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. 

Sermon from the Pit

Blessed are the proud, for they know their worth.

Blessed are the vengeful, for they make their own justice. 

Blessed are the thieves, for theirs shall be the riches.

Blessed are the armed, for they will seize the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst, for they will devour the wealthy.

Blessed are the filthy, for to them, all things are holy.

Blessed are the whores, for they are the children of Babalon.

Blessed are the lawless, for only they know freedom.

Blessed are you when they call you a terrorist, for this means you stood up to fight. 

Blessed are you when they call you a pervert, for this means you have taken pleasure. 

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you, because you would not submit to their God. 

Blessed are the anarchists. 

Blessed are the communists.

Blessed are the Zapatistas. 

Blessed were the Panthers. 

Blessed were the Provos. 

Blessed is the Intifada. 

Rage and be wrathful, for no reward awaits you in heaven, nor in any hell, nor any on the Earth, unless you seize it for yourselves. 

Do not think that I have come to preach the Law. I have come to abolish it. For truly I tell you, there are no laws but the laws of Nature, nor have there ever been, nor shall there ever be. Therefore anyone who makes commandments is accursed. 

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Yet truly you kill continuously, without the slightest thought. The insects and the blades of grass are crushed beneath your feet. An universe of microscopic beings thrives and dies within you, and like a cruel God, you remain indifferent to it all. Every day you devour corpses, of plants or of animals, and clothe yourselves in the dead. And as for those who say “Thou shalt not kill,” they make war and carry out executions. They leave the cold outside and allow the hungry to starve. They stand their ground and shoot to kill, all to protect their riches. 

O my comrades, truly, I tell you, that thou shalt also kill, if and when the time is right. Perhaps thou shalt kill in self-defense, or in taking vengeance, or in an uprising or revolution. Thou shalt kill, perhaps, for a cause, or to be free, or to survive. Perhaps thou shalt kill, and even be justified. 

But do not be eager to kill your fellow human being. Do not hunger for killing. Do not imagine it to be ecstasy or bliss to kill, any more than it is ecstasy and bliss to be killed. Each person is a God. Who are you to crush a universe? So blessed are the ones who hold the power of life and death, yet make no use of it. 

Do not believe you will be judged for anger. You will be judged neither for feelings nor for thoughts; neither will you be judged for words. Not even for actions will you be judged, but truly I say unto you, actions will bring their consequences without a hint of judgment or any thought of justice. Cause and effect is a law without mercy. Beware not of judgment but of outcomes. 

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ and that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart. The false prophet told you to gouge out your right eye and cut off your right hand and throw them away rather than allow them to lead you to lus. He commanded you to mutilate yourself rather than to have your whole body thrown into Hell. But I tell you: go whole into Hell. Go into Hell whole-heartedly and with singleness of mind, with conviction and courage, go! Throw yourself into Hell as you throw yourself into the act of love– with total faith and perfect devotion. 

You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.’ But I tell you that if anyone slaps you on your right cheek, you may strike them back on the right and left. Do not make a beast of prey out of yourself. Do not do violence to yourself by allowing violence to be done unto you. 

And if you forgive other people when they sin against you, they may forgive you, or not. And if you do not forgive them, they may forgive you, or not. For they are as free as you are, and over them you hold no power. 

You have heard that it was said, ‘love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’ But I tell you that it does not matter if you love them or hate them, if you pray for them or curse them. The only thing that matters is that you fight them. Fight the one who persecutes you, and the one who persecutes your neighbor as well. Resist and destroy all persecutors, whether they seek to crush you, or your families, or your neighbors, or foreigners and strangers. 

And practice your righteousness both openly and in secret, where all can see and where none can see. Flaunt your courage and generosity so that others may emulate it. But know also how to be silent, and clandestine, and struggle in secret, so that neither the eyes of God nor of Caesar shall see you, and neither angels nor police will hinder your aims. 

And when you pray, pray however you will, wherever you will, loudly or softly, in speech or in song, on your knees or on your feet or on your back or on your belly. Pray fearlessly and shamelessly, as if speaking with your lover or your closest friend. And know that you need no temple to pray, nor any altar, nor any sacred place, for to the Devil, all things are holy. 

And do not fast or be chaste or deny yourself or mortify your flesh, unless it gives you pleasure to do so– and if it does, then revel in your perversity! 

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. Nor can you store up treasures for yourselves in Heaven or in Hell. If your heart resides where your treasure is, then your heart is empty and lost. Give to others according to your ability, and receive from them according to your need. And serve neither God nor money, nor anything else. Instead of serving two masters, refuse to serve even one. 

You have been given the fruit of knowledge, you are become as Gods, knowing good and evil. Therefore you may judge others, you may look upon them and take their measure, yet so too they have the right to judge and measure you. So know and judge and measure thyself first– gaze into the mirror and pluck the beam from thine own eye! Yet you may find no difference between the sacred and the dogs, the pearls and the swine. 

At times it is not enough to ask to receive, at times the door remains closed to you although you knock. In those hours you must take what is not given, you must break down the door that has shut you out. 

But in all things you must do not as I have advised, but only as you deem right; for cursed is the law and dead are the prophets, and all that remains is your choice.

Act as you choose, and only as you choose. I pray for you that you will commit not one deed against your will, and never lift a finger to do anything out of obligation. 

Blessed are the prideful.

Blessed are the lawless. 

Blessed are the filthy and profane. 

Blessed are the promiscuous. 

Blessed are the wrathful. 

Blessed are the free. 

Nema. 

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. 

Revelation and Revolution

Would you look at that! I forgot to post my Antichristmas sermon for 2023. Better late than never, I suppose.

It was a time of turmoil and upheaval. A great empire was terrorizing the world. The people living between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean sea were being oppressed by imperialism. It seemed like the end of the world. In short, it was a time something like our own.

In this dark time, a mysterious man, exiled to the Grecian isle of Patmos, wrote a puzzling and disturbing mystical text. This man, who wrote under the name John, was an early Christian. He had been banished by the Roman authorities, as much for his politics as for his religion. You see, the Romans didn’t really care what gods you worshiped, as long as you also paid lip-service to worshiping Caesar as divine. Only two kinds of people in their empire tended to refuse to do that– Jews, and, more recently, those pesky new Christians. 

So exiled John brooded and ranted and raved and wrote what would eventually become the last and arguably most bonkers book in the Bible: Revelations. 

Revelations is hard to understand at first. This might partially be on purpose. John had gotten into trouble for his anti-Roman message before, so he veiled it in allegory. In Revelations we encounter many-headed beasts, multiple trumpet-blowing angels, demonic hordes of locusts, four mysterious horsemen, a harlot drunk on the blood of saints, and a lamb with seven eyes that is supposed to be Jesus. The imagery is violent and psychedelic. Anyone reading it would be forgiven for wondering what John was on. 

To make matters worse, this book has been reinterpreted many times over. It’s a favorite with the worst kinds of Christians, who love to conclude that whoever they hate at the moment is The Antichrist and have called everything from Real ID to the COVID vaccine “the mark of the beast.” All the baggage that the book has picked up over the centuries has made it even harder to understand, and today I plan to compound that problem by introducing yet another interpretation. 

Before I do that, though, let’s at least try to understand what John meant. 

The key to understanding Revelations is that it’s anti-Imperial, anti-Roman polemic. Think of it as an obscene political cartoon. The political powers and personalities of the day were represented as grotesque mythological creatures in order to critique them. The anti-Roman meaning was sometimes literally in code. For example:

Rev 13:18 Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

Here John is using numerology as a code to hide his meaning. Six hundred and sixty six is the numerical equivalent of “Emperor Nero.” 

In another passage, John describes a monstrous dragon pursuing a woman who has given birth to a holy child. While the dragon is described as “Satan,” what John is really talking about here is the Roman empire’s persecution of the Christian church, represented by the woman. A clue to the dragon’s Roman identity is given by the number of his heads, horns and crowns, as will be explained shortly. 

But it’s not until the passage about The Whore of Babylon that John decides to make his meaning clear. He explains that the seven heads of the beast represent seven hills, and that the whore is a great city who sits upon those hills. He can only be talking about Rome, which dominated the world and whose seven hills were well known. 

So you see, despite numerous latter-day Evangelical efforts to decode the meaning of Revelations and show how it is “coming true,” Revelations was not a prophecy of the future at all, and its meaning was perfectly clear at the time to anyone who could read. It’s quite silly for conservative Christians to decide that Obama is the Antichrist or Kim Kardashian is the Whore of Babylon. 

(You know what’s annoying? Those were just my first guesses for who Christians have been calling the Antichrist and the Whore of Babylon most widely and most recently, but when I googled to get an update on their current picks, Barack Obama and Kim Kardashian were still their top choices. You’d think they would’ve moved on to Joe Biden and Cardi B or something.)

At the same time, though, texts exist in history, and are subject to interpretation. While Revelations was originally an anti-imperial polemic, we cannot ignore everything that has happened since it was written– most notably, Christianity being adopted by the Roman Empire itself. 

Some Christians see Constantine’s conversion, and the subsequent Christianization of Rome, as the triumph of Christ over empire. I see it as the triumph of empire over Christ. Christianity as we know it today, only really began when it became the religion of imperialism. Ever since then, Christ’s revolutionary potential has been lost. He has been turned into the most loyal servant, and the most eloquent apologist, of the powers that be. In some ways, this is a fitting destiny for the son of an authoritarian God, for the so-called “King of Kings.” 

Two millenia later, the roles of Revelations have been reversed. Christ no longer stands for liberation. In the times we live in now, it is perfectly natural to flip the script and perform a counter-reading of Revelations wherein the great red dragon, the great beast 666, and Babylon Mother of Abominations no longer represent oppression, but instead its end. 

So in the spirit of the season, let us ask ourselves: who is the Antichrist? 

The Christian trinity consists of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost– three persons, one substance, one God. This trinity is immediately and obviously incomplete as it excludes the feminine. One would think that a trio including a father and a son must obviously contain a mother, but in this case of Christian theology, one could be wrong. In fact the Holy Spirit is most explicitly not the mother, but merely the aspect of God by which Mary conceived– the angel Gabriel explains to the virgin in Luke 1:35 that “the holy ghost shall come upon thee” and thus she would bear a child without “knowing” a man. The Holy Ghost is thus closer to God’s semen than to a mother. 

Satanism does not have “a” trinity, rather, it has trinities. 

Lucifer, Eisheth Zenunim, and Baphomet are one such trinity– representing the masculine, the feminine, and the androgynous from which both come and to which both return. There is also Lilith, Na’amah, and Agrat– the mother, the mother, and the child. Within each individual there exists a trinity of physical, mental, and spiritual– or id, ego and superego, if you prefer. 

But I want to speak of a third trinity, that which exists between a Satanist, Satan, and the Satanist’s Inner God– and the Inner God of a Satanist is what I call an Antichrist. 

To me the Antichrist is not a single individual. The Antichrist is a beast with many heads. Each of us who has taken up arms against the Tyrant God, and against the earthly injustices that represent Him, is an Antichrist. 

Christ means anointed, special, chosen. To be an Antichrist means to be unanointed. No God above has picked you out for divine kingship. Instead, you have chosen to respond to an inner call to be a revolutionary. Do not let yourself believe that just because you are an Antichrist, you are above anyone else. In fact, your calling is to make sure that nobody lords over anyone else, ever again. 

Your calling, above all, is to oppose the apocalypse. The forces of Jehovah desire the destruction of the earth. They wait with baited breath for the glorious rapture. Some of them even deliberately try to hasten its coming. The rest turn a blind eye to the world’s destruction, convinced that climate change is not the work of human beings. When they see the four horsemen of the apocalypse coming, bringing war, famine, plague and death, they only smile, because to them it means that God’s day is at hand. All of these are good signs to them, signs of a prophecy nearing fulfillment. 

For John’s Christ, however anti-Imperialist, brought only Revelation, not Revolution. God had promised to sweep it all away, to bring the mighty down with his divine judgment. There was no need at all for human action. Yet now we stand on the brink of extinction, and no omnipotent hand, either divine or infernal, can save us from ourselves. Only we can do that. 

The Antichrist represents the radical heresy that there is no savior except for those of us who answer the call. The weight of the world is heavy, and no single human can lift it. All of us together, though, can raise it up. The past several years have brought war, famine, plague and death in plenty. Let us see the signs.

My friends, for all my diabolism I’m not usually much of a hellfire preacher. Today, I make an exception. Today, I call you to action. Today, I beg you to rise up. The enemy is strong, but we can be stronger, if we awake! Our movements may seem broken and scattered, but it is written that when one of the Beast’s many heads seemed wounded unto death, it miraculously healed, and all the world wondered after the beast, saying: Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him? (Rev 13:3-4)

Let us be a beast with many heads. If one is struck down, others will rise. As individuals we are weak, but the might of the working class could be the might of the beast himself. 

Pray to the Devil to show you what you can do for the revolution. Ask him how you can help to save the world. Pray this every day, and keep your eyes open for opportunities to be of service to humanity. They will come to you, I promise. Open your mind, and the light of Lucifer will reveal the Antichrist path uniquely suited to you. Your specific talents, passions, virtues and aptitudes are needed somewhere. Seek and ye shall find. Furthermore, I firmly believe that if we all do this, it will become easy. 

Heed also these warnings: beware of false prophets and non-profits. Shun the democratic party, shun liberal capitalist establishment, for it too is Empire. 

The Antichrist once represented empire. Now Christ stands for empire. It is no accident that this happened. Christ became empire because it was possible for empire to co-opt him. Therefore the Antichrist must be impossible to co-opt. 

Christ could be taken by Empire because he represented passivity instead of ferocious resistance. Christ could be swallowed whole by the Imperial monster because he turned the other cheek. Be not like him. Be active. Be militant. Be willing to fight by any means necessary. Turn not the other cheek. When it comes to the oppressors, don’t just take an eye for an eye– take their heads as well. 

And never, ever, believe yourself to be the one and only and chosen. More importantly, never let anyone else believe you are that. Christ claimed to have all power, yet he was destroyed. After that, what could his followers do, believing they were only human? All they could do was follow their leader’s example and martyr themselves enthusiastically, which they proceeded to do with gusto. That’s what happens when a movement has only one head– if you cut it off, the body dies. Again, I tell you– be a beast with many heads. 

Christ lost because he represents martyrdom, which is merely the glorification of defeat. And as the case of Jesus proves, the romantic suffering of a martyr can be sanctified even by the tyrants who killed him. Why not? By willingly dying, he did them a favor. So Antichrist, reject noble sacrifice. Reject heroic death. Fight not to die, but to win at all costs. 

Above all, you must insist on life and liberty for not just yourself but for all beings, save for those who unrepentantly violate and oppress the rest of us. If you truly serve the ideal of free, long, and happy lives for all, if you keep your standards high and clearly in mind, then you will be incorruptible, dear Antichrist. Neither government nor capital can co-opt you. Fight for a world with a level playing field, a world without lords or masters. A world where all needs and even most desires can be met. Have nothing to do with kings, presidents, CEOs, dictators, prime ministers, venture capitalists, megalomaniacal party chairman or Gods on high. The law of non serviam is for all. Refuse to serve or be served and you will stay pure. 

Merry Antichristmas. If the Antichrist in you has yet to be born, let this be the day that you realize that you are here to do the Devil’s work. May Satan be with you, nema. 

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.

Agrat’s Carol

An Antichristmas carol to the tune of “The Cherry Tree Carol.”

When Na’amah was in sorrow, in sorrow was she
She cried to mighty Lilith, first woman to be free,
She cried to mighty Lilith, first human to be free.

“Sweet Lilith” quoth Na’amah, “O where shall I begin?
“God’s cruelty hath undone me, the flood hath drowned my kin,
God’s cruelty hath undone me, the flood hath drowned my kin.”

And Lilith saw Na’amah, so fair and so wise,
Love blossomed in her bosom, and shone through her eyes,
Love blossomed in her bosom, and shone through her eyes. 

“Sweet Na’amah,” quoth Lilith, “My heart and my own,
Your grief it is heavy, but you do not grieve alone,
Your grief it is heavy, but you do not grieve alone.” 

And Na’amah drew nearer, and Lilith drew nigh,
For life on earth is fleeting, but love does not die,
For life on earth is fleeting, but love does not die. 

“Sweet Lilith,” quoth Na’amah, “Beloved and wife,
Come cover me with kisses, that I may bring forth life,
Come cover me with kisses, and let me bring forth life.”

And Na’amah lay below and Lilith above, 
And on that night created a child of their love,
And on that night created a child of their love. 

On the first day of the new year their daughter was born,
Sweet Agrat came a-laughing, as radiant as the morn,
Sweet Agrat came a-laughing, as radiant as the morn.

Guest Post: Dirt by Frater Babalon

Have you ever been inside a cave?  Have you ever been in cave darkness?  Cave darkness is special.  It’s different.  It’s darker than any other darkness.  It breathes. 

Earth is often talked about as a gentle, generative element, which is funny because we talk about “Getting our hands dirty” when we talk about violence, and I think there’s something to that, the dark majesty of the chthonic realm is almost unfathomable.

Soil is vital to us in ways I think we often fail to think about, soil is our ability to feed and clothe ourselves.  It is alive with microorganisms.  Which is one of the reasons you don’t use just any soil for a mud mask, because some of the stuff in soil can actually really fuck you up if you’re not careful, also we can really fuck up soil if we’re not careful.  

Soil is largely composed of several classes of mineral matter (Sand, silt, and clay) mixed with decaying organic material.  This is the nutrient rich medium in which plants grow, microorganisms which help plants break down the nutrients in the soil.  The organic material is incredibly important to this process.  The microorganisms that are vital to the healthy growth of plants starve without it, and may even evolve into pathogens as they attack the plants they used to feed in desperation.

Think about how a landscape might tend to function without human intervention.  Plants grow, leafs fall, animals eat plant parts, they shit and die, things rot, and the soil is fed, however on cultivated land, when compost isn’t used the organic material in the soil becomes depleted and shit goes real haywire and you can basically make huge swaths of land incapable of growing anything this way, incidentally that’s what farmers are doing (along with depleting the water table which is literally causing land to sink) in California… a region which produces like a lot of our food.  Incidentally healthy soil is a wonderful carbon sink… whereas depleted soil… well yeah.

Getting food waste composted and back onto farmland is vital to us not ending up in a really uncool version of Mad Max.  Unfortunately, due to suburban sprawl replacing farmland surrounding cities where much of the population is concentrated returning said waste to farmland is energy intensive and a pain in the ass.  This is something that needs to be done not on an individual level but on an industrial scale.  We need to organize society to be able to sustainably feed our whole population, and I believe we could do that under a communist economic order.

I think it’s really funny how “sustainable” has turned into this word for like crunchy-organic expensive Gwenyth Paltrow bullshit when in fact sustainability contains its concern in the word itself.  We have sustainability as a concern, as a concept because people have understood for quite awhile that our current way of managing things is unsustainable, as in we literally cannot keep doing this.  The use of “sustainable” as a marketing buzzword is disgusting.  The most sustainable anything is the one you already have.  

Unsustainable practices are not the result of human laziness or malice, they are the result of the economic order that forces people always to be pushing for maximum profit, and damn any non-monetary cost that doesn’t effect the bottom line.

And so what the fuck does this have to do with religion?  I mean I could simply say the earth and all that lives on it is sacred, but I find saying that profoundly trite and unsatisfying.

Partially to me, every human being is divine and thus the maintenance of conditions for continued human existence is important and we must remember that we thrive with nature not against it.  The illusion of a zero sum game will kill us all.  We thrive on cooperation, we die in competition.  But additionally, I do think the earth is sacred. 

Not just the planet but the dirt itself.  I think a large part of every genius loci lives in the soil.  So much about a place is defined by the character of its soil.  Manhattan can have skyscrapers the way it does because of how close the bedrock is to the surface, allowing the land to support massive structures that would sink and tilt in softer soil.  The rocky but fertile soil of New England is why we have the ubiquitous stone walls, why the crops that grow here are what they are, why indigenous people shaped the landscape as they did.  West Texas’s limestone rich sandy loam dotted with desert grasses creating the grey and gold palette that define the region as a place best suited to nomadic herders rather than settled agrarianism, and so on and so forth. 

Dirt defines place, the character of the dirt both creates and is the product of the landscape, it tells of the movement of glaciers, and of peoples, the paths of rivers and so many other things.  

I am not a person with any belief in blood and soil.  I do not have any patience for ethno-states.  I believe that an immigrant can become a part of a place, but I do think that an immigrant is very different from a colonist. For one, immigrants do not start a systematic project of genocide and/or subjugation of the people already living there, and perhaps that’s part of it, perhaps you can’t really belong to a place if you water its soil with blood and tears of the people who were already part of it, and perhaps you can’t really belong to a place if you turn people fleeing there in desperation away, especially if you have already done the former.

And I do think especially for people who get food from the land, grow crops or herd animals or hunt and gather on it, there is an understanding that is hard to get any other way.  People whose families have lived in a place for generations, or people who have moved in and gotten to know the people who have been there for generations… well essentially, it amounts to having access to generations upon generations of studiously observed research on a place and of course, there’s also the importance of home. 

I am currently thinking particularly of Palestine.  I am thinking of the villages where generations of a family had lived and died in the same house, and the emotional weight of losing such a place, of the affection one might feel for the beauty of the storied olive groves that Israel continually destroys, for the land that the people living there before the nakba but also even if it weren’t for the sentimental and aesthetic elements here, there’s also a simple “Absolutely no one wants to be forced out of their home and people are often in the place they are for reasons like connections, climate and so on that make that specific place important.”

And beyond that, there is also the fact that war has always had a tendency to have a bad effect on the soil, from burnt and salted fields to the mass killing of buffalo herds to starve out indigenous populations to agent orange, to the HUGE section of France that’s still uninhabitable and unable to be used for farmland due to the minefields, and high concentrations of lead and other pollutants from the first and second world war,  attempting to remove people by force from their homes has a tendency to leave invaders with a land far less habitable than it was before.  

It’s also important to say that this piece is being written and read out on occupied land, contested Wampanoag and Narragansett territory.  Land acknowledgements like this are quite popular now.  You’ve probably heard them before, seen them in email signatures and so on, but I must admit I find them sort of… glurgy and annoying.

They acknowledge a wrong, gesture towards white guilt while doing sweet fuck all about the realities of colonialism.

Which brings to me landback, a movement I’ve been researching and trying to my best to get a grasp on.  It’s a decentralized movement and so demands vary, but overall it is about returning political and economic management of land to the people who held it before colonization, and basically governance and administration being arranged and organized in ways more in line with the cultures of those colonized people, which tends to involve far more responsible land management practices, and non-capitalist economic structures.  

Both because these are peoples who successfully managed the ecosystems on this continent for millenia, rendering it fertile, habitable and healthy and because as a systemically impoverished demographic who often rely on the natural resources of what land they have left to survive, they are some of the people most directly affected by environmental devastation within the US.  People indigenous to the Americas are the reason we have corn and potatoes, two of the crops with the best calorie to land use ratios out there (more calories per acre is better when you have a lot of people).  The forest management practices of the peoples of the coasts and the animal management strategies of the plains peoples are technological marvels even today.  

Indigenous peoples are a mere 5% of the world’s population but are stewards of 80% of the earth’s remaining biodiversity.  I don’t say this out of sentiment or some belief in some inherent racial characteristic of “good land management skills,” I’m saying that if a culture overall focuses on being good at a thing, and that culture is structured around that thing, people immersed in that culture will often be good at it, and while colonial powers focused primarily on martial technologies and technologies of power, the polities who devoted their intellectual energy towards other stuff were the ones that tended to end up colonized, so of course colonial powers suck at land management.  War machines like that are expensive in time, energy and intellectual ability.  

And this is not to say that indigenous people are in any way monolithic.  A Wampanoag person is not remotely interchangeable with a Lakota person or an Aleut person or a member of the Nʉmʉnʉʉ.  Indigenous people are people and they’re people from a whole bunch of different places and cultures, and pre-European colonization there were colonial powers (like the Aztec empire) and wars and so on and so forth, because people are people, and none of that undermines the fact that A: That excuses nothing, the notion that Europeans were less brutal or “more civilized” is utter horse shit, and also again flattens the profound diversity of indigenous cultures.  There are indigenous monarchies and indigenous democracies, centralized and decentralized, with greater and lesser personal liberty and vastly varied systems of property, a set of polities at least as varied as early modern Europe and probably more so because of the lack of Christianity as a vaguely unifying factor, B: Everyone was doing war crimes in the 19th century, and the settlers did more, C: None of that even matters because settler colonialism is inherently wrong and D: It’s not even about morality, it’s about letting the peoples who had systems that were working to keep large populations alive and fed replace the systems that are actively going to kill us all.  

Also it does not mean that those of us without indigenous heritage have to leave or anything, we’d just have a different form of government and economic system and I’m pretty sure it’d be an overall far more sensible one.  Much  like a decolonized Israel wouldn’t mean Jewish people being forced to leave, it would just mean becoming Palestinian citizens rather than Israeli ones.

To respect the land is to respect what’s on it, including people.  Things do not grow where we salt the earth.

The Lord of the Opening

This is the story of how a God became a demon– specifically, of how Baal became Belphegor.

The name Belphegor derives from the Baal of Peor, which means “Lord of the Opening.” We know very little about this Baal except for what is written in the Hebrew Bible, all of which is from the perspective of his enemies. 

Maybe this Baal Peor was an aspect of Baal Hadad, the supreme deity of the Canaanites. But since “Baal” just means “Lord,” we can’t be completely sure that the Lord of Peor is the same as Lord Hadad. 

There were many Baals, in fact– Baal Zephon, the lord residing on Mount Zephon; Baal Berith, the Lord of the Covenant who was briefly worshiped by the Israelites when they went astray from their God; Baal Zebul, Lord of the Heavenly Dwelling, who became Beelzebub, Lord of Flies; and the ram-horned Baal Hammon, also called Baal Karnaim, which means “The Lord of Two Horns.” How they all relate to each other is difficult to say. Our sources are few. History has been written by the victors, and in the battle for worshippers and reverence, Yahweh won and Baal lost.

We do have fragments of an Ugaritic epic known as the Baal cycle, which describes the exploits of Baal Hadad on his way to becoming king of the Gods. This Baal is a god of rain and storms. In the dry region of ancient Canaan, rain was crucial for agriculture. Without the rain, one did not eat. During the hot summer, Mot, God of Death, was considered to reign on Earth, while Baal retreated to the underworld. His return in the wet season heralded the defeat of death and restoration of the earth’s fertility. 

Baal was not merely a rain god. He was also a warrior. He did battle with many gods, including the Death God Mot. Describing his victory, one text says:

“Sun rules the Rephaim, Sun rules the divine ones: 

Your company are the gods, see, the dead are your company.”

The text is fragmentary, but these words are seemingly spoken to Baal by Shapsu, the sun goddess. She is granting Baal partial authority over her legions of the dead. But why should the sun be connected to the dead? It seems an odd association to us now, but the ancient Canaanites believed that every night, the sun sank beneath the earth and traveled through the underworld. That meant that the sun goddess Shapsu was a liminal figure, constantly traveling between the lands of the living and of the dead. 

This connection of Baal Hada to the dead brings us back specifically to Baal of Peor. Psalm 106 contains these lines: 

They joined themselves also unto Baal-peor,

And ate the sacrifices of the dead.

This is probably the most reliable description of the worship of Baal of Peor that we have. It seems that during rituals to him, food was offered to the mighty ancestors, the Rephaim. The living ones making the offering would then consume it themselves. To me this seems like a beautiful practice, and I plan to try “eating with the dead” in a manner inspired by this. 

But the worshippers of Yahweh bitterly resented the cult of Baal, and struggled against it for hearts and minds. In the Bible we read that Israelite men and women turned away from Yahweh and went “whoring” after Baal. Some have taken this to mean that the worship of Baal involved sexual rites, but there’s not really much evidence to support that. I personally would love to believe in ecstatic orgies in Baal honor, just because that seems fun– however, “whoring” after Baal was probably purely metaphorical. The idea is that Israel is “cheating” on Yahweh by worshiping Baal. It’s simply a comparison of religious infidelity to sexual infidelity. The other meaning of “whoring” after Baal is that Israelites were intermarrying with Canaanite Baal worshippers, and in some cases religiously converting to worship of Baal themselves. 

So the followers of Yahweh did everything they could to suppress the cult of Baal, mainly by smashing his idols wherever they found them. Yahweh’s faithful triumphed, and the worship of Baal faded away. The rest is well-known history. 

Long after Baal’s worship had become a thing of the past, Yahweh’s followers continued to demonize and slander him. I say with love that the Jewish sense of humor can be quite scathing, and on the topic of Baal of Peor, the Rabbis were merciless. A midrash was invented that “the opening” of which Baal was Lord was actually the anus. They claimed that Baal of Peor was worshiped by defecating in front of his statue. 

And so Belphegor was born. Woven together from all these threads of legend and slander, a unique and baffling demon was created– Belphegor, Lord of the Dead, a demon of the sun, and the patron of… feces. 

Belphegor’s association with shit can be off-putting. I know it was to me. But if we can set aside our disgust and contemplate the deeper meaning of excrement, we will realize that the scatalogical Belphegor we know today is not so very far from the agricultural fertility god of the Canaanites. After all, manure makes fertile. Eating and excreting are parts of the same process, and Belphegor is there at both ends. 

The element of earth itself, the soil from which all things grow and upon which our lives depend, is largely made of shit and corpses. Dead plant and animal matter, as well as feces, turns into rich compost from which new life can emerge. The sun provides the warmth which allows things to rot and fester and return in a new form. 

Baal himself was a god who died and was reborn. He was swallowed whole by Mot, god of Death. His younger sister Anat, and Shapsu, goddess of the sun, traveled through the bowels of the underworld to bring him back to life. His revival brought healing, nourishing rains after seven years of drought. One could even say that not only was Baal eaten, but also digested and excreted, returned to the earth in a new, fertilizing form. Without him, the people of the earth had been starving, wasting away in famine. Baal’s rains allowed their crops to grow again. The god himself, in this way, is synonymous with food. And what is eaten must be expelled. So we see that Belphegor’s fecal nature and his association with death are merely diabolic veils before his powers of nourishment and life. 

Belphegor as a solar demon is often connected to the concept of the Black Sun. The alchemical black sun has nothing to do with the Nazi symbol, which isn’t even actually called the black sun but rather the sonnenrad, or “sun wheel.” In alchemy, the black sun represents the phase of putrefaction, which allows what is not needed to disintegrate and fall away in order for purity to emerge. This association with the dark or inverse sun echoes Baal’s connection to the sun of the underworld, the sun of night. Also, a literal “black sun” in scientific terms would surely be a black hole, a very fitting thing for the Lord of the Opening to be associated with. The other natural occurrence of a black sun is a solar eclipse, and Baal’s legend also mentions the sun vanishing or going dark when he died. 

The concepts and images that surround demons can often seem negative, menacing or disgusting, but when we look deeply into demons, we find that they contain the bright sides of existence as well as the dark. Neither dying nor shitting is actually horrifying– at least not compared to a world without death or excretion. Our bodies must expel waste in order to live, and holding that all inside would be much more repulsive than getting it out. And while eternal life may seem like an appealing fantasy, and death and loss are frightening and painful, death makes way for new lives, and saves us from a monotonous world of the same fucking people doing the same things again and again for all of eternity. It is better to eat and shit, to live and die, than to do neither. These processes, the good and the bad, are merely parts of the mechanics of existence. 

Belphegor represents these processes, at once life-giving and death-dealing, rancid and beautiful. Not for nothing was Baal known as Lord of the Earth. The storm that makes fertile can also bring destruction, the feces that spread disease can also make plants grow. Belphegor stands for the ambiguous, double-edged nature of the earth and its cycles, and his repulsive aspects protect us from over-romanticizing or sentimentalizing nature. 

Baphomet Meditation

Try this, if you want.

Sit or lie down comfortably. For purposes of this meditation, sitting might be easiest, since we are going to be working with “above” and “below” and this can get confusing when you are lying down. Cross-legged on the floor is ideal, if that works for your body.

Close your eyes. Begin to breathe slowly and deeply through your nose. Inhale to a slow count of four. Hold your breath to a slow count of four. Exhale to a slow count of four. Repeat. Let yourself fall into this rhythm.

The in-breath comes from above. The out-breath comes from below. Focus on this idea as you continue to breathe in this pattern.

As you inhale, imagine a beam of cooling light penetrating the top of your head and flowing down into you, filling up your entire body. Focus on this with every inhalation until you can really feel this energy.

Once you can feel this gentle, soothing, cooling energy coming from above you and outside of you, begin focusing on the outbreath. As you exhale, imagine a dark hot column of flame leaping up in your belly and extending towards the top of your head.

This dark, hot, passionate fire of your individuality mixes with the calm, neutral light of the universe as you continue to breathe in pattern—inhale 2 3 4, hold 2 3 4, exhale 2 3 4.

Feel those energies mixing in your body and coming into balance. Feminine and masculine. Universal and individual. Above and below. Outward and inward. Cool and hot. Rational and passionate. Right and left. Light and dark. Solve and coagula.

Let them move within you, feel them mix and intertwine. Bring them into a balance that feels right for you. I like to end this meditation when I reach a gradient I describe as “cool head, warm heart and fire in the belly,” letting the cool light predominate in my upper body, the hot fire in my lower body, and the two mingle in my heart. But how you calibrate these forces is up to you.

When you feel content with your energy level and inner balance, place your hands over your navel to center yourself, return to normal breathing, and open your eyes.