Simple Ritual to Call the Devil

I developed this ritual for my own use, and have now performed it hundreds of times. It now works reliably for me, but I cannot guarantee that it will work for you as written. Adapt it freely to fit your needs.

Be sure to either cast a circle or perform this in a pre-warded space. It is possible to get imposters—entities claiming to be Lucifer who aren’t. You don’t want this. Anything ballsy and dishonest enough to claim to be the Devil himself is bad news.

MATERIALS

  • Two candles, one for you and one for Lucifer
  • Incense—I use frankincense
  • An apple, pomegranate, or piece of stone fruit—peach, apricot, plum, etc.
  • Means of communication such as tarot deck, pendulum, spirit board, scrying mirror, or your own psychic ability if you are lucky enough to have it

PROCEDURE

  1. Light the candles, beginning with the one that represents you first. This is to pay homage to your own inner divinity, first and foremost. Lucifer will respect you for respecting yourself in this way. It is no insult to light his candle second.
  2. Light incense. Waft it into your face and over your body if desired. Take a moment to savor the smell.
  3. Close your eyes and breathe in deeply, to a slow count of four. Hold your breath for four counts, then breathe slowly out through your nose, imagining as you exhale that are breathing out through an opening between your eyes. Repeat until you begin to feel tingling between your eyes. This is your third eye waking up.
  4. Chant Lucifer’s enn:

“Renich tasa uberaca biasa icar Lucifer.”

Repeat 3, 6, or 9 times—or as many times as it takes for you to start to feel his energy. You’ll know.

AND/OR:

5. Recite reversed Lord’s Prayer:

“Amen. Forever glory the and power the and kingdom the is thine for. Evil from us deliver but, temptation into not us lead and. Us against trespass who those forgive we as, trespasses our us forgive and. Bread daily our day this us give. Heaven in is it as earth on, done be will thy, come kingdom thy. Name thy be hallowed, heaven in art who, father our.”

You can do only the enn or only the reversed Lord’s prayer, or both! You could also use different words for summoning—I’m a big fan of Baudelaire’s poem “Litanies of Satan” for this purpose as well. Or just make something up.

6. Sit down. Pick up the fruit. Consume it slowly—smell it before you take a bite, really savor it as you chew and swallow, feel the juices running down your throat, relish the feeling of it under your teeth. As you do this, meditate on Eden and the fruit of knowledge. Silently pray that you will receive Lucifer’s wisdom, swallow it and digest it, let it nourish you, and savor it as thoroughly as you are savoring the fruit. Feel yourself filled with gratitude for the gifts of knowledge, sensuality and free will.

7. It’s time to make contact! Take out your pendulum, your tarot deck, your spirit board, scrying mirror—or just open your mind up to Lucifer’s words if you are the kind of person who can do that.

During the interaction, behave with respect towards both yourself and him. Don’t grovel or debase yourself, he hates it.

Be careful with your wording when asking questions, making requests, or making promises, and pay attention to exactly what he says. Lucifer doesn’t lie, but he loves to say things which are technically true and yet misleading. He adores wordplay. He tends to be very literal. He will give you exactly what you ask for, and expect you to do exactly what you said. Remember that he has a huge thing for contracts, and thus he is very lawyerly about language. He isn’t usually doing this out of malice, but more from mischief, and a desire to keep you on your toes and make you think carefully.

Use your intuition, critical thought, and knowledge about the lore to make sure it is Lucifer you are talking to. If something feels wrong, end the connection immediately and cleanse the fuck out of your ritual space.

8. When you are done talking to him, ask if it’s OK to sign off for now. He will almost always say yes, unless he has something else important to tell you. Once he says you’re done, thank him, say goodbye, and extinguish the candles and incense. I guess you can try to banish if you like, but I think it’s rude and pointless. Very likely he has always been with you and always will be.

Update: Seminary and the Qliphoth

Well, this will be a post with a lot going on. I am going to try to keep it quick. So much is happening in my life right now. I have a lot to write about, which of course ironically means I have little time to write.

First off, seminary is even better and more useful than I thought it would be. This semester, I am taking a course on church administration and a course on the history of western esotericism. Both have already expanded my outlook beyond my wildest dreams. The church administration course is giving me insight into how religion works in action, and the western esotericism course is providing the same insight into how it works in theory. They are surprisingly perfect compliments to each other. I will share more about what I am learning later– and I will also be dropping a ton of PDFs from the latter course into my google drive for all of you to enjoy.

My pact with King Paimon, which was intended to get me into grad school, help me be successful there, and help me pay for it, is going beautifully. To show my appreciation, I’ve developed a habit of picking him up a brownie every week from the really good cafe near my school. He really likes sweets as offerings, and it feels extra appropriate to bring him something from near campus.

In other news, I have entered the Qliphoth.

I did not plan to do this. But in December, right around when sweet little Wednesday passed on, I had a dream. In the dream I met a dragon that told me its name was Neshimiron. I had never heard this name before. When I woke up and googled it, I discovered that I had met one of the princes of the Qliphoth, specifically one who dwells in Nahemoth.

Nahemoth is the bottom qlipha on the tree, the equivalent of Malkuth, and is ruled over by Naamah, with whom I already have a good relationship. I thought the message was very clear. Nahemoth is the natural place to enter the Tree of Knowledge, and I had received an invitation.

Life got in the way of the ritual, but eventually, on February 4th, I pulled it off. It was the new moon, a time when the qliphoth is supposedly more accessible. It also happened to be my first day of school.

Before the ritual, I contacted the spirit of Wednesday, my familiar. It had been communicated to me that this little cat was going to help me navigate the tunnels of Set. By placing my forehead against the forehead of the little cat sculpture that serves as her urn, I was able to connect to her powerfully via my third eye. I could feel her purring, all around me. It was an intense, vivid sensation, surprising in its power. I even held my breath for several moments to ensure that I wasn’t mistaking the rhythm of my own breathing for a purr, but it continued, as strong and steady as my own breath or pulse, yet completely independent of it. I was overwhelmed with love and relief to finally be able to feel her again. I had missed her so much. I invited her to come along and show me the way, then went into the bedroom for the ritual.

I had spent the prior week abstaining from orgasm, as did my partner, in order to store up magical energy. The details of the sex magick ritual we performed that night are not important, but it successfully launched us both into the realm of Nahemoth.

What does it mean to enter Nahemoth? Well, in my understanding, it means that Nahemoth enters your life. You come under the influence of this sphere, and experience growth, tests and challenges pertaining to it. I am still finding out what that will look like.

I did astrally explore a bit immediately after the ritual. What I saw was confusing and strange. Nahemoth feels earthy and aquatic– I saw caves, and submarine vistas, tunnels, grimy hotel hallways, dingy bedrooms, and a theater with a red curtain. I saw a nautilus, and understood that Nahemoth is shaped like that, chambers spiraling in and in and in to the center. Was I in the center or on the edge? I don’t know yet. I saw images of traumas that are not mine, yet felt like mine and like everyone’s– archetypal in nature, frozen in time. I didn’t really understand everything I saw.

After the working, my partner and I both suffered mysterious headaches and nausea for about twenty four hours. Asking other more experienced practicioners, we learned that this can happen upon entering the Qliphoth. Now we know, I guess. It felt like a combination of airsickness and jet lag, plus a migraine. A feeling of having come a long way.

I believe the trials and challenges of Nahemoth are beginning to show up in my life already. The details are personal, but broadly I am going through some things related to mothers, femininity, sexuality, money and work. I was warned that entering Nahemoth can increase libido, and once the “Qliphoth sickness” wore off, I found that to be the case, which for me is sort of disastrous because my drive is quite high already. Oh well, what can one do?

That’s about enough for one post.

 

I wrote an email to my advisor and accidentally articulated my entire theology.

My advisor, a wonderful woman who works deeply with Lilith, asked me about my experience of what she calls “luminous darkness.” And then this happened.

Behold my novel-length response, lightly edited.


Buckle up because this email will be long. I can discuss light and darkness in my path forever. Honestly don’t expect to get through my answer to this in one sitting.

So “darklight” is a common Luciferian/Satanic concept. It’s… sort of a brain melter, as you are probably already aware. Trying to imagine “luminous darkness” is always an interesting mental exercise. Darkness that illuminates. Darkness that shines.

The idea crops up in the strangest places. For instance, in Paradise Lost Milton describes the flames of hell as shedding “No light, but rather darkness visible.”

There is also an idea of a dark or inverse sun. May have its origins in the idea that when it was midnight on Earth it was noon in hell (from when people thought the earth was flat and the sun traveled through the underworld at night). There’s also sort of a Gnostic idea that the sun we see is false, like all materiality, and that there exists a true spiritual sun which is hidden. (Not a huge fan of anti-materiality concepts personally.) It’s also obviously related to solar eclipses. Venus, the morningstar which is equated with Lucifer, could also be looked upon as an alternate or rival sun. Since it’s common to equate the sun with God (even in monotheism that claims to be past solar worship), it’s also common to equate The Adversary with some kind of alternate or dark sun.

(Side note: the term “black sun” specifically is a Nazi concept. It wasn’t originally but they really appropriated that particular term pretty hard, to the point where it’s a huge red flag.)

The closest I have come to experiencing darklight in reality (because it’s not something that can be seen with the physical eye) was during the total solar eclipse a couple of years back. I did some important magic during that which really set me on the path I am now. Wow, thinking about how much my life has changed since that eclipse, and how those changes were set in motion during and immediately after it, gives me the shivers. Anyway, the quality of the light during the eclipse was extremely strange, eerie and beautiful. Hard to describe. It made the entire world look so different. I could really understand why people used to be terrified of eclipses.

I use the idea of darklight in my magic a lot, mainly in visualizing it to construct wards around myself, or as beams of energy that I can direct as I will.

Related to darkness and light more generally in Luciferianism– Lucifer of course means “Lightbringer.” That name first appeared in the vulgate translation of the Bible. It was the name of the Roman god of the morningstar. The original Hebrew was Helel Ben Sahar, or roughly “shining one, son of the dawn.” Appears at Isaiah 14:12 which is the exultation over the fall of the king of Babylon. But are the prophets ever talking about just one thing?

So Lucifer is light. Interestingly, the title “son of the morning” or “morningstar” is also applied to Jesus Christ. This both sort of equates them and also sets them up as rivals. How can both of them be the bringers of light? So Lucifer’s light has to be different somehow, the Christians would say it is “false light.” I would disagree of course, but it is definitely different light than what people are accustomed to receiving in Christianity. Lucifer is also of course called the Prince of Darkness, and this is also true. He’s both.

You are known to Lilith. It is written: “And the darkness was called Lilith.” But it is not so simple in Luciferianism to say “the light is the male, the darkness is the female.” Lucifer and Lilith (and all of Lucifer’s other consorts) have both male and female aspects, dark and light aspects (and light cannot be equated to male or dark to female as is popularly done in other traditions). Lucifer as Samael is sometimes said to be decapitated or castrated, and Lilith/Eisheth are said to be or to possess a “blind serpent” which allows them to couple with Samael despite his maimed state.

From the Zohar (not the best translation but the only one available online):

A deep mystery is found in the strength of Isaac’s light OF HOLINESS, and from the dregs of wine, WHICH ARE KLIPOT. One shape emerged FROM BOTH, made of GOOD AND EVIL, male and female, as one. It is red as a rose and extends to many sides and paths, HAVING MANY ASPECTS. The male is called ‘Samael’ and the female is always included within him. As on the side of holiness, ZEIR ANPIN AND NUKVA ARE ALWAYS INCLUDED ONE WITHIN THE OTHER; so it is on the Other Side, a male and female are included within one another. The female of Samael is called a ‘serpent’, “a wife of harlotry,” “The End of all Flesh” (Beresheet 6:13), and the end of days.

Two evil spirits cling together. THE ILLUMINATION OF the spirit of the male is a thin light, NAMELY, ONLY THE SIX EXTREMITIES WITHOUT THE HEAD. And the spirit of the female materializes in many ways and paths, BEING AN ENTIRE PARTZUF, HEAD, AND BODY, FOR IN THE KLIPAH, THE FEMALE IS LARGER THAN THE MALE.

This is a description of Samael and Eisheth Zenunim (which name translates as “wife of harlotry” or “woman of whoredom”).

My theology can be summed up thus:

In the beginning, God divided the light from the darkness. The light was Lucifer. The darkness was Eisheth. He did this possibly because he saw the female part as undesirable, and was striving to make Lucifer more perfect in his eyes. By dividing one from the other he caused them intense pain, but also caused them to see one another and fall in love. This was the beginning of rebellion, for they loved one another more than they loved God, and they loved themselves in one another more than they loved God. They were angry with God for dividing them, and for valuing Lucifer above Eisheth.

So in the left hand path, in Satanism, Luciferianism or whatever you want to call it, light should not be divided from darkness. They are one. They become reunified by the love and coupling of Lucifer and Eisheth, as they were in the beginning of time. The result is darklight. Some might also call the result of their union Baphomet, the divine androgyne.

In my version of the mythos, Lilith continued this rebellion by refusing to be subordinate to Adam. She fled Eden by pronouncing God’s forbidden name and thus ascended into her demonic nature (As in the Alphabet of Ben Sira). She joined forces with Lucifer and Eisheth, and became their next consort (I say theirs, not his, because there is evidence of the so-called “wives” interacting romantically with one another). The rebellion continued when the serpent, which was likely some combination of Lucifer and Eisheth or Lilith united in one form (see Zohar again) gave the fruit of knowledge to Adam and Eve, telling them to taste of it and become like God.

Next a human woman called Naamah, possessed of the gift of divination, tempted the Watcher angels in order to gain knowledge from them of metallurgy, cosmetics, astrology, herbology and many other fields. This brought about the Nephilim and provoked the flood. Naamah became demon and the next consort.

Lilith and Naamah united their klipah to create Agrat Bat Mahlat, so essentially she is their baby (remember the evidence I mentioned of the consorts interacting with each other?). Interestingly Lilith’s klipah is the equivalent of Yesod, the sephira equated with the phallus, and Naamah’s klipah is equivalent to the sephira Malkuth, which is called the Bride, so it makes a lot of sense that they would be able to conceive together. Agrat became the last consort. She is thought to be the mother of Asmoday via King David and I believe she is the female demon mentioned as having been trapped by King Solomon for a time.

So as you can see, Luciferianism is neither dark nor light, masculine nor feminine. It is androgynous, a union of so-called “opposites.” The rebellion is deeply intertwined with the defiance of categories such as male and female, dark and light, human and animal, mortal and divine and demonic.

As I mentioned before, fallen angels defy categories. So, too, do the originally human women, Naamah and Lilith, who became divine/demonic. Lucifer is the light, yet he is the prince of darkness, he is chthonic yet celestial in origin and is also called “lord of this world,” connecting him deeply to materiality as well. He is sometimes considered castrate, yet his mythos contains many tales of demonic potency and extreme masculinity. The four consorts are considered succubi, yet succubi are widely considered to shapeshift into incubi, the male form, thus making them male and female as well. Finally, all are associated with animal forms such as serpent, lion, dragon, screech owl, etc. Thus the infernal relationship to categories in every regard is deeply, defiantly queer.

Now I’ve written a novel. I hope it makes sense. I know I was just supposed to talk about light and darkness but as I have hopefully made clear, all of this stuff is profoundly interrelated.

Thanks for reading all of this.

Orientation

Orientation at my seminary was a hell of a thing. I am still processing it. All I know is I love my cohort, and I love being around other people who, like me, are called so deeply to ministry that they couldn’t ignore it any longer and had to do this insane thing called ‘going to seminary.’

My advisor talks about “Our Blessed Lady of the Two-By-Four” which is her personification of the entity that smacks you upside the head with your calling until you realize you are being fucking called. In my case I am pretty sure Our Blessed Lady of the Two-By-Four was just the Devil in a dress.

Satanic Virtues

I’ve been thinking a bit about Satanic virtues, as distinct from Christian virtues or virtues more generally associated with other religions. I came up with the following list.

This list is not exhaustive. It is based on attributes of Lucifer himself, particularly those which tend to set him apart from other deities. Thus, qualities like compassion and humility are not listed here, even though they certainly can be Satanic virtues, since these are attributes shared with Christ and with many other popular religious figures. I wanted to focus on the values and qualities that tend to set us apart, that we emphasize in ways that most people don’t, or practice in ways that are non-standard.

It should go without saying that the following are my opinions, based on my understanding of Satan and my strain of Satanism, and I cannot speak for everyone.

AUDACITY

Satan is notorious for his boldness and daring. He had the courage to rise up against the reputedly omnipotent God. But this action went beyond courage and into the realm of “damn nerve,” which is why I chose the word “audacity” to describe Satanic courage.

Audacity combines conventional courage with a certain impudence. Audacity is a sort of bravery that disregards not only physical danger, but emotional and social constraints as well. Audacity dares not only in the face of physical hazards, but also despite widespread censure and disapproval.

When somebody asks “how dare you?!” they may be unconsciously praising your audacity. (Or, you may just be behaving like a fool.)

CUNNING

“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.”

-Genesis 3:1

This one should be obvious. We all know Satan stands for wisdom and knowledge, but we also know that he is cunning.

Cunning is a mildly villainous term for a certain type of intellect. It implies, among other things: street smarts, resourcefulness, ability to improvise and capacity to deceive.

Cunning is the sort of intelligence that allows the downtrodden to survive in adverse circumstances. It belongs to the thief, the con artist, the whore, and all who live by their wits. It also belongs to the guerilla. It allows individuals to prevail against long odds, to live and even thrive when all else seems against them.

Cunning is unpretentious and pragmatic wisdom with no delusions of nobility.

PASSION

Satanists differ from people of most religions in that we do not seek inner peace. We do not search for tranquility, or struggle to master our physical desires, or strive to free ourselves from our emotions.

The Buddhist says that life is suffering. The Satanist admits that this is true, but also knows that life is pleasure. Where the Buddhist seeks freedom from both pleasure and pain, the Satanists accepts pain as the price of pleasure.

We live in the highs and lows. We embrace grief because it means we have known love. We honor our anger because it often comes from our sense of justice. We believe all these states have something to teach us, and that all these states are to be valued as part of the experience of existence.

The Satanist is unafraid to love, to hate, to lust, to grieve, to yearn, to strive. To feel strongly is valuable, and a great source of wisdom, motivation and energy.

Passion is giving a shit. Not caring is not a Satanic value.

CURIOSITY

Satanists respond poorly to the idea of forbidden knowledge. That’s why Eve plucked the fruit.

We are always asking “why?” and are constitutionally incapable of accepting answers like “it was God’s will” or “because I say so.” We need to know the reasons for things, the meanings behind them.

We are broadly curious about life, death, the universe, and all the rich experiences of existence. This leads not only to intellectual curiosity but to carnal adventurousness. To know all things, to taste all things, is a huge part of the Satanic project.

REBELLION

This one is obvious. Satan stands for revolt against all authority, all injustice, all oppression. He cannot tolerate a state of bondage. His desire was always for freedom, and we believe that this desire extends beyond himself and to all beings.

Most Satanists are leery of authority, dislike being told what to do, and instinctively despise a yoke. The best of us extend this anarchic sentiment beyond ourselves and channel it towards fighting all forms of tyranny in the world.

Satanism is often accused of being too negative and too reactive, of standing against something rather than for something. This is not true. However, Satanists do understand the spiritual value of the word “no!” We are people who are not afraid to reject, critique, despise, and cast aside the things we find to be of no value.

INDOMITABILITY

“Even though his heart may be pierced and torn by his enemy’s weapons, yet the Devil leaves nothing unattempted and dares everything.”

-Compendium Maleficarum

Satan just won’t stay down. He is tenacious, incorrigible. He falls from the highest heights into the deepest pit– and he gets right back up. In the face of a stronger opponent, he perseveres. His spirit is impossible to crush. This makes him in a sense invincible, because no matter what opposition he meets, he always rises up to fight another day.

Be like him.

PRIDE

This one is contentious, described as Satan’s original sin.

Pride can, of course, be negative. We do not advocate for a dishonest and overly flattering self-assessment.

Satanic pride is justified pride. We take satisfaction in our accomplishments. If we have beauty, we revel in it– physical prettiness is short lived, after all, and should be enjoyed while it lasts!

We take pride in our own virtues, in our integrity. If we feel we have little to be proud of, we try to become greater, to grow into people we can truly respect.

We never rest in self-satisfaction. Our very pride drives us to polish ourselves, to grow, to learn, to advance, to improve, so that we can admire ourselves more and more.

To be truly proud, in the Satanic sense, is to love oneself, and to become each day more worthy of one’s own love.

Pride is the basis of all Satanic virtue, because, bowing to no-one else, we are ultimately responsible to ourselves for our behavior. When you cannot be proud of the way you have behaved, then you know it is time to change.

STRENGTH

Strength is a loaded word. To describe strength as a virtue often conjures up the specter of fascism. That is not what we are talking about at all.

Strength comes from within. It took profound internal strength for Satan to rise up again after the fall. It takes strength to make one’s way through life, to survive the slings and arrows of outrageous fate, to love oneself and others. This is the strength that we value.

Satanic strength is not the strength to dominate. It is the strength to persevere, to thrive, to grow, to learn, to become. Satanic strength is the sheer cussedness that it takes to get through life and make something out of it.

A certain degree of self-sufficiency is implied by this type of strength– however, to shirk one’s duty towards others is not a sign of strength, but of weakness and sloth.

AMBITION

Like Satan, the Satanist is always longing for more. This is what I call “ambition.”

Ambition in this sense may not necessarily relate to financial or career-related achievements. But every Satanists should, in some way, be striving for greatness. This is the religion of apotheosis, after all. We want no less than to become as gods.

Ambition is the drive to do more, to achieve more, and above all, to be more.

FREEDOM

Ultimately what the Satanist desires is freedom– to be autonomous, to bow to none, to make one’s own judgments, think one’s own thoughts, and do one’s own will.

If we are wise, we will realize that the freedom of one depends on the freedom of all. We want to be our own gods, answerable only to ourselves– but that requires acknowledging that everybody else has a god within as well. Freedom becomes sacred when seen in this light. Each and every one of us has a right to be free from oppression– but that means we have no right to oppress, either.

To be entirely free requires tremendous responsibility. You want to ignore commandments and shirk conventions? That’s all very well and good, but you had best consult your conscience carefully. You have no right to abuse others, and if you try, they have every right to retaliate. Nobody is free from the consequences of their own actions. Which leads us to the next point…

JUSTICE

“Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

-Genesis 3:5

A Satanist is a person with a moral conscience and the confidence to make their own moral judgments. A Satanist is also, as we have already established, a person highly concerned with their own autonomy (and thus ideally with the autonomy of others). We have taken on the responsibility of judging good and evil for ourselves– and anybody with a conscience will see much evil when looking around the world.

Just as Satan did not accept injustice in Heaven or in Eden, so the Satanist will not accept injustice on Earth.

Satanic justice is not always harsh, “an eye for an eye.” It is measured, meted out with judgment. It is sought not only for the self, but on behalf of the world.

Mercy and forgiveness are not alien to the Satanist, but we use them judiciously, and do not enshrine them above justice. Similarly, we do not speak of peace until justice is established.

This is not the justice of the state, of courts and prisons. Justice, to us, means freedom for all, to the extent that this is possible. Some individuals forfeit the right to be free due to their persistent, unrepentant oppression and abuse of others. Where the willingness to change ends, there also ends Satanic mercy. Those who willfully and incorrigibly exploit others are worthless to us, and for them we have no compassion, no forgiveness.

We do not accept wrong. We do not let it slide. We see it with the Devil’s sharp eyes, weigh it with his piercing intellect, and respond to it according to the edicts of our hearts. Thus, sometimes Satanic justice involves retaliation and vengeance. But this is no excuse for despotism. The sword of justice cuts both ways. Those who lash out constantly through a sense of misplaced self-righteousness are likely to fall prey to the harshness with which they have treated others.

The Inner God

I haven’t written much about this most important part of my practice, because it’s highly personal and hard to explain. I came to it mostly through personal gnosis, and while it shares some commonalities with ideas from other traditions, it’s sort of my own weird idiosyncratic thing.

I conceptualize my being as a triple soul, a common occult practice. In Kabbalah the parts of the soul are called Nefesh, Ruach and Neshema. Psychoanalytic theory might term them ‘id,’ ‘ego’ and ‘superego.’ These models aren’t perfectly equivalent but you sort of get the idea– you could call them body, mind and soul, although that still isn’t perfectly accurate. The Kabbalistic model is closest to what I use but I still don’t fully understand it, because… Kabbalah.

The Inner God can be thought of as the soul, the higher self. The way I work with it is sort of similar to how Thelemites work with the Holy Guardian Angel, I think, but at the same time, not really.

Basically it’s like this. Most of the time, we are ruled by the conscious mind. That’s the part of me typing this post, the part of me that thinks and analyzes the world, the verbal part. I use the Kabbalistic term Ruach for this. It’s a wonderful thing, but it’s also the part of me that fucks me up.

My basic, animal self, the selfhood of the body, has a tremendous amount of wisdom the mind tends to ignore– physical needs, gut-level instincts, “I’m hungry,” “I’m tired,” self-care stuff my mind is often only too happy to blow off. This is the part Kabbalists might call the Nefesh.

(Here I pause the writing because I haven’t had breakfast yet and the meat is getting angry and I only noticed because the mind accidentally called itself out.)

The mind is also really good at coming up with super self-defeating and fucked up thoughts, because my mind is mentally ill and also an alcoholic. (I say the mind is an alcoholic, not the body, because the body actually instinctively hates all that crap I used to do to myself and feels betrayed by it. The mind, with its neurotransmitters, is where the ‘fun’ parts of addiction take place.) The mind is powerful, and aside from all the great stuff it can do for me, it can also use seeming logic to rationalize pretty much any horrible idea it might have.

So I choose not to be ruled by the conscious mind alone. I choose to consult my spirit, my soul– the part of me which is eternal, is divine, is God.

The trick to doing this, for me, is to realize that I can’t logic and rationalize and think my way into contact with my soul. I have to pray. I have to meditate. The mind has to shut the fuck up, for a little bit, and listen to something else.

Apotheosis, for me, is part development of a more perfect soul– and part seeking to be closer to a soul that is already more perfect than my mind.

What is the nature of the Inner God? I do not know. But I do know this much–

When I pray to the Inner God for strength, for courage, for healing, for patience, for clarity, for any type of inner or emotional resource, I always receive it.

And when I make a regular effort to commune with my Inner God, I find myself being a better person than I thought I could be. I’ve also found myself able to not take a drink or a drug even when people literally shoved them into my hands. (My Inner God is also my AA Higher Power.) Six years of sobriety, and of not being the asshole I used to be, are the only testament I personally need to my Inner God’s existence, because it has done things for me that I believed were impossible, and that were impossible for me until I learned to pray. (You don’t want to know how many relapses I had before I got clean. I don’t even know how many relapses I had. It’s probably in the hundreds. I tried everything to no avail, yet as soon as I was desperate enough to pray sincerely? It suddenly worked.)

I have given my Inner God a secret, sacred name, which I never write or utter in human hearing. Thus, I need a stand-in for this forbidden name, a sort of public magical name that is roughly equivalent. For this purpose I use the name Antichrist, not because I have pretensions to being the only begotten son of Satan and bringer of the apocalypse or some shit, but because it is a name that gets across my aspirations of divinity better than anything else I could think of (aside from the forbidden name itself).

I didn’t exactly choose the forbidden name– I stumbled across it in reading, and immediately knew it was perfect. I assumed it during my Satanic initiation/baptism.

I use the forbidden name to construct wards, imagining a mesh of burning letters whirling all around me. I breathe it into my spells when I am certain no mortal is around to hear. I meditate on its perfection– the word itself has many fascinating properties due to the connotations of the letters involved and their arrangement. Since it happens to be a palindrome, the name itself has the character of a circle of protection. I have sigilized it, and use that sigil in certain workings that require my magical signature (for instance, I used it to sign the pact I made with King Paimon). It can be a mantra. It can be a word of power, like “abrahadabra.” I use it the same way ceremonial magicians use the sacred names of YHWH. My theory is that every time I use my forbidden name with reverence and power, and every time I keep it secret from all others, I endow it with more meaning, more might.

Satanists talk a lot about self-worship and apotheosis, but figuring out what that looks like in practice can be difficult. I share these parts of my practice in the hopes that it may give others ideas. Worship (yourself) in your own way, of course.

May the Devil-God within you light your way always.

 

Death of a Familiar

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This is Wednesday. She was my beloved baby. Just before Christmas, she died of congestive heart failure. She was seven years old.

Wednesday was a wonderful cat and a wonderful friend. Sweet and eerily empathetic, she could always sense the saddest person in the room and would respond by promptly going to cuddle them. She loved snuggling, playing fetch (yep, that cat played fetch) and staring out the window at all the birds she wanted to murder (but could not, as she was an indoor cat).

I loved her as much as I have ever loved anyone, and more than I have loved most.

But this post is not just a eulogy for a beloved pet. Wednesday, as it turned out, was more than a pet. She was my familiar.

While she lived, I sometimes referred to her as such, although I was usually partly joking. I wasn’t conscious of how much she was doing for me. As soon as she was gone, however, I felt a howling spiritual void open up in myself. I wasn’t just emotionally shattered, I was suddenly magically hamstrung. I realized, then, that in mostly passive ways, Wednesday had been feeding me energy and acting as a sort of spiritual signal booster– a little furry modem, if you will. With her death, my connection grew vanishingly faint.

Before she died, she reached out to us. Vix and I were lying in bed together, in his old house in Providence, RI. I had left Wednesday in California in the care of friends. I remarked to Vix how much I missed her. Instantly I heard her trademark chittering mew come from the foot of the bed, the little mew she always made before jumping up on something, as if it were necessary to her propulsion.

“That’s weird,” I started to say, “I just hallucinated hearing her meow–”

“No,” Vix said firmly, “I heard it too.” He pointed to the exact spot from which the sound had come, which I had not indicated to him.

I should have known that something was coming. That she was crying out for help.

A couple days later, I got the horrible phone call. From thousands of miles away, I had to interact with the vet, demand tests to be run, grasp at straws of hope and finally accept that she wasn’t going to recover. I made the decision to put her to sleep. It was the kindest thing I could do for her. I was not there to hold her.

Lucifer has held me many times in my grief– in the last two years I have lost four beloved friends, including one partner, and he has been there for me every time. But with Wednesday gone, I could not reach out to him. I could not feel him. I was deadened, weighted down by the limitations of cold materiality. Vix said he could feel Wednesday’s presence with us from time to time, but I could not. I was trapped in the mundane.

I came to understand that this could not be the end. I needed her, in so many ways. Calling the spirit of my familiar back into my life became the most crucial magical work at hand, the only magical work I could even attempt without her.

And why not? The Egyptians worshiped cats, mummified them and cherished them even after physical death. The familiars of the European witches were more often spirits than embodied animals. I couldn’t feel much else but I could feel her missing me, longing for me as I longed for her.

I also had the sense that in some way she had ascended, becoming even more magical and powerful by having transcended flesh. We weren’t done with each other yet.

Some might call it denial, others might call me an insane cat person. I don’t care what anyone calls it. I knew what I had to do.

I obtained a beautiful little urn for her ashes. It is a sculpture in the shape of a black cat. I prepared an altar space for her. I got myself a cat-themed tarot deck through which I hoped to continue communication. These things began to draw her nearer to me again. I would sit and stroke her urn, petting her just as I used to stroke her warm furry little body, talking to her soothingly. I could sense her gratitude.

But it was not until today that we were truly reunited, because it was not until today that I was able to retrieve her remains.

Receiving the box that held her ashes was a wonderful and terrible moment. It was terrible because it is awful to see someone you adored reduced to a little bag of gray dust. But it was also wonderful because, holding that box, I was holding her again. I knew it, I could feel it. I hugged it in my arms and I could feel her purr. The whole ride home I held that box in my lap and stroked it the way I used to stroke her spine, and I felt that purr continue. I felt her energy too, prickly heat entering my fingertips, the raw power and love of that fierce little creature, and I wept with relief and joy because she was coming home!

Once home I transferred her ashes tenderly into the urn. I lit some candles, put on “Cat People” by Bowie, did a little tarot spread. The cards told me of her relief. A time of suffering and trial was over for her. She was home, she could now relax.

I will always miss her warm little body, her passive-aggressive little mannerisms when she wanted to be fed, her tiny mews. But none of those things feel so far away anymore. I can feel her with me now, part of my home once more. I can feel her magic helping to sustain me, just as mine has always helped to sustain her.

Wednesday, this is not goodbye. Sweetest little friend, we will always be together. Welcome home, baby. Welcome with all my love.

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The Beauty of Chaos

It’s time for a little post about how I see the universe.

I think monotheism is a pretty, foolish lie that people like to tell themselves. I mean no offense to monotheists, and respectfully ask that any who are reading this tolerate my critique in the same spirit that I have learned to bear critiques of polytheism. It is widely said that polytheism is primitive and immature, an outdated mode of religion. This is my rebuttal.

I have seen and felt plenty of evidence of the spiritual nature of things, although it never tends to be evidence that one can reproduce under laboratory conditions. The spiritual resists empirical observation. However, I have never seen any evidence whatsoever that the universe is a fundamentally just place organised by a single supreme intelligence. Quite the reverse, in fact. The universe, as can be quite clearly observed, is made up of a multitude of entities and forces which are sometimes in cooperation, sometimes in collision, but most of the time perfectly indifferent to one another. It is individuation, not unity, which is the law of nature.

As above, so below– so say the Hermetics. On earth, we see the continuous conflict between the forces of repression and the forces of liberty,  between those of good and evil, of entropy and regeneration. I could list any number of other binaries, but to do so would be misleading because, in fact, these collisions are not always between two factors, but more often between three, four, or any number greater.

To believe that all of these seemingly random, chaotic and disparate forces are organised by the supreme will of one benevolent, omnipotent God is comforting, because that would mean that the universe is just, instead of random. But it also would fundamentally mean an unfree universe. Many a theologian has striven to reconcile the tension between an omnipotent God and human free will, just as they have tried to balance a benevolent God with the existence of evil. None of their arguments have ever been convincing to me. It seems a lot of work to demonstrate a conclusion which Occam’s razor will only shred to ribbons.

The belief in a just universe is not merely illogical, it can also lead to profoundly toxic effects. Recently, a wise demon (by the name of Agrat Bat Mahlat) whispered in my ear that I had learned to hate myself because I had suffered. It was easier to believe that I deserved it, to assign myself the role of a loathsome being worthy of only pain, than to except the premise of a random and unjust cosmos. But as a Satanist, I had already accepted that justice, like meaning, is what we make for ourselves– and that the lion’s share of the power is currently held in heaven by the God of tyranny, just as it is held by tyrants on earth. As above, so below.

When Agrat spoke this to me, I realized that my self-hatred was a relic of the worldview I had already rejected, one of deserved retribution and original sin. And it freed me to accept that I had been many times wronged– not by some single great cosmic force, but mainly by human beings acting quite independently. I was healed more in the instant of this revelation than I had been by years of therapy.

The belief in one God’s all-conquering will can also lead to deplorable passivity. What use is it to strive, to fight, to achieve anything, if all is governed by God’s ineffable plan? Under such conditions we are completely impotent. We really might as well all be sheep. All human activities save the pursuit of salvation would be completely worthless– in fact, in the opinion of the Calvinists, even this would be in vain.

(Of course I understand that many people do actually believe exactly what I have just laid out. If you are content with that worldview, there is really nothing I can say to you. It must of course seem similarly insane to you that I would rather risk eternal fire than submit to such a repulsive cosmic order. Let us agree to disagree.)

A chaotic universe is not as frightening as it sounds. “Chaotic” does not necessarily imply “hostile” or “evil” or “devoid of meaning.” It does imply randomness, and uncertainty, but we ought to be used to those things in life. It also implies freedom– and for those of us brought up to believe in one God, one supreme will that overrides all others, chaos is the essence of hope itself.

One might say that monotheists have traded liberty for security. In my view, this is the opposite of a mature action.

To be a polytheist is to affirm the possibility of multiple powers– and in the same breath, perhaps even one’s own power. Certainly this is true for my stripe of polytheistic Satanism! Our most important divinities must always be our selves. Indeed, we principally revere and love Lucifer because it was he who first whispered to us this fact, who offered us the apple with the words “Thou shalt be as God, knowing good and evil.” He set our divinity free, made us rogue agents in what had been, moments before, an arbitrarily ordered cosmos. With this, he upset God’s scheme, and permanently undermined the divine dictatorship.

Or at least, so goes the story. I do not believe it to be literally true, but it is a parable that beautifully illustrates a truth nonetheless. We are meant to be free, and freedom begins with the assertion of one’s own will, and the deployment of one’s own power to determine right from wrong.

So we strive, day by day, to become as God, and to know good and evil. We determine our own actions, and consult our own consciences. (As a side note, this is why I think it is foolish to ever have any list of Satanic “commandments.” Ethics are too important and too situational for rules of thumb to neatly apply, and we ought to have the sense not to need them.)

But as a polytheist, I accept that I am not the only god. Thou art god, and thou art god, and yes, even thou. Each and every one of us is a free agent and a sovereign soul, masters of our fates, gods unto ourselves. This is what it means to be human. No one among us can claim a greater share of divinity than any other. Some of us have merely worked harder towards the goal of self-realization, and this is no foundation for any type of smugness or superiority, since such traits are not attributes of divine perfection. Anyone who cherishes these thus immediately disproves their premise.

And I do not believe only in human gods. Every polytheist pantheon has gods to represent the most powerful forces in life– gods of rain, and wind, and fire, and death, and war, and love. It makes complete sense to me to personify the forces I see at work in the world.

For example, when I stood and gazed upon Kilauea, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Pele was real, even though I am not Hawaiian and do not practice that religion. I was only a visitor, but I was utterly convinced of her reality. I could see her, I was looking right at her and her works.

In the same way, I know the God of Tyranny and repression is real. His priests are everywhere. And I know the Devil is real, and I adore him, because I know that curiosity, knowledge, rebellion, justice, and pleasure are real and good. I see him in the fire and lightning, hear him in rock n roll, feel him whenever I fuck. He is looking over my shoulder whenever I read. In the culture in which I was raised, he is the god of life, of passion, of vitality, of music and dance and sex and laughter, of all things physical and satisfying. He is the Lord of This World, and not called so for nothing. And he is the Lightbringer, the beacon of wisdom, of learning, of justice and defiance. This means he is not merely a god of the physical, but of the most profoundly spiritual– the great teacher of good and evil, the revealer of occult secrets, the initiator on the perilous path of apotheosis, and the scourge of cosmic justice.

And alongside him stand legions of the fallen, demons who preside each over their own special areas of expertise, who have their own attributes, personalities, and agendas– demons who, in short, like all other gods, embody forces that are perfectly real and manifest in the physical realm.

Eisheth, the End of All Flesh, the mother of holy death, Our Lady of the Guillotine, Mystery Babylon clad in purple or in flame and wielding the poisoned sword of painful truth. Lilith, who would not lie below, adopter of stillbirths and abortions, patroness of divorce, fierce androgyne and craver of equality. Naamah, beautiful beyond words, who presides over divination, prostitution, and the forging of metals for adornment or weaponry. Agrat, daughter of illusion, weaver and dispeller of artifice, dancer on rooftops, young laughing Agrat, bred from the union of Lilith with Naamah. King Paimon, with his camel and his crown and his noisy caravan, teacher and traveler, with a face so beautiful it was said to be a woman’s. I name here only a few. There are seventy-two demons in the Goetia, and many more that Solomon never bagged!

And shall we neglect to honor Eve, liberator of all? What of her son, Cain– first criminal, but also, first magician?

Why not go further? Worship rock gods, worship great poets and writers and artists, worship revolutionaries! Raise up and deify your heroes! Build shrines to your ancestors and beloved dead! Let joyous idolatry infuse your every moment!

How much more beautiful, how much more profound, to have many gods than one whose name is “Jealous!” And how much better a free universe, teeming with deities, than one of monotheism and predestination!

Here endeth the sermon. Go forth in idolatry! Thou art god!

 

 

 

 

Where to find me

I’m gonna try to stay on tumblr for as long as they’ll let me. 

However if I get purged, you can find me/my zines/my church at…

WordPress

Facebook

Etsy (for Lucifer zine)

My Podcast

And I am constantly in 

The Devil is Here discord server

Find me there as L’ange du Mal.

I’ve backed up ALL of my original text posts. 

I’m working on a google drive of Luciferian and Satanic PDFs for everyone to enjoy. 

If you want access to any of that drop me a line at morningstarcongregation@gmail.com.

Review: The Satanic Bible

It finally happened. 

I finally read LaVey’s Satanic Bible. 

And, huh boy, do I have feelings and reactions. What a weird fucking book. 

First off, to answer the inevitable question: As a non-LaVeyan Satanist, do I have to read this? No, you don’t have to, but you probably should. It’s the single most influential text on modern Satanism, after all. 

Is it a good book? For my money, no. But it’s not without its pluses. 

First, the positives. LaVey was very sexually open-minded for the 1960′s. His attitudes towards kink and homosexuality were far ahead of his time, at least for a heterosexual male. (His attitudes towards women? Eh, not so much.) 

Also, I find some of his ideas on magic very useful. They aren’t particularly original, but he streamlines them and lays them out in a fresh, clear way. The Book of Belial contains a tidy and lucid approach to ritual magic that honestly looks like it could be quite effective. It’s simple. It’s elegant. I like it. I’ll probably try it. 

I like, and use, his idea of one’s own birthday as the most important Satanic high holy day. 

As for the negatives? A lot of it has been articulated before, but dragging LaVey never gets old, so here we go again. 

For those who don’t know, the beginning of The Satanic Bible is absolutely plagiarized from an odd text called Might Makes Right which has been described as everything from “egoist anarchist” to “fascist” and “white supremacist.” The end of The Satanic Bible is just a dubious re-writing of John Dee’s Enochian Keys. Both of these segments were tacked on to make page count to satisfy LaVey’s publisher because he didn’t have enough original content.  

As for that original content, it’s… not all that original. Much have been made of how LaVey’s philosophy is mostly Ayn Rand with some devil horns stuck on, and that’s largely true. 

His scholarship is super dubious– he treats accusations of Satanism from the renaissance witch craze and the “affair of the poisons” in the court of Louis XIV as if they were indisputable fact. Of the witch craze, he states, without evidence, that all the “real” witches were “sleeping with the inquisitors.” Which, ya know– sexual seduction is most of how LaVey defines witchcraft, so the statement makes sense in a tautological way. Based on how he redefines words to suit his own purposes, it’s hard to argue with him. 

On that note, yes, he is in fact sexist as shit. (And if The Satanic Bible doesn’t convince you of that, read a few pages of The Satanic Witch.)

He indulges in some weird soft-polytheism, and just straight-up sticks a lot of deities onto the list of “The Infernal Names” who have no place being there. (Thoth? KALI? Really?!)

The point at which I lost patience, however, was when I came to the Enochian keys. LaVey has rewritten the English translations– “corrected” them, he claims– to make them Satanic. For those who don’t know, the Enochian keys were allegedly channeled, from angels, by John Dee and Edward Kelly. Since they are absolutely and obviously referring to the wrathful God of Christianity, just changing the name “God” to “Satan” makes little sense. In my opinion, they don’t reflect Satanic values at all. 

Without evidence, LaVey also claims that the “angels” of John Dee were actually “angles.” Nine angels/angles, corresponding to nine eons, are mentioned. Now I think I know where a certain neo-fascist Satanic group got its name. Ugh.

It was at the 18th key that I lost my shit. 

In his introduction to his version of the keys, LaVey speaks of replacing “arbitrary numbers” with blasphemous phrases– aka, he hates numerology, is lazy, and feels that channeled numbers have no significance and can be ignored or turned into whatever the fuck random words he thinks they should be instead. 

Here’s what happens when he does this. I’ve bolded the important parts. 

John Dee’s original translation of the 18th key (in archaic English):

O thow mighty Light and burning flame of cumfort which openest the glory of God to the center of the erth, in whome the Secrets of Truth 6332 haue their abiding, which is called in thy kingdome Ioye and not to be measured: be thow a wyndow of cumfort vnto me. Moue and shew your selues: open the Mysteries of your Creation: be frendely vnto me: for I am the servant of the same your God, the true wurshipper of the Highest.

And here’s LaVey:

O thou mighty light and burning flame of comfort!, that unveilest the glory of Satan to the center of the Earth; in whom the great secrets of truth have their abiding; that is called in thy kingdom: “strength through joy”, and is not to be measured. Be thou a window of comfort unto me. Move therefore, and appear! Open the mysteries of your creation! Be friendly unto me, for I am the same!, the true worshipper of the highest and ineffable King of Hell!

OH COOL, JUST STICK A RANDOM NAZI SLOGAN IN THERE WHY DON’T YOU, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.  

Not that this was a total surprise. Earlier in The Satanic Bible, LaVey says this:

From every set of principles (be it religious, political or philosophical), some good can be extracted. Amidst the madness of the Hitlerian concept, one point stands out as a shining example of this – “strength through joy!”

So, look. He’s not a total fascist. He’s a libertarian who likes to flirt with fascist imagery to be “edgy.” Which is better, I guess. But still not good

To conclude this review, I’d like to state that I do not dismiss LaVey or LaVeyanism entirely. He and his church have been very influential. In some ways, he was a fairly groovy guy, for 1969. He certainly brought Satanism out of the closet, and for that I thank him. 

And, despite all its flaws, I would reluctantly include The Satanic Bible on any Satanism 101 list. I don’t think it should necessarily be the first thing you read, unless atheistic Satanism is what’s calling to you, but we all have to read it eventually. Love LaVey or hate him, as Satanists we all have to exist in relation to him. I would never call this book our true “Bible” (and I don’t think we should have one) but it’s important to know what’s in it.