Tag Archives: inner god

Guest Post: What is an Inner God? by Frater Babalon

Homily at Church of the Morningstar on 3/18/2023

So as part of my theology I firmly believe that every human being is possessed of an inner god.  This god is utterly benevolent towards the person it is a part of.  They love us, as we ought to love ourselves.  They are the part of us that knows how to keep moving, to keep loving through the hardest shit in the world.  They can banish any frightening spiritual force.  They give us our capacity for compassion, and moral reasoning.

It’s weird, but I think most of us have experienced something like our inner god at some point.  That voice within us that is kind, and that holds us together in the face of hardship.  It is the voice that gets you through.  And it can be drowned out by so many things in life, fear and other people’s unkindness, our own pain, innumerable things.  I don’t believe the world is naturally a just place.  I don’t think the ledger is balanced by some divine hand in the end.  Justice is up to us.  So I don’t think that our inner gods can always yell over the din, we have to find a way to listen.  They are a resource we can turn to if we know how.  

The inner god is a concept about which I still have a lot of theological questions.  Are inner gods one per person?  Given the same information, will all inner gods reach the same moral conclusion?  If morality is too complex to be axiomatic (as in reduced to a series of axioms) but they would come to the same conclusion, would that be to suggest there is some absolute morality?  Objectively true in itself?  But of course, I think there is usually more than one “right” answer to most things, and of course there are a lot of times where there’s not really a good answer, just a lot of least bad answers and unavoidable collateral damage.

But I mean I suppose, despite their lack of omnipotence, inner gods are the closest thing to the vast and ineffable “big god” style gods to me.  Every human being contains that sacredness, and of course, the sacred is also the potentially dangerous, isn’t it?  We all know about wrathful gods.  I think a mistreated god is likely to become a wrathful god.  As well, I don’t know whether if everyone truly listened to their inner god if there would be no conflict?  I’m not sure it would.  I do not think we live in a clockwork universe where when everything is “working properly” we function as a well oiled machine, each piece fitting perfectly into place, never bashing into one another.  We’re not a puzzle with loops and blanks perfectly aligned, destined to make a perfect whole if we all just find our right place, I think.  But if that’s true… what is this?  What is it for?  Why do we have it?  How do we do it?

This is a hard sermon to write, because for me the inner god is so deeply a felt experience, that trying to describe it, to explain a rational theology of the inner god, to explain what conclusions I draw from this felt experience, and I think it’s a good exercise, a useful thing to actually think about.  I think it must be for something in a way, but of course like any idea of human life having a purpose, anything articulable is unsatisfactory.  If we were to know that the purpose of human life is to provide the… specific atmospheric conditions necessary for the universe to function optimally as a doorstop for the cosmic crystalline unicorn that exists outside of time, that would still be unsatisfactory because then we’d wonder what the unicorn was for.  

But of course “forness” is like… a concept that exists within human life.  Purpose is something that exists on too small and specific a scale to cover a whole life I think.  It’s like asking “what color is a human life?” there’s too much color in a human life to answer the question, there are too many human lives to answer the question.  I don’t know.

Now, of course, believing every human being is divine and being as you all know, not someone who preaches pacifism or tolerance for injustice, is a complex thing.  What does it mean to believe in the divinity of humanity and to acknowledge that as long as there is oppression, there may be the necessity of things like wars?

Well, I mean to me it means acknowledging the full weight of that.  The full weight of both the need to combat all oppression and the true potential cost of combating it.  It requires a serious commitment to thinking about the strategies you employ and choices you make.

I do think that there is something to be said for trying to listen for the inner god.  I think we’re happier and generally kinder to one another when we do, but how and why that works?  That’s a mystery of my faith, the way the nature of the trinity might be to a Christian.

I don’t know, it’s the thing that keeps you moving when it’s freezing and you’ll die if you don’t keep walking.  It’s the thing you hold onto.  That’s what I’ve got.  That’s all I’m sure of.

My God

Today I’d like to talk to you about my personal Lord and Savior– me. 

Well, not exactly me. The best of me, a hidden, higher part, a true, secret Self who I can never fully know, but whom I worship. 

I’ve called Him my Inner God, my Holy Guardian Angel, The Bornless One, Akephalos. His true name is a secret that can never be spoken. I worship Him in the form of this word, a word whose multitude of translations, connotations and properties reveals ever more about Him to me. 

My God is not your God. He may be nothing at all like the God that dwells in you, but still, I thought that maybe talking about My God and how I relate to Him might get you thinking about Your God and what They might be. 

First of all, my God is not omnipotent. He cannot grant all my wishes, stop the evil in the world, protect me or my loved ones from death, disease and misfortune. If something goes wrong in my life, it is pointless to get angry at Him. What goes on in the outside world is beyond His influence. 

His influence and power resides in the little bubble of my thoughts, feelings, and actions. Over these he has absolute power, as long as I grant Him my submission.

That may not sound like much, but it is not to be underestimated. 

I discovered My God when I had to get into recovery from alcoholism and self-harm. I had relapsed hundreds of times, and was incapable of stopping my self-destruction until, in desperation, I did what those AA people told me to do and prayed. 

And for reasons I could not understand, it worked. When I asked for help from something that was above and beyond my ego and my conscious mind, I suddenly found a power I had never had before– the power to turn down a drink or a drug. The power to change. The power to get better. 

An atheist-friendly AA definition of a Higher Power is an “unsuspected inner resource.” That was how I thought about My God. That is still how I think about My God. 

I knew Lucifer would not be my Higher Power. He wanted me to worship Myself. But there were a lot of problems with that idea. Worship me? I was fallible, imperfect. Hell, more than that, at the time I was a fucking mess and frankly not a good person. I couldn’t worship the guy who didn’t care how many people got hurt by his self-destruction. I couldn’t worship the guy who was scared all the time, angry all the time, hurting all the time. 

But Lucifer told me there was more to me. I was doubtful, but I decided to trust him. 

For a long time, I prayed to My God without a clear idea of who he was or what he was like. I didn’t even have a name for Him for years. Eventually I received the name, and with it a set meanings attached to it which began to make His mysterious character a little more clear. The name jumped off the page of a book at me while I was struggling to find the right secret name for my Satanic baptism. I hadn’t been able to come up with anything that fit before, but the instant I saw that word, a word completely unfamiliar to me until that moment, I knew it was right. 

That word is the primary manifestation of My God to me. It’s an unusual word with unusual properties, and many meanings in many languages. Additionally, the word breaks down into a multitude of other words that also have interesting translations. The letters, the number of letters, the arrangement of letters, has a shocking symmetry and simplicity that unfolds implications. I meditate upon that word, imagine its flaming golden letters wrapping around me, endlessly recursive, in an unbreakable ward of protection. 

My God is not like many other Gods you may know. I don’t have a clear mental image of his appearance, other than the face I see in the mirror, which is also attached to the less divine parts of me. My God does not have a mythology, and very little iconography. I imagine Him as a pyramid, as lightning, as a white rose, or as the flaming letters of His name. His colors are black, white, red, and gold, a standard alchemical palette. After all this time, I know very little about Him, yet he draws me unfailingly in a direction– the right direction.

I said before that My God has absolute sovereignty over everything in my direct sphere of actions– my thoughts, feelings, words and actions. I also said before not to underestimate this power. I have found that any time I remember to pray to Him, I am granted the strength to carry on in the face of any pain. I find the right words for any occasion. I come to the right decision, the right solution, the right thing to do. My lower mind can fail to listen to Him, can forget He is there– but when I reach out, He never fails me. 

He is my redeemer and preserver. In a sense He is my creator, for He made me the man I am today. He is unambiguously the reason I am still alive, that force that stays my hand when self-destruction’s siren call is loud. He is the reason I can bear tragedy, trauma, and stress. When I think I cannot go on, I know that I can, for He is with me, and in me. He is the core of my being. 

Because of Him, even my fallible body and mind are sacred. My body is His shrine. My mind is His servant. 

When I speak of My God, I sound almost like a monotheist of the right-hand path, speaking in terms of surrender, submission, service. But I surrender to His will because it is my own truest will. I serve Him because in doing so I ultimately serve myself, and the people and causes I care about. I surrender to Him because he does not dominate others. There is no I, only Thou, I tell him every day, with ecstasy and devotion in my heart. The path to my apotheosis is to blend ever more fully with Him, and this is my highest aspiration. 

I believe whole-heartedly, after many years of practice, in these simple things: If I stumble, He will catch me. If I am uncertain, He will have the answer. If I am afraid, He will grant me courage. If I am weak, He will give me strength. If I am cruel and selfish, He will teach me compassion. If I am in error, He will show me the truth. If I am tired, He will give me determination to press on. If I am in despair, He will grant me hope. When I cannot love myself, I can love Him in me. And though I may die, I believe that He is eternal. 

Glory to the God who dwells in Me. Nema.