12. 

Definition of dogma

plural dogmas also dogmata

1a : something held as an established opinion; especially a definite authoritative tenet

b : a code of such tenets

• pedagogical dogma

c : a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds

2:a doctrine or body of doctrines concerning faith or morals formally stated and authoritatively proclaimed by a church

(From Miriam Webster)

I think this is a good question because dogma does get thrown around as a buzzword far too often, to the point where anyone who has or expresses an opinion about anything at call could get called “dogmatic” by some ignorant jerk on the internet. 

Dogmas are beliefs handed down from higher authorities, and it is a term deriving from the Catholic church. “Authoritative” really is the key word to understanding what “dogma” means. 

I recognize no higher authority within Luciferianism/Satanism, including Lucifer/Satan himself. So I’m leery when some guy like Anton LaVey or Michael W. Ford tries to set himself up as an authority. Satanic/Luciferian churches, organizations, cults, orders, etc. usually leave a bad taste in my mouth– because it seems like all of them end up being goddamn hierarchical! A bunch of followers repeating “I will not bow” and then proceeding to kiss the ass of the Grand Poobah– and often paying membership dues for the privilege!

Someday it would be lovely to stumble across a Satanic/Luciferian church, temple, order, or whatever that I felt comfortable with, because I do long for community. But so far I have yet to find anything of the sort that wasn’t ultimately controlled by some dude on an ego trip (usually with a pretentious assumed name).

So given that I reject the Satanic/Luciferian churches, orders, etc. that I know of, and also feel under no obligation to uncritically accept even the messages I seem to receive from Lucifer himself, there is no source of “dogma” for me that I find valid.

As far as I can tell, it appears that Lucifer appreciates it when we think for ourselves with our own brains. That’s the whole point of the exercise. 

There is also an emphasis in my practice on maintaining doubt and mental flexibility about “facts” that I hold to be true. I recognize that, with new information, even strongly held beliefs may be subject to change. 

Now, does this mean we should isolate ourselves and reject all knowledge that comes from outside ourselves? Of course not! Does it mean we should be disrespectful to older and more experienced practitioners, and dismiss what they may have to teach us? Not at all! Valid knowledge can come from almost anywhere. 

But Luciferianism, in my view, is about doing your own mental work, not simply accepting a ready-made set of beliefs handed down by someone or something that is presumed to “know better.”

So no, I don’t think dogma has a place in this community. 

Call me dogmatic for that if you like (but you’d probably be using the word wrong).

11. Do you believe in hell? What kind of place do you think it is?

(link to challenge because it’s now far enough down my blog that it’s getting hard to find it)

I don’t really believe in hell. I don’t really believe in heaven. 

I accept the remote possibility that maybe hell exists and is a terrible place where I will burn forever for being a Satanic fool, but them’s the wages of free will. I would rather take that risk freely than worship That Bastard Up There (TBUT) and do everything He says in life, just so I can do even more obeying Him and worshipping Him in heaven. 

I don’t really believe in reincarnation either, exactly. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to just keep reincarnating on the same planet again and again and again. What’s the point? 

I do however seem to believe in some sort of afterlife… in fact, “afterlife” is a very apt description of it. My best guess is that when we die, we move on to another plane where we live a different life, with different challenges and opportunities for growth, as spiritual beings. In that life eventually we may die as well and advance to yet another plane, and another after that, until eventually, maybe… we become Gods. 

Somebody told me this is kind of a Hermetic idea. I know basically nothing about Hermeticism but maybe that’s the wheel I was reinventing with that. 

On a more somber and down-to-earth note, I believe in living hell, especially today when I look out my window and see the sky completely gray, not with clouds, but with thick smoke from the wildfires up north. Climate change is in the process of turning the world into an inferno. We need to wise up and do something about this. 

I think about the huge squalid tent cities that already exist in San Francisco and Oakland, and I think about all the people who lost their homes to the fires and wonder how much those tent cities are about to grow, and I think about how callous and ignorant most people are about the tent cities and the people in them, and I just know….

Hell is human evil and the ways it shapes the world. 

But we could make this place paradise, too. 

10. Do you have any daily practices or do you celebrate any holidays i.e. sabbats? Or are your holidays not religious related?

I do have daily practices, which are mostly related to my 12 step program, but I am a Luciferian so Lucifer is all up in them, too. 

I pray every morning. I read the “Just For Today” NA Meditation of the day. I try to write some stepwork every day. Then at night, I write my 10th step, which is basically like a quick review of the day, the feelings I had, any mistakes I made, what I did well, what I didn’t do so well. 

Part of why 12 step recovery is great for me, not only as an addict but also as a Luciferian, is because it’s part self-care and part self-improvement. It keeps me clean, but doesn’t just keep me out of negative patterns– it also helps me grow positively. 

Less frequently, like a few times a week, I meditate. I go to 12 step meetings. I’ll light some candles and incense on my altar, maybe get out my pendulum or read some tarot, maybe cast a spell. 

I am trying to get into daily dream journaling, but I haven’t been the best at that lately. I also need to practice my astral projection attempts way more frequently if I want it to ever actually work. 

As far as holidays go– I stole the idea of my own birthday being the most sacred day of the year. I think that’s a LaVeyan thing. I am also just utterly done with Christmas and am considering just being especially obnoxiously Satanic this year around that time, more as a survival tactic than anything else. In case it’s not clear, I am blatantly talking about just making some bullshit up so I won’t be driven insane by Capitalist Jesus Month, I am not talking about any legit holiday that I can justify historically or scripturally. 

Now that I think about it, it would be REALLY COOL to make up Luciferian holidays devoted to celebrating the Fall from Heaven and the Fall from Eden. I am not sure on what the timing of those would be. Needs more thought. 

I kiiinda celebrate solstices and equinoxes because one of my covens does stuff for those. But the wheel of the year is not really my jam. To be honest, my practice is not terribly in tune with the cycles of the sun and moon in general.

I did, however, utterly lose my shit and spend the entire day in Luciferian devotion when the full solar eclipse happened. That was just… cooooool. I also recently had a lovely time during a lightning storm, hanging out outside burning incense and candles and thinking about Lucifer. 

So I guess what I am saying is that, while holidays and sabbats are nice, I do really love my spontaneous days of devotion as well. 

8. Do you practice witchcraft why/why not? Is it “Devil” or “Lucifer” (a reference to Light Bringer/Bearer) involved? Why or why not?

I am a witch because… I just am. 

I realize that sounds pretentious. I don’t claim to be super powerful or super special. I don’t claim to come from a long line of amazing witches tracing their lineage back to wherever the fuck. I do, however, have a witchy mother, and the tarot cards she gifted me with were her mother’s before her. So, something’s going on with us. There’s some kind of sensitivity and interest that we just seem to have. 

I was reading tarot and having lucid dreams, and prophetic dreams, even as a child. I was designing sigils before I even know what sigils were, and that they could be used for magic! I learned how to shield myself with energy while I was still a kid. Some of these things I was taught, some I intuited, some I sought out and learned myself. 

As a young adult I became very skeptical, but I still for some reason kept collecting tarot decks and doing other things typical of the “witch in denial.” 

Eventually I stopped resisting my natural impulses and started doing the things that felt right to me, and a lot of those things are referred to as “magic” or “witchcraft.” 

As you might be able to tell from this, I’ve been sort of a casual, intuitive practitioner until recently. I am now trying to do some research and step up my game. I find myself most inspired by the stereotypical ideas of diabolical medieval witchcraft– flying off to the witches Sabbath to bone the Devil, etc. The confessions extracted from “witches” under torture paint a picture of a practice that probably never existed, and yet… I could make parts of it real, you know?

(Minus the child murdering and cannibalism, not my jam. And unfortunately I just don’t have an extra nipple to feed my familiar XD.) But I can learn astral flight. I can go give myself to Lucifer sexually on the astral plane. I can make potions and do divination and cast curses and charms. Embodying that archetype, whether it ever existed or not, is what is truly interesting to me. 

At the same time, my research into “traditional witchcraft” and “sabbatic craft” has been both inspiring and at times frustrating. I’m a little too eclectic by nature to fit into those comfortably, and I have no interest in an initiatory path, or in putting myself in a situation with human hierarchies. 

I’m not completely solitary– I loosely belong to at least three informal, overlapping “covens.” I have mentors and people who I look up to and get advice from. 

But look– I already believe I am talking directly to Lucifer. He is my main mentor, guide, and initiator. Given that, honestly, why would I let a human being initiate me? 

My mind could be changed if I found a coven or group that is VERY in line with my values and very egalitarian in nature, but honestly most Luciferian groups I have come across are not terribly trustworthy and are big old cults of personality. Anybody trying to be the LaVey of Luciferianism can suck it. I want nothing to do with that. 

All that said, I consider myself a novice with pretty much everything except tarot, with which I consider myself intermediate. Sometimes my spells seem to work. Sometimes they don’t. 

I am fortunate enough to work in a queer coffee shop almost entirely staffed by trans witches. I am the only Luciferian in the mix but everyone else is friendly to my path. We have a Thelemite, a bunch of assorted Chaotes, another Satanist more on the atheistic spectrum, a traditional witch with hermetic flavors. (You guessed it– I consider the cafe one of my “covens.”) But what’s really cool is that my workplace is literally always filled with sigils, doodled on sticky notes or drawn in dry-erase marker on the white tiles of the walls. 

Sigils hidden behind the tip jar for better tips. Sigils to protect the cafe. Sigils for fuck knows what, the boss drew it and no one really knows what it’s for so better not fuck with it. Sigils charging underneath the blistering hot water of the espresso machine. 

On slow days, I practice my sigil craft to improve business. It’s great because I can see immediately how it worked, and I am surrounded by other witches who can suggest ways to tweak my wording and improve results when it doesn’t go as planned. 

(Yeah, I basically work in witch heaven– or hell, depending on your point of view.)

So a lot of my successes have been in the area of money magic, because that’s what I get to practice most. I also seem to do fairly well with anything involving protection. 

Still, I consider my greatest talents to be in the areas of divination, not spell-casting. 

And I am still learning. Oh my gosh am I still learning! One problem with being so eclectic is that I have built my path from bits and pieces rather than coherently from the ground up, and I am still discovering ways in which I am missing basics. For example, recently I gave another witch a case of the vapors when she found out I had no idea how to gather energy from sources other than myself, and was basically just throwing a ton of my own energy into every spell, leaving me exhausted every time I did magic. 

OOPS. 

So yeah, that’s me. Eclectic, novice, inspired by aspects of traditional witchcraft, chaos magic, and pretty much anything I stumble across that I like. 

Doing two questions today because one of my answers is going to be extremely short.

6. Do you meditate?

Yes. 

Usually a couple of times a week. 

Not often enough. 

7. Have you given an oath to Lucifer/Devil…why or why not?

I kind of did… by accident?

While I was agnostic, I got the sigil of Lucifer tattooed on the back of my neck. 

When I became theistic and started trying to communicate with Lucifer, the tattooed sigil developed a habit of… activating. It’s hard to describe what that feels like– shivers like fever chills in the back of the neck, but it almost feels like they are actually outlining the sigil, tracing the shape of the tattoo. 

This was… an unintended consequence. 

Since marking myself like this wasn’t done in a theistic spirit or as an intentional oath, I don’t think Lucifer would consider me bound by it if I ever wanted to leave this path. But I don’t anticipate wanting to leave this path, and I do feel bound by it, voluntarily. 

5. How do you feel about veneration/genuflection? If you do honor Lucifer/Satan what kind of offerings you do? Why?

So, there are three words here which are all different in connotation to me, and thus I feel differently about all of them. 

Veneration is “great respect, reverence.”

Genuflection is “to bend the knee.”

Honor, in this sense, is “high respect, esteem.”

I feel fine about all those things towards Lucifer, however, Lucifer has frequently discouraged such displays from me. (Is this UPG? Yes! It’s absolutely UPG!)

Do I respect him and revere him and hold him in the highest of esteem? Absolutely!

Do I kneel to him? No, because the reaction of the spirit I have been interacting with, and who I believe to be Lucifer, would not be positive. 

Placing limits on my displays of veneration is, in fact, a sign of respect and a form of veneration in and of itself. Which is a paradox! And Lucifer lives in paradox. 

I do make offerings, of many types. What I don’t make is sacrifices. Lucifer has never indicated any interest in receiving an offering that does not benefit me as well, and thus I assume would have no interest in receiving an offering that actually inconveniences me, i.e. a sacrifice. 

In my experience, Lucifer reacts very well to shared offerings. I share fresh fruit with him frequently, in honor of Eden– a specific offering he suggested to me. I also burn frankincense and myrrh for him, because if baby Jesus can have nice things so can Lucifer. He seems to appreciate the mild blasphemy of that offering, and we both get to enjoy the fragrance. (I want to offer him some gold, too, so that he can have all three traditional gifts of the Magi, but ya know, turns out gold is expensive.)

Lucifer also seems to enjoy offerings of self-improvement and creativity. I often silently dedicate my musical performances and even my rehearsal sessions to him. After finishing a good book that really made me think, I used to set it on my altar for a few days–until altar space and frequent fire hazards became an issue. I should really just dedicate some bookshelf space to him because I miss that part of my practice, and it felt really good and right. 

I also offer Lucifer defiance and irreverence– both towards traditional religions/institutions, and occasionally towards him. A little irreverent humor and blasphemy often seems to please him, even when directed his way. 

I know some Luciferians have very different practices that are much more… traditionally reverent, or immediately recognizable as reverent. I think that is beautiful. 

I am a little sensitive about my own perceived irreverence because I realize many may not understand the reverence that is wrapped up in it, and the way that so much of it is motivated by my direct contact with the being I believe is Lucifer. (UPG, yes, but if we can’t have some personal gnosis, which may be hard to verify by its nature, then what is the point of this path?)

I came to my conclusions about shared offerings after I spent nearly fifteen minutes begging Lucifer to let me know if he would like an offering just for himself that didn’t benefit me. The reply I received was “just eat some fruit.” That was not the reply I was looking for or expected, at all. 

Once, during a pendulum session, I was overflowing with gratitude and thanking him profusely, and the pendulum started going “no no no” very forcefully. Answers to follow-up questions revealed that he did not feel responsible for the particular things I was thanking him for, and wanted me to thank myself instead. 

Lucifer constantly shifts the focus of reverence and worship from him and onto my Inner God. I find that deeply uncomfortable and challenging. Self-worship sounds like an easy cop-out, but it’s not! It’s far easier to feel adoration and veneration and gratitude towards Lucifer, than it is to feel that way about any part of myself. Apotheosis is an inscrutable mystery. Even though my Inner God is an integral part of my soul and is always with me, It often feels so much more distant, so much more unknowable than Lucifer. Just worshiping him would be so much easier. But he doesn’t let things be easy. 

I am not his equal. Absolutely not. But he wants me to become so. That goal may be lifetimes away, but he won’t let me lose sight of it, and he won’t let me forget it. Placing him too far above me lets me forget what I am supposed to be doing, so he consistently comes down to my level to remind me. That is grace. That is generosity. That is fucking noblesse oblige on a cosmic scale. 

With the entity I know as Lucifer, worship is blasphemy and blasphemy is worship. Defiance is reverence and reverence is defiance. Somewhere in between all of that lies the goal– intimacy with Lucifer, and apotheosis for myself. 

As always, your mileage may vary.