Tag Archives: luciferianism

More Mini Book Reviews

Compendium Maleficarum

This 17th-century witch-hunting manual is absolutely essential for understanding European views of Satanic witchcraft. It is also super entertaining, being full of wild anecdotes and fun bits of folklore about witchcraft, demons and the Devil. Best of all, I ended up finding it super useful and inspirational to my practice. It contains a black baptism ritual (which I adapted for my own use), and lots of spell casting ideas. I would put it in a “top five” list of books every theistic Satanist should read. (I have the Montague Summers edition, so that’s fun as well.)

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake

This is a quick and mostly excellent read. I might not put it in a top five list of Satanic reads, but definitely top ten. It’s trippy, poetic and philosophical. In terms of style it reminded me of Thus Spoke Zarathustra more than anything else. It’s more of an inspirational text than an informational one but I found it to be VERY pro-Satanic and uplifting. And it took me all of twenty minutes to read.

Là-Bas by Joris-Karl Huysmans

A novel. This is a good read and it sheds a lot of light on how Satanism has been conceptualized. That said, I wouldn’t call it pro-Satanic. Satanism is basically portrayed as menacing and evil, yet attractive if you are a super alienated skeptic who longs for spiritual experience (I can’t really argue with that last part). It’s also a very gruesome text, and focuses on the alleged pedophiliac murders of Gilles de Rais. So, that’s what you’re in for, and it’s fucking explicit about it too, especially for being published in 1891. A lot of what it references is pretty well-researched based on what was available at the time. If you are interested in Satanism in literature and feel like reading a creepy, moody, 19th century French novel, then check it out. If you are easily upset by graphic child abuse content or by horrendous stereotypes about Satanism… skip it.

The Fruit of Knowledge

The story of Eden is important to most Satanists. A lot hinges on the fruit of knowledge and on what that signified. For many of us, you could call it our central mystery.

Different Satanist tendencies can often be classified based on how they interpret that fruit. 

Luciferians tend to be very focused on intellectual and spiritual knowledge. That’s nice. I have a lot of history with that tendency and I still relate to it. I’ve even joked that “Luciferian” is a five syllable word for “bookworm” or “nerd.” 

But of course, in the Bible, “to know” has a lot of connotations. Famously, it stands for “carnal” knowledge– we’ve all know what it means to know someone in a “Biblical sense.” (It means you fucked them.) Certain strains of Satanism place a lot of focus on carnal knowledge. That’s cool too. I do that as well. 

But I think it’s a mistake to forget that the fruit stands for all knowledge. It has many dimensions of meaning. Remember, it was said to give knowledge of good and evil. That’s pretty broad– and also implies a type of knowledge a lot of Satanists don’t seem to think about much, which is to say conscience, ethical knowledge. 

It’s OK to follow your heart and focus on whatever you like, but I think it’s a mistake to focus on just one type of knowledge and knowing. Gnosis doesn’t have to come from just reading a ton of books, or just from meditating a bunch, or just from hedonistic indulgence. If you tend to be particularly cerebral, or particularly carnal, it may be profitable to balance your approach. You might be missing out. 

Alchemy (for Fools like Me)

The Magnum Opus— the Great Work of Alchemy— is the work of becoming perfect. It is the work of Apotheosis.

Stage 1: Black.
You burn. You die. It is the dark night of the soul. You become as ash, and yes, it will hurt.

You are initiated. Reborn. Nothing is the same. You are not the same. For that, you grieve.

Stage 2: White.
You are silver now. This is purification. The pale moon in the black night. Finally, some light.

But oh, you didn’t think it would hurt? Think again. Purification implies removal. All that did not serve a purpose is stripped away. You will lose more. You will grieve more.

As the statue emerges from the marble chipped away, so you are emerging. Except that’s not stone under the chisel. It’s your soul, and every cut is agony.

Don’t resist it. You are being refined. Defined. Coming into focus. You are finding out who you are.

Stage 3: Yellow.
Now you are gold. The sun has risen. All that you are has become integrated, symbolized by the divine androgyne.

You are yourself. You see yourself. I think you might even like yourself.

Does it hurt? Probably. I’m not there yet. I don’t know. I can’t tell you much about becoming gold.

At best, I might be silver.

At worst, I am still ash.

Stage 4: Red.
The philosopher’s stone, something so perfect it perfects all things, so pure it purifies all things. This is you, now, I guess.

What is it like to be this? To be translucent and red and perfect beyond perfection? Who can tell you about it?

Ask the Gods, some of them might know.

And if you do, ask them for me:

Does it hurt?

Gratitude = Pride

I learned about gratitude lists in my recovery program. I fucking hated the concept when I first heard of it. 

“LIFE IS KICKING ME IN THE NUTS, AND YOU WANT ME TO BE GRATEFUL TO SOME SHITTY GOD? ALL THIS CRAP IS COMING MY WAY, AND I’M SUPPOSED TO SAY ‘THANKS DADDY, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER?’”

And yeah, done that way, gratitude lists or prayers of gratitude really wouldn’t work for me. At best it would be cheesy and insincere, and at worst an exercise in self-abasement. 

But I learned that gratitude lists and prayers of thanks are tools that can work for me, if I do things my way. 

It’s not about kissing the ass of some shitty Daddy Dom God and thanking him for throwing me crumbs.

It’s about reminding myself that I actually do have reasons to be sober and stay alive.

Praying in thanks for all the good things in my life helps me focus on what’s precious to me. That got me through six years clean, sober and self-harm free. 

Recently I’ve had to level up. Because you see, so many of the things that made up my daily gratitude list have become past tense.

The sponsee? Dead. The boyfriend? That’s over. The cats? Two out of three will be going shortly. My coworkers? I don’t work there anymore. My bands? On hiatus, possibly permanently. Three of my other friends? Also dead. 

I still have items on my gratitude list that I get to keep. The one cat that is mine and not my ex’s. My other partners. My family. This apartment. My sponsor. My friends that still live. 

But I cannot help but feel how precarious it is, to have things and to love people, given all that I have lost.

So what do I do? I’m still trying to figure that out. What I have been doing is still praying in thanks for the things that I have lost, because I did have them and they were wonderful. And that reminds me that, although everything is shitty and precarious, and relationships end and buildings burn and people die, the wheel of fortune keeps turning. I can’t know what further losses await me in the future, but I also don’t know what victories and blessings may come.

And fucking crazy and cracked and whackadoodle nutso religious as it might sound, I have two things that I can never lose: my Gods and my faith.

And it’s amazing how far I can get on just that.

I don’t have all powerful Gods. And my faith does not expect that horrible painful things won’t happen to me. The only thing that my faith promises is that, when I look inside myself for that spark of divinity, I will always find it. The God in me will always give me the courage and strength to get through any bullshit life throws my way—and do so stone cold sober.

My faith promises that I need never despair, and that there is always a way to avoid killing myself– and even better, that I can always find a way to become a person I respect more.

And it turns out that, aside from certain physical necessities, that’s the only thing I actually NEED.

So today I am grateful for the fire in my belly that won’t let me quit no matter what. I’m grateful for the scars of survival. I’m grateful that I have loved fiercely enough to know immense pain. I’m grateful for all the lessons I have learned, and for all the fucked up situations I have weathered. I’m grateful that what does not kill me makes me stronger, bitch.

And herein lies a secret: when you’re a Satanist and you self-deify, gratitude gets another name: pride. Not the kind of pride that puffs you up with false confidence and makes you obnoxious. The pride that comes when you realize that, for every blessing, you ought to be thanking yourself.

You. Yes, you. You reading this. You’re fucking amazing. 

You don’t have to believe as I do. You don’t have to believe shit. But in my book, Thou art God.

Verily I say unto you, you have been kicked in the posterior by life, you have been gut-punched repeatedly by circumstance, and you have climbed to your feet again. You may live on stubbornness, spite and too much caffeine, but yea verily you live on, you are risen, Glory Hallelujah! Jesus has nothing on you, you tough weirdo cockroach motherfuckers who just won’t stay down.

You are Gods. You don’t have to believe it, but I do.

Am I saying you should be totallt self-reliant, and do it all alone on your own power, which probably feels so depleted? Fuck no! I am here! We are all here! So much power and love is available to us all! Alone we are strong, but together, so much stronger!

My heart is open to you, to you, and also unto you. I see the fire in your belly too, and I am grateful for that too, and so proud of you.

Here ends the sermon. Praise be to Us. Amen.

TL;DR of my last post: Remember The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Sometimes you don’t think magic is all that powerful. You think you’ll only get one animate broom, if that. And then suddenly you have three million animate brooms and you are drowning in the waters of your own confusion and ignorance and feeling like Mickey Mouse in an animated short. 

(Amusingly, the old tale of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was also recounted in Compendium Maleficarum. Witch hunting manuals have so much accidental wisdom in them.)

Skepticism Must Cut Both Ways

I haven’t made a long text post in awhile. This is because my life has been crazy– particularly my magical/spiritual/religious life. I’ve wanted to share about it, but have been too raw, and haven’t known where to start. 

So I’ll start here, with an important lesson I’ve learned. 

If you want to dabble in magic but have a healthy skepticism about whether this is all “real,” that’s fine. That was me for a long time. But there are dangers to this attitude, and I am here to give you a warning about it. 

True skepticism is open-mindedness. Think about how good science is actually done: you have a hypothesis, but you don’t wanna be too married to it because it will skew your interpretation of results. And if your hypothesis is wrong, you have to be ready to throw it out. 

If your hypothesis is “magic isn’t real,” magical experiments may prove you wrong. You ready for that? 

I’ve done some things not truly expecting them to work, or not expecting them to work very well, because I still felt foolish and thought I was probably kidding myself about any of this stuff being real. 

The problem with that is… what if it works? 

Are you ready for it to fucking work? 

If you go into a spell or ritual with too much skepticism, that means you may not be mentally and emotionally prepared for it to have real, powerful consequences. Even sending out a prayer that you don’t truly expect to be answered can have this effect.

And if you’re too cynical about results, you likely haven’t thought through all the potential repercussions, and that can be devastating. 

For example, I prayed for Lucifer to destroy all of my illusions. Yep, all of them. I’m an idiot. 

Just a couple weeks later I have quit a job I loved, and broken up with my boyfriend who I also love to pieces, because I became incapable of ignoring the ways in which those lovely things in my life weren’t healthy for me anymore. How much more in my life is based on beloved illusions? I may be about to find out, even though I feel like I’ve already lost pretty much everything I have. 

Are you ready for something like that?

Related, I did that Black Baptism in May. I did it in the spirit of occult experimentation, basically customizing a supposed Satanic Witch Initiation I found in Compendium Malleficarum. I had no idea if there was anything to it, given that there was a good chance it was just based on false confessions extracted under torture. So I decided to jump on that grenade– try it, and see if it worked. 

I still admire that reckless, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants spirit of experimentation that I had going into the ritual, and I don’t regret self-initiating and giving oath to Satan. However…

…did you know that initiation involves spiritual death? 

Yeah, spiritual death. Hard to describe if you have never been through it. Feels about as painful as it sounds. Imagine shedding parts of your identity that don’t serve you anymore like so much dry skin. Imagine suddenly becoming a completely different person, and realizing you need completely different things than you thought. 

Then imagine how painful that process can be for all the people around you. 

If your identity died and you were reborn as something new, would your old life be set up for that new person? Chances are, you just can’t know the answer to that until it happens. We don’t get to pick what we are reborn as. 

If I sound naive, chaotic and disorganized, it’s because I honestly am. I’ve been at this for a couple of years and have done a lot of reading, but I am not and never have been part of any structured magical tradition. The Devil is my initiator and he doesn’t always play nice. He also knows the only way I tend to learn is “the hard way.” I signed up to be repeatedly astrally gut-punched by Lucifer, and I knew he didn’t pull his punches, but intellectually knowing that and actually finding out how hard Satan can hit you are different things. 

So I am begging you, dear skeptics and cynics who like to do magic to see if it will work (but kinda don’t expect it to):

Be ready for it to go either way. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe ALL THE THINGS WILL HAPPEN. You’ve got to be prepared. 

And uh, please don’t try my Black Baptism ritual, or any other initiation rite, until you’re sure you’re ready. It might change your life. It might change you. And it won’t necessarily start changing you right away, or change you in the ways you expect. When I did the ritual itself, I had a lot of powerful emotions, but I didn’t have any flashy visions, or hear the voice of Satan, or feel him touch me to leave a Devil’s mark. I thought maybe it had been nice and personally cathartic, but not magically effective. I was wrong. The Devil’s Mark is on me now, and I am still figuring out what that means. 

I love you all. Hail Lucifer and also Thanks Lucifer, You Absolute Motherfucker. 

Story Time

So, I used to work at a small, queer business that I really loved, and that has a lot of small, queer business-related struggles. It almost closed permanently earlier this year, and during that scary time I did a lot of money spells for it, and asked Satan and Naamah to protect and help the place. This is just necessary background info.

Fast forward to now. A couple days ago I got some VERY weird tarot cards that I was pretty sure weren’t directed at me. I did a reading from another deck to confirm, and they sent the same very strong message that didn’t seem applicable to my life: there was a backstabber, and a business was in serious danger. Since I’m self-employed and there isn’t currently anyone who can really backstab me in business, I was very confused about how this applied. 

I got on pendulum and Lucifer confirmed that the message was not meant for me, and was in fact meant for my ex employer.

I messaged my ex boss, who thankfully is a Thelemite and down with the woo, and told them that the Devil had a warning for them. 

They had a suspicion about who might be holding the backstabbing knife. Lucifer confirmed via pendulum that those suspicions were correct. They thanked me. 

Twenty minutes later an email chain emerged showing the exact guy implicated by the readings going behind my ex boss’s back and doing some really sketchy stabby shit. 

I am pissed of course, but also my mind has been blown once again by how fucking spot-on Lucifer always is. 

The Shy Silence of Mystics

It’s ironic, but the more my spiritual practice intensifies the less time I have to blog… and also, truth be told, the more sensitive I feel about sharing my journey. 

On tumblr it’s cool to believe in magic… but I don’t see a lot of people sharing about what happens when it WORKS. This is probably partly out of a fear of sounding cringe-y or crazy. At least, that’s the fear holding me back. 

The Infernal Gods are not silent or shy. Once you open yourself to them, they interact. They talk a lot. And in this culture we live in, steeped in the cruel silence of Jehovah and the ending of his miracles, it’s fine to pray to your God… but no one knows what to do if your Gods talk back. 

All this being said, I am going to try to be brave. I know there are other people out there having mystical experiences, who need the validation of reading about others going through similar things. I know this because I need that validation too. 

So I guess what I want to say in this post is– don’t be ashamed of your spiritual experiences. Practice discernment, yes. Keep some healthy skepticism in mind– with an emphasis on healthy. 

The important thing for me, always, is whether my spiritual practice is helping me or hurting me. As a theistic individual with an agnostic streak, that’s actually more important to me than whether it’s all “real” in an objective sense. (Although I get more and more unnerving evidence that it just might fucking be.) Are my conversations and interactions with Lucifer, Naamah, Eisheth and Agrat helping me become a better, more stable person and unravel the painful tangled threads of my own internal psychodrama? As of this writing, yes they fucking are. 

What isn’t helping me is shame and embarrassment about being so religious. And I need to get over that. 

Mother of Death

Hail Eisheth, clad in flames! Holy Mother of Merciful Death!

You teach me how to grieve. You teach me not to flinch. You teach me how to be without fear, and how to be full of love. 

Veiled leper, wife of harlots, stained with the blood of revolutions, your adornments are bandages and nooses, your kiss smells of sweet putrefaction. 

You are the life that springs eternal, the teeming maggots in the corpse, the red rose that grows on a beloved grave. 

You embrace the diseased, you kiss the syphilitic whores, you walk barefoot in the streets among the plague-bearing rats, your voice is the screams of the dying and the wails of the grieving and the kind, soft words of the chaplain. 

You are Sin and you are Death but your daughters are Compassion, Hope, and Life. 

Within your belly burns a star, the fire of rebellion and the will to justice. I felt it when you embraced me. 

Next time I will not recoil.