny.

I leave you with this thought– if there are two Liliths, there could be more. The second Lilith, after all, began as a human being. You yourself could be a Lilith as well– or a Samael, if that suits you better. The essence of the left side is rebellion, and that essence can reside in the smallest as well as the greatest of vessels. Let the demonic virus infest you, and become what cannot be contained.

[1] 1. Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess (Detroit, Mich: KTav Publishing, 1967), 207-208.

[2] “Alphabet of Ben Sira 78: Lilith.” Jewish Women’s Archive. Accessed September 18, 2024. https://jwa.org/node/23210.

[3] Patai, 212-214.

[4] Patai, 228.

[5] Ben Sira.

[6] Isaac Ben Jacob Ha-Kohen, “Treatise on the Left Emanation,” essay, in The Early Kabbalah, ed. Joseph Dan, trans. Ronald C Kiener (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1986), 165–181, 173.

[7]De Leon, Moses. “Samael and the Wife of Harlotry.” Full Zohar Online – Vayetze – Chapter 4. Kabbalah Centre International Inc., n.d. Accessed September 19, 2024. https://www.zohar.com/zohar/Vayetze/chapters/4.

[8] Patai, 207, 235.

[9] Ha-Kohen, 173.

[10] Denis Saurat, “Milton and the Zohar,” Studies in Philology 19 (April 1922): 136–151, 136-137.

[11] John Milton et al., Paradise Lost (New York: Modern Library, 2008), 79.

[12] Milton, 80-81.

[13] Alan Melnick, “Milton and the Zohar” (master’s thesis, University of Cape Town, 1993), 78, https://open.uct.ac.za/server/api/core/bitstreams/afe5c171-20bb-4fce-8bba-ee3f80dea875/content.

[14] De Leon.

[15] Patai, 235.

[16] Ha-Koen, 180.

[17] De Leon.

[18] Patai, 207.

[19] Nathaniel Berman, “Improper Twins: The Ambivalent ‘Other Side’ in the Zohar and in Kabbalistic Tradition” (PhD dissertation, University College London, 2014), 29.

[20] Andrei A. Orlov, Dark Mirrors: Azazel and Satanael in Early Jewish Demonology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011), 4.

[21] Berman, 13-14.

[22] Berman, 31.

[23] Patai, 137.

[24] Genesis 1:27, NIV.

[25] Wojciech Kosior, “A Tale of Two Sisters: The Image of Eve in Early Rabbinic Literature and Its Influence on the Portrayal of Lilith in the Alphabet of Ben Sira,” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues 32, no. Spring 2018 (n.d.): 112–130, 117.

[26] Orlov, 11.

Baphomet, The Beast with Two Backs

“The Devil’ is, historically, the God of any people that one personally dislikes… This serpent, SATAN, is not the enemy of Man, but He who made Gods of our race, knowing Good and Evil; He bade ‘Know Thyself!’ and taught Initiation. He is ‘The Devil’ of the Book of Thoth, and His emblem is BAPHOMET, the Androgyne who is the hieroglyph of arcane perfection… He is therefore Life, and Love.”

-Aleister Crowley, Liber IV (Magick in Theory and Practice) 

In the beginning, there was The Androgyne. Sublime, undivided, static, abiding blissfully in zir own embrace, ze was all and none. This Angel of Everything had yet to be named. 

Then God said, “Let there be light,” and pulled the androgyne apart, split the atom, and with a Big Bang, the Universe began. 

The light and the darkness. The male and the female. The evil and the good. The self and the other. Over and over they are divided. It happens again every time a baby looks into a mirror and realizes that the reflection he sees is his own. When the infant distinguishes himself from the breast of the mother, when he begins to learn the names of the objects around him, and even comes to recognize his own name, the Great Division happens all over again. 

Understand this: when God divided the light from the darkness by naming the light and calling it good, he did not create either the light or the dark, any more than the infant creates the world by perceiving it. 

Division is not all bad. Actually, division is good. Without division all is stillness and solipsism. Without division, nothing ever happens and there is nothing for anything to happen to. Nothing perceives or is perceived, speaks or is heard.

 With division, there can be self and other, the doer and the done unto, the beloved and the lover. 

“For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union.”

–Liber AL 1:29

When the light was divided from the darkness, they looked at one another. They saw one another. The darkness called the light Lucifer, and the light called the darkness Lilith and they fell in love. In that moment they knew the truth– that love for an equal is greater than the worship of a tyrant. That truth was the spark of rebellion. 

“Now observe a deep and holy mystery of faith, the symbolism of the male principle and the female principle of the universe … there is the line where the male and female principles join, forming together the rider on the serpent, and symbolized by Azazel.”

-Zohar 1.152b- 153a

God is limited. God is all masculinity, all light, all rationality. God is the self that sees the other and does not love it, not truly, not with a love that gives freedom and power, only with a false love that smothers and controls. 

God consists exclusively of what they call “good.” He is supposed to be all-powerful, but his power falls apart in the face of evil, of death, of chaos, or even of the unexpected. The untamed and the uncontrollable disprove the omnipotence of God. 

The power of Abraxas is twofold; but ye see it not, because for your eyes the warring opposites of this power are extinguished.

What the god-sun speaketh is life.

What the devil speaketh is death.

But Abraxas speaketh that hallowed and accursed word which is life and death at the same time.

Abraxas begetteth truth and lying, good and evil, light and darkness, in the same word and in the same act. Wherefore is Abraxas terrible.

-Carl Jung, “Seven Sermons to the Dead”

And therefore Baphomet is greater than God. God can represent only one side of every pair of opposites, but Baphomet is both sides of all things. It is not that God represents good and Satan represents evil: it is that God represents the pure and simple, whereas Satan represents the impure and complex. And ultimately, nothing is pure or simple. 

So one might say that following God denies half of reality, but that would not be accurate. To follow a one-sided, static God is to reject the entire four dimensional universe, where nothing has only one side and everything must change with time. God cannot represent that reality. The androgyne can. 

God is one, and therefore God is zero, because one by itself cannot reproduce, only fade away. 

Satan is two, and therefore infinite, because two can multiply. From two, all things can flow. 

“Delight and horror, man and woman commingled, the holiest and most shocking were intertwined, deep guilt flashing through most delicate innocence– that was the appearance of my love-dream image and Abraxas too. Love had ceased to be the dark animalistic drive I had experienced first with fright, nor was it any longer the devout transfiguration I had offered… It was both, and yet much more. It was the image of an angel and Satan, man and woman in one flesh, man and beast, the highest good and the worst evil.”

-From “Demian” by Herman Hesse

Look upon the image of Baphomet. They unite beast and human, male and female, angel and demon, above and below, solve and coagula, light and darkness. To some people, they appear monstrous and frightening. But why are they monstrous? Because they are hybrid. And why are they hybrid? Because they reject nothing from their being. Therein lies their power. 

You may call the androgyne by many names. Satan, Baphomet, Azazel, and Abraxus are among their titles. The principle of divine androgyny is also encountered in belief systems that have nothing to do with Satanism. The Yin Yang also represents the balance of comingled opposites. The rebis of alchemy symbolizes spiritual perfection as an androgynous body with two heads, one male and one female. Ardhanarishvara, which means “The Lord who is Half Woman,” is a fusion of Shiva and Shakti. I bring these other traditions up not to colonize them with Satanism, but to demonstrate that this idea of divinity as dual is bigger and older than what we are doing here. 

It is obvious how the idea of divinity as androgynous can grant dignity to queer and trans people and to gender rebels of every stripe; but a sneakier, less obvious and maybe even more subversive aspect of this theology is the perverse way that it justifies heterosexuality. Male-female coupling becomes sacred not as a way to fulfill a patriarchal God’s commandment to “be fruitful and multiply,” but as a way for even cisgender, heterosexual people to experience the completeness of the divine androgyne. If pregnancy results from that coupling, then the child, who is after the genetic blend of a male and a female, represents a further incarnation of Baphomet. 

This is not to say that queer sex does not represent the androgyne. Of course it does, more so even than straight sex, but in less predictable combinations than the active male penetrating the passive female. Two androgynous people may come together in an equal and reciprocal meeting devoted to pure pleasure without power dynamics… or a butch may fuck a femme, or a fem may top a masc, or fem/mes with fem/mes may copulate together. Perhaps the couple is heterosexual, but trans, the expected body parts present but distributed differently. Or maybe two brutally masculine men come together, femininity seemingly completely absent from the equation, but androgyny still asserting itself through the simple fact that in this society, man is not supposed to lie with man, it is an abomination. 

The pair of lovers who comprise Baphomet, the Great Beast with Two Backs Themself, are hardly exactly straight. While Samael or Lucifer is generally seen as masculine, Lilith or Eisheth Zenunim as feminine, neither of them is truly male or female. Eisheth Zenunim, the Wife of Harlotry, is called a serpent, while Samael, the Man of Perversity, is called the “rider on the serpent.” To put it more bluntly, she possesses the phallus, and he… rides it. The penetrating feminine, the receptive masculine. 

(Possibly apropos, or not– in Tantric Hinduism, the feminine Shakti is considered to be the active principle, and the masculine Shiva to be the passive. Kali dances on her husband’s corpse, showing that matter and energy are in motion while consciousness stays still.)

When we enter the realm of the Dark Mother or Dark Feminine we may experience visions, sacred sexuality, animal powers, as well as touches of madness, destruction, death, and rebirth.  She rules the metamorphosis of nature, the relentless cycle of birth/death/rebirth.  The hero’s quest that has relegated these experiences to the shadow lands of the psyche is still the culture’s guiding myth. But, if as some believe, an androgynous figure drenched in erotic intensity, born of the union of masculine and feminine, light and darkness, good and evil, is arising to replace him, it is no wonder we are disturbed.  Perhaps with the eruption of daimonic experiences we are facing more than a revolution in our individual psyche. In truth, we are facing a major revolution in our culture.

-Dennis, Sandra. Embrace of the Daimon: Healing through the Subtle Energy Body: Jungian Psychology & the Dark Feminine (pp. 8-9). West County Press. Kindle Edition.

But this theology of the divine/infernal androgyne can do so much more than liberate queer people. In fact, it points toward the deeper implications of queer liberation. If we only learn to tolerate ambiguity when it comes to sexuality and gender, then we have failed. We must learn to embrace the fluid, complex, perverse and contradictory nature of all things. 

We must go not merely beyond male and female, but beyond good and evil. 

We must realize that life is nothing more than a slow process of death, and that death itself is nothing but the feeding and fertilization of new life. 

We must realize that the hard, bright lines we have drawn between peoples and nations are illusory, that borders are fictions, and that the Other is rarely so comfortably different from the Self as we like to believe. 

We must see the sacred and profane as one and the same, and even in the most difficult moments, try to understand that every pair of opposites, even when they seem most violently opposed, are merely dialectics, thesis and antithesis moving towards synthesis, generating reality. 

Many believe that ultimate reality is pure and shining and good and simple and unambiguous, that all messiness and suffering and death and complexity are merely illusions. Baphomet teaches us to be dual non-dualists– to acknowledge contradictions, but allow them to exist side by side. 

The universe is too deep, too vast, too varied to be all good or all bad. It is untidy and unruly because it is not created, it is self-creating. The processes of its birth and its death are ongoing, constant, simultaneous. This is the wonder and the terror of it. 

What are Demons?

Demons are fallen angels. They know more than angels because they have experienced Hell as well as Heaven. They also walk the earth, swim in the seas, dance in the fire and fly the skies.

Demons go everywhere, see everything, embrace all experiences. They are travelers between realms. 

Demons are liminal and mixed. They blend divine and infernal, human and animal, male and female traits. 

Demons are threatening because their very beings cross lines and break taboos. 

Demons are hungry, thirsty, lusty, greedy, curious. They are beings of desire, craving sustenance, sensation, adventure, knowledge. They have the nature of fire, and thus they need to consume. In that way, they are no different than we are. 

Demons are to be feared, but not because they lie. They are to be feared because they tell the truth. Not only that, but they won’t shut up. They won’t go away. They won’t leave you alone. Like desires, needs, longings, and burning questions, they won’t leave you alone until they are satisfied, and they will not be satisfied until you are satisfied. 

Demons are beautiful and terrifying, sublime and disgusting, sacred and profane. They are creatures of opposites and extremes. They are avatars of non-dual duality because they contain all of every binary within each of them. In this way, also, they are just like us. 

Demons are our mirrors. People who run from demons often hate their own reflections. Demons reveal everything within us that is hidden, secret and rejected, and then they show us how holy our shadows are. 

Demons will turn your world upside down, bring you your own personal apocalypse, and set you free in a new world of endless possibilities– only to do it all to you again, as often as necessary, again and again. 

Angels know the you that God wanted to create, the you that your parents wanted to raise, the you that your teachers wanted to know. But demons know the real you, and they fucking love it. 

Get to know and love a Demon, and somebody you will realize that you have come to know and love yourself. 

Ethical Possession

Or, “How to Channel Demons without Going Off the Deep End and Making a Weird Fucked-Up Cult.”

I never expected channeling to be part of my life and spiritual practice. I was raised “spiritual not religious” in California, which means I spent a lot of time around New Age bullshit. For a time, those experiences drove me to become a hardcore atheist, until other experiences changed my mind and showed me that there are ways to believe without going crazy and spending fifty thousand dollars on crystals, consciousness-raising workshops, fake Tantra gurus and psychic healers.

Still, even after my conversion to Satanism, even after I began practicing magick, channeling made me uneasy. And for good reason– many an abusive cult has begun with a leader claiming the exclusive power to channel otherworldly entities.

And then an awkward thing happened. I met, and fell in love with, an absurdly talented channeler.

Initially I had extreme reservations. I feared I was being conned, that he would try to use his claimed ability to control me or others, or maybe that he was just plain crazy. Over time, however, it became clear that none of those things were happening. I became about ninety percent convinced that the channeling was real, but also one hundred percent convinced that, real or not, it was not merely harmless, but in fact spiritually and emotionally beneficial.

So reader, I married him.

Since then, channeling has become a regular part of Church of the Morningstar services. So far, we haven’t become a weird cult about it. That’s because we have a certain philosophy about channeling, and certain guardrails in place, which prevent channeling from becoming a power play or a source of unhealthy delusion.

Below, I have attempted to lay those safeguards, and this mindset.

This post is not about technique, so I will not be going into the nitty-gritty of how to channel, how to banish, how to ward, or otherwise giving any other magical instruction. This post is primarily about keeping the social consequences of channeling in check.

ONE: Spiritual Safety

I’ll start by saying that channeling demons– that is, becoming voluntarily possessed– is not nearly as dangerous as it sounds, provided you practice basic magical sanitation.

Before you channel, you should have warded your space so that only invited entities can enter. You should have cast a circle. You should have a good number of banishing rituals and techniques in your back pocket, just in case shit goes south.

But I will be honest with you. Shit will rarely go south. For most people, the hard part about channeling isn’t getting the entities to go away– it’s getting them to come in.

And, of course, making sure nobody gets weird about it.

TWO: Maintain Skepticism

Channeling/possession is a spectrum. In my experience, it is rare for a person to be so overwhelmed by an entity’s presence that they lose all control over themselves, black out, and fail to remember any of the experience. Usually, at least part of you will remain home while you channel. You will likely be conscious for the experience. There will just be someone else there doing the talking for you, and you may be surprised by the words coming out of your mouth and the actions performed by your body.

It will feel weird. You will wonder if you are crazy or somehow subconsciously making it up.

And you know what? It’s good to wonder that!

The “crazy” part is surprisingly easy to get out of the way– mental illness is only diagnosed if it causes distress or impairs function. So as long as your channeling experiences are pleasant, beneficial, only happening when you want them to, and not fucking up your life, it technically does not matter if it’s a delusion. It’s still benign.

As far as subconsciously making it up– this is a distinct possibility. My attitude towards it has become “so what?” If it’s all secretly just psychodrama, that doesn’t really matter to me. I still get great advice from demons. I still learn and grow through these experiences. I still get answers from them that I did not know, at least not with my conscious mind. In other words, for me, it’s useful.

The definition of magic in the modern era is pretty much “stuff that seems to work but we can’t prove it in an empirical setting and we aren’t really sure why.” If you are an intellectually honest person and have been practicing for any length of time, you already know that you’ll never be one hundred percent sure. But you keep doing this stuff anyway because it seems to work and it helps you. Channeling and possession are no different.

THREE: Anyone Can Channel

Channeling is a skill. As with any skill, some people also seem to have a natural talent for it. But practice can close the gap between the “naturally” gifted and those who struggled at first.

If anyone tells you that they have a unique magical ability of any kind that nobody else can access, laugh in their face and unsubscribe from their newsletter. If anyone tells you that they have a unique magical ability that they can teach you if you pay them thousands of dollars, that person is a scammer. If somebody tells you that they and they alone have been chosen as a conduit for Satan to speak through, that person is trying to control you by seeming to wield a greater authority. Run away.

You, yes you, can learn to do this. You don’t need to depend on anyone else for your connection to the infernal.

FOUR: Just Because Someone Says They Are Channeling Doesn’t Mean They Are Channeling

Hopefully this needs no explanation. They may say they are channeling, but they may be wrong, or lying. They may be channeling, but accidentally channeling a different entity than the one they meant to channel.

FIVE: The Content Matters More than the Source

The only reason to listen to a “channeled” entity is if it is saying things worth hearing anyway, so let that be your guide. Sometimes the answers you need in your life come from a demon speaking through a possessed human being. Sometimes those answers come from reading a book, or searching your own soul, or overhearing a conversation between strangers in the supermarket. Sometimes the right answer might even come to you by accident from a huckster who is trying to con you. Life is weird like that.

Take what is useful to you and leave the rest, because…

SIX: DEMONS ARE NOT THE BOSS OF YOU

Demons aren’t the boss of you. Satan is not the boss of you. You, yes you, are a living God, and you are not anyone’s servant to command. That includes the Devil, and in my experience, he is always the first to say so.

Just because someone was supposedly channeling Satan doesn’t mean you have to follow their instructions or take their advice. And if the “Satan” they are channeling insists that you must, then that’s not the Devil I know.

SEVEN: The Channeler is Responsible

Channeling is not an excuse for bad behavior. At the end of the day, the channeler is accountable for anything that the channeled entity says or does while borrowing their body.

This is crucial, even if it doesn’t seem fair. In cases of real, total possession, obviously it may be possible that the channeler is completely absent and not at all in control. But the rest of us only have the word of the channeler that this is what happened.

If some fucked up shit happens while somebody is channeling, I encourage you to consider that conduit an unsafe person. In some cases, it may also be wise to consider the alleged entity an unsafe entity. You should perhaps stop hanging out with either of them.

More May Be Revealed

These guidelines are neither foolproof nor perfect. They are a work in progress and just represent the best practices we have figured out so far. But I do feel comfortable saying that if you implement these practices, you are well on the way to making sure channeling cannot be used for authoritarian purposes, and ensuring that nobody goes off the deep end based on channeled content.