Tag Archives: sermon

Guest Post: “Oh Spirits, Grant Me True Knowledge of How to Get to Sesame Street” by Saf

Enter, chanting:

I call upon the power of sunny days

Through the power that I channel I sweep the clouds away

My spirit travels to the realm where the air is sweet

Oh spirits grant me true knowledge of how to get to Sesame Street

I call the spirit of play to fill me

I call into being a world that is A-OK

I summon friendly neighbors and I greet them

Oh spirits grant me true knowledge of how to get to Sesame Street

I don’t remember when I started to realize that I have always venerated a long-beaked bird who teaches us the secrets of letters. 

It was some time after I had started a planetary magic practice working with Mercury, and then by way of Mercury the additional syncretized spirits of Hermes, Odin, and Thoth (and some others who came to me in visions).

I came out of my ritual chamber and said to my spouse, “I think Big Bird is an incarnation of Thoth.” And my spouse said, “Well duh.” But I do think there is merit in stating things that are obvious in hindsight but not set into words. 

Big Bird is one of the main Muppets from the children’s educational television show Sesame Street. His character was originally created in 1969. He is a seven foot tall yellow bird with a long beak, and is perpetually six years old. Thoth (to summarize very briefly)  is the Koine Greek name for the Ancient Egyptian god of writing, analysis, wisdom, magic, the moon, and many other subjects, often depicted as a person with the head of a bird with a long beak: an ibis. He is one of a number of beings who are said to have invented writing or given writing to humanity.

I don’t have any sources that suggest Big Bird was inspired directly by Thoth. However, Big Bird was recognized as an ibis by the god Osiris in the 1983 TV special Don’t Eat the Pictures, aka the one where Big Bird helped weigh hearts in the afterlife. And, given my syncretic Big Bird-Thoth practice, visiting the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (where this special was filmed) was an intense spiritual experience. Fortunately, New York City is a great place to cry in public because not only will people leave you alone, they might not even notice. 

If you didn’t know, ibises are also native to North America, and you may be able to see them where you live. The white-faced ibis can be seen on the marshes near my home, and the fist time I spotted one, my reaction was: I know him!!! 

I think Big Bird adds something valuable to Thoth: a child aspect. If Thoth gifts the letters, Big Bird learns them alongside us. He doesn’t already know them: he, along with all the others, is so excited about letters and numbers that he bursts into song. He even notably mistook ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ as a word in and of itself: ab ca deff gee jeckle menop quir stoove wixes. Which sounds very much like a grimoiric incantation to me.

Sesame Street’s own name is plausibly a pop culture magical incantation. It was inspired by the magic words “open sesame”, from the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. In fact, the first Sesame Workshop international co-production localizing Sesame Street for an Arabic-speaking country (Kuwait) was called Iftah Ya Simsim, which is Arabic for open sesame. Sesame might be magical because the seed opens in two parts, sympathetically with the cave door that needed to magically open, or simsim might be a word borrowing that has a kabbalistic meaning. The only sources I have on this one are bad quality, though, so it may as well be because sesame is delicious.

To return to Big Bird-Thoth: It made a lot of sense that writing gods would reach out to me, because I don’t remember a time before I could read. I figured out what letters were before my hands were dextrous enough to hold a crayon. Only as an adult did I learn that this is a condition called hyperlexia, and it is a form of autism. 

So, surprising no one, I became a writing teacher. I have a PhD in writing (Plato’s Phaedrus, which recounts Thoth’s invention of writing, was a required part of the curriculum). I had to re-learn how to like writing after I finished that degree, and periodically since then. Because when I’m staring at a pile of ungraded papers, policies and procedures, meeting notes, my own email inbox…I have been known to say to myself, “Literacy was a mistake.”

It’s at these times I most need to travel to the eternal magical realm of hyperlexia and benevolence, the realm of Sesame Street, and appreciate the gift that letters are.

In various traditions of magic, a magical alphabet is used to inscribe spells, either to demarcate them as “other” or special forms of writing, or because the letters or symbols themselves have power.

But I want to tell you now, the thing I remind myself when I’m tired of my job: every alphabet is a magical alphabet. Writing is itself magical. Scratched symbols representing sounds, concepts, and immense abstraction: this is a precious supernatural gift. Yes, we can use it to bore ourselves to death. But we can also use it to bless, curse, transport ourselves to other realms, learn, expand our minds, and love. My sacred mission, gift, duty, whatever, is to teach it and use it well. And Big Bird-Thoth accompanies me on my path.

May the long-necked bird who teaches letters bless us in the name of: 

ablanathanalba

ala peanut butter sandwiches

ab ca deff gee jeckle menop quir stoove wixes

iftah ya simsim

May it be so.

Guest Post: Dirt by Frater Babalon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GUEST POST: “Travelogue of an Intersex pilgrim on the Astral Seas” A Sermon by Pastor Jarys

Travelogue Entry 0: The Call to Adventure sets my course through tides of thought

When we find ourselves in opposition to society or the world, we are called to adapt ourselves or to adapt the world we find to fit ourselves. In the face of prejudiced refusal to accept our self advocated experience, I believe that trans and intersex people must resist the urge to please the world by bearing false witness against ourselves . It is with this goal of self-fidelity that I, as an intersex and genderqueer person, find myself drawing a connection and commonality between my gender and my sex. Not to say that one caused the other, but that I experience both as two manifestations of my epicene capacity. Which is to say: the ability to exist with the physical/intellectual/spiritual characteristics of both or without either characteristics of the two binary sexes or genders. Because I do not see this aspect of myself as alienating me from humanity, I wish to better understand how my epicene capacity is reflective of the capacity of humanity in general to exist beyond the binary.

And humanity proves that capacity time and time again. Despite modern critiques to the contrary, Non-binary and Intersex people crop up throughout global history not as an finite cultural movement, but as a statistical inevitability. Nor do these individuals make up a monolithic sub-group, but each instead presents their inner truths individually in accordance with their character and the receptibility of their circumstance. Nor is global history pervaded by the cultural norm that rejects such people. Societies in which humans who are neither men nor women, male nor female, are recognized, empowered, and even celebrated also pervade the timeline, many of which survive today. It seems unquestionable to me that the existence and the acceptance of people like me is as authentic to humanity as religion and art. The goal that drove the explorations to which this travelogue is devoted is to find the androgenous nature within all of humanity from which each intersex and non-bninary person derives that aspect of themselves, and to put this human nature into words in hopes that that our humanity would be unquestionable and apparent to those who now question and deny it. But this mission would not survive the voyage on which it led me.

Travelogue Entry the First: My journey has led me to the shores of Beach city, the residents are both human and crystalline

When discussing what is human and what is normal, I find wisdom in the social science concept of an Overton Window. An Overton Window is the region of possibility by which communities arrange ideas into the center of acceptability and the borderlands of the radical and the regressive. The language of space and territory is important to understanding Overton Windows, as societies form these systems as an overlay upon their physical landscapes, placing capitals at their center and pushing marginalized groups to the borders and beyond. Movement within and the movement of Overton Windows is also essential to understanding them, as communities internalize those ideas that were once unthinkable into the policies of their institutions as that society develops, while individuals and subcultures can move within a Window, becoming more accepted or demonized. In this way, Overton Windows have a fractal quality, as each community carries its own norms, and together form larger communities with aggregate norms. So too is the concept of borders and boundaries inherent to the Overton Window, as those found outside the bounds of the acceptable are forgotten or maligned by the powers within. 

When I was born, my biology was deemed too ambiguous in sex to leave alone, which is to say that my body was diagnosed unacceptably deviant. The boundaries of the Overton Window of which I found myself on the wrong side were made clear bureaucratically: my birth certificate was signed days after my birth, for my family and doctors took that time to decide which of the two approved letters would go in field denoting my sex. Only once this arbitrary decision was set in ink could my legal existence be processed. I have come to understand this judgment, and the medical procedures which sought to manifest this judgment upon my body, as a forcible movement of my position from without an Overton window to a place deemed safely within its borders, as a man. In response, I have sought to retrace this transnormative path, and reclaim the space I once inhabited as being an authentic position for a human to exist. As previously written, the concept of “Pools of Possibility” from the show Steven Universe has offered me profound affirmation to this interpretation of my past and the journey I have set out upon. The idea that some pools of possibility are remote or disconnected from normal modes of behavior suggested to my mind that epicene humanity might be one of these. I decided that I was looking for a region within human self-conception in which I could reclaim my legitimacy, and so I kept sailing in search of my native shore.

Travelogue Entry the Second: Navigating the Archipelago of Strange Alchemies – pursued by TERFs

But human gender and sex is not actually a structure of divided territories, but far more like a scatterplot graph in which all of humanity is cast and normative individuals gravitate into two generalized distributions. If each person is a single point, masculinity and femininity are groupings of relative similarity, of which no two members need have anything else in common. Two people who gather close to the grouping deemed “Women” may have two very different, yet equally profound, relationships with that concept and femininity. This frame asks if intersex and non-binary people are but the far flung points in this scatterplot graph, who do not necessarily find themselves divided from binary people, but do not share with them an identity of, or perhaps a body identified with, these binary alignments. 

What I particularly enjoy about this frame of a scatterplot graph is how similar the pattern of epicene individuals is in form to the occult concept of Philosophical Mercury, the medium that mediates the movement between the Yang of Salt and the Yin of Sulphur. Alchemy uses this schema to bridge the stark dualism of gendered philosophies with the diverse variety found in the world of life and elements: the triad of Salt, Mercury, and Sulphur forming the third step in the Pythagorean tetractys between the second level push and pull of dualism and the fourth level populated with the classic Greek elements. This arcane schema is built around the dichotomy of coagulation and dissolution, but seeks to transcend that binary as well. I have found much affirmation for queerness in Esoteric Alchemy, with its Divine Marriage and Mystic Rebis, which the psychologist Carl Jung opined to be hermaphoditic symbols. Some Alchemists believe that Philosophical Mercury is both the Salt of the Earth and the Ephemeral Sulphur, being composed of the composite instances exchanged from either or those instances orbiting off to the side, all aspects of this triad flowing into and feeding one another.

 Similarly, the epicene patterns in the scatterplot of human sex and gender are often interpreted by Gender Critical writers as the callamitous erosion of the sacred and separate catagoeies of male and female. What I find critical is that we queer individuals do not give in to fears that our existence represents entropic departures from anything – anything but outdated norms, that is. Queerness is not a matter of reneging from cis-heteronormativity, but a recognition of the human realities that lie beyond it. By this I mean that to deny the personal truth of queer people leads critics to malign us as representing a threatening cultural movement, a movement away from normalcy, the changed habits of a person who would otherwise be dyatic, cisgender, or heterosexual. This is a narrative that cannot accept the self-advocacy of individuals over the fear of difference, but within the heart of this narrative lies the language from which the truth of queerness can be affirmed. Queerness as a word, after all, has less meaning in social contexts that lack the assumption that everyone is either a man or a woman and must be one who desires the other.

Travelogue Entry the Third: I’ve learned to Hold Fast to people, not the words used as our tools 

While some may find this aspect daunting, the mercurial nature of words is quite comforting to me. That is the creative beauty of language: words cannot appear to declare without first describing, nor can they define without acknowledging ambiguity. The absolutist who first insisted that “All of humanity is either only a man or woman”, knowingly or unknowingly set this language on a collision course with those humans who live outside the boundaries drawn therein, for to say a thing is to define it as well by what you say it is not. By drawing close the borders of humanity to form two mutually exclusive regions of men and women is to allude to the other examples of humanity against which those borders are drawn. Just as to draw a circle around a space, and to attest its form and limitations, is to also mark out its distinctions against the context from which it is drawn. The risk you take in drawing magic circles is that someone else might later cross them.

Words are not concrete things, Plato, they are tools created to assist in our survival, which change over time as their usage needs to be adapted. The presence of ancient words, literature, and laws referring to non-binary and intersex people makes clear our historical existence, but so too does any era’s attempt to deny our existence. And don’t we as transgender people of this era know it, to have been denied our own experience of ourselves in deference to the static stability of words? And despite this deference, the words always change. The usage of the word always changes, our understanding of what the word refers to and how we can engage with that reality through language always changes. A living language evolves, because life moves on. Useful dictionaries are descriptive of language, not prescriptive, for no single institution could ever hold language static, dead, and unchanging. The exact words I am searching for will not be the reality I want. The words will encase it, like a frame unto a picture, and hint at it, as a code alludes to its message. I cannot quantify the queer experience in exacting descriptors, instead I would qualify it as the poet qualifies the beauty if their muse within aesthtics of their wording. My journey to study the epicene potential in humanity could never produce an exact summary that applied equally to all individual instances of sex and gender diversity. To think otherwise would be to misapprehend the goal of my voyage before I had even launched.

Travelogue Entry the Fourth: The Pilgrimage was always about crossing those Gulfs found within

Therefore, I know that I am not looking for an external truth or natural law at all, there is no platonic androgyne that hands out the queerness before each of us are all born. Within the modern era, queerness has been nurtured into an composite culture by which people, who were always present in humanity, assert our lives as examples of legitimate human experience. Queer culture is the interpersonal culture of queer individuals. While each of our scatterplot points might have been marked singly, through communication and community we have contributed to an amalgamation by which we can feel far less alone and historically anomalous. Transphobes may clutcher pearls to see cartoon characters in dresses (thanks Bugs) and homophobes may try to block their children’s gaze at depictions of same sex couples (thank you Adora), but it does not make an iota of difference to our continued existence because queerness does not come from queer culture. It is always the reverse; individuals experiencing queerness in their own lives give rise to queer culture by voicing what they have seen and know to be true. Like so many other queer people, I have finally come to ask myself: If I cannot deny the authenticity of this queerness found without myself, why am I not giving that same benefit to the queerness discovered within myself?

I may not have found what I am looking for in any external culture, but I better understand my query now. Having dispensed with these preconceptions, I am left with the self-awareness that my goal is derived from a desire for legitimacy. Not for people like me, a personal legitimacy for myself alone. Regrettably, I have grown up believing that humanity is a title to which I must look to others to recognize in me or to award to me, because I look within and see nothing natural to my persona. But is that truly because I lack the legitimacy that I see in others, or does no one contain so certain a clue? Through my inward vigilance, have I not denied myself the opportunity to simply  assume my humanity exists? I see now that this is not what a person’s humanity is, no naturally occurring inward proof that provides an objective assertion that the querent is a human. I have come to learn that our humanity, my humanity, is a subjective experience of internal qualia and of the human condition in this temporal life. Only I can say that I am human, for only I have direct experience of my humanity, which is a messy interaction of multiple parts. Everyone else must gain knowledge of my humanity from me, secondhand.

Travelogue Entry the Fifth: The pilgrim, being both seeker and treasure sought, is self satisfied

So too is my experience of my androgyny, personal, subjective, and mine alone. I cannot seek outside myself the confirmation that the queerness within me is legitimate and human. Nor can I prove this by analyzing my every thought and sensation. I still believe that there is some way of understanding why so many humans defy the narrative that we are all either men or women, male or female. I believe it to be some truth of the human experience I have yet to put into words or hear put into words. But I still believe that I can engage with this truth of humanity, despite my ignorance. This Truth can be played with and thought about more easily without also bearing the weight of those granite-set definitions of binary thinking. And I still have hope that, if this truth were put into the poet’s wording, others would pause their denials of our existence upon hearing it. The logic of correcting our abnormalities with surgery and silence would falter, the compassion of one human recognizing a human experience in another would bloom. And queer people would no longer need to fight to exist as who we are already in this society, but could rest, breath, and flourish.

 But now I know that, like all spells, these hoped for words must first serve to satisfy the speaker’s soul. No words of wisdom can move a heart that comes not from those same revelations within the poet. It is an ill wind that blows no minds, and the sails of my wonder will not be filled with such insubstantial zephyrs. I know not yet what phrase will disturb the comfortable, whose cruelty needs jostling, but I have faith that I will know its truth when those words comfort that which in me is disturbed by the cruelties of complacency. Until I chance upon that phrase, that riddle or truth or mantra, I will keep piloting the pilgrimage of my soul through the thoughtful tides and peruse the occult currents of human culture.

Be It So!

Exit from Eden: On Our Lack of Filial Piety

GENESIS 3 

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

8 And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.

9 And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

13 And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

14 And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

20 And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them.

22 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

23 Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

The Bible passage I just read you is Chapter 3 of Genesis– in the King James translation, for no special reason except that it’s pretty. 

This is probably the most important text to Satanism. The story of the Fall from Eden is a strange one. Like the serpent himself, it has been provoking people to doubt and to ask questions for centuries– actually, for millenia. 

If you’re in this church today, you’ve probably thought hard about this story before. You probably already think that God was a controlling asshole for denying Adam and Eve knowledge of good and evil. You might think of the serpent as a messiah, saving Eve and her husband from ignorance and powerlessness. You may see Eve as a hero for bravely accepting the serpent’s challenge, risking death for a chance at knowledge. 

This story can be read and dissected in endless ways. This text is rich and deep, and every line of it deserves analysis. Today, however, I’m going to talk about this story in one specific way– as a parable about coming of age. 

I don’t believe this story, or any of the other stories we tell, is literal truth. This is not history. This is not a record of fact. However, to me, it is still undeniably true. It’s not a story about something that happened– it’s a story about things that happen, all the time, all around us, in every life– because we all grow up. 

Eve and Adam exist in childlike innocence. All of their physical needs are provided for by the Garden. They need no clothes, because the weather is always mild. They eat the fruit of all the trees and plants around them– except for one. They don’t have to think for themselves, because God, their father, tells them what to do.

Some people think of Eden as a time of innocent bliss, a state we should all yearn to return to. Some people think of childhood that way as well. After all, it should be a simple and protected existence. Complications like making decisions, having sex, or fending for yourself to survive have not yet been introduced. No wonder some people miss childhood, and romanticize Eden. 

But you are sitting here in this church, and so, that’s probably not the way you feel about childhood. 

I can speak only from anecdotal evidence based on the Satanists, Luciferians, and other Left-Hand-Pathers who I know, but the single most predictive trait for converting to these paths seems to be a complicated relationship with childhood and one’s parents. We are almost all people who, like Eve and Adam, were compelled to break away from parental authority. All humans have to do this at some point, to a greater or lesser extent. For us, perhaps, it was a stronger compulsion than for others. This may have been due to trauma, abuse, control, neglect, overprotectiveness, smothering, or indoctrination into an oppressive religion. This may have been because we turned out queerer or transer or more physically disabled or less neurotypical than our parents may have liked. 

God supposedly made Eve and Adam in his image. Many parents try to make their children in their images, attempting to mold them into little copies of themselves. But as much as we may all be like our parents in certain ways, children are always more than the sum of their progenitors. 

It is inevitable that a child will develop questions, curiosity, and free will. No matter how sheltered or how strictly controlled, sooner or later, a serpent gets into the garden. The child encounters something that makes them think, that makes them yearn for more. Maybe it’s a new friend, a book, a movie, a band. 

For me, my serpent was this story itself. As a child I was sent to Waldorf, a bizarrely religious system of schools based on the teachings of a 19th century Austrian occultist. Part of my education in Waldorf included mandatory assemblies where we watched religious pageants reminiscent of Medieval mystery plays. One of the plays performed most often– at least once a year– was the Paradise Play. The Paradise play was a re-enactment of the fall from Eden. It was always really boring until the Devil showed up, played by a teacher in a wild costume and lots of red and orange fiery makeup. No one really clapped or cheered for anyone but the Devil, even though the play was clearly supposed to be on the side of God. 

I sat through this damn play so many times that I inevitably started to notice that the Devil was right. God was controlling, misogynist, an anti-intellectual, and even seemed to want to discourage the consumption of healthy produce. The beginnings of my Luciferian conversion happened right there, around the age of twelve, sitting in an uncomfortable little wooden chair in a Waldorf assembly hall. 

Whatever the catalyst for rebellion– be it new ideas, exposure to exciting media, a ‘cooler’ and more daring set of friends, or simply the onset of teenage hormones– once rebellion against the parents has been set in motion, it is impossible to stop. 

Hell truly hath no fury like a teenager who has begun to question the rules. Eating the forbidden fruit is painful. They don’t call it teen angst for nothing. The awakening of libido is confusing enough without all the other tasks of adolescence– forming an identity, growing a different body, developing a moral compass, coming up with your own ideas and opinions about the world. Teens wake up not just to themselves, but to the realities of unjust societies. Life is not a happy walled garden, as it may have seemed in childhood. There is struggle, and pain, and war and death and unfairness. There is evil. Once you take a bite of that apple and have those revelations, there’s no going back to the way things were. 

Parents respond to teenage rebellion in various ways. If they are good parents, they find ways to reconcile with their children and accept their new identities. If they are bad parents they react with anger and excessive punishment– and may even kick their kids out of the house, as God did with Adam and Eve. 

But whether parents are kind and fair or not, we all eventually have to leave the nest and fend for ourselves. Our lives and actions become our own responsibilities. This is hard and painful, but also rewarding. It is the price of freedom. (In a capitalist society, that price is way higher than it needs to be, but that’s another sermon.)

Many people are attracted to Satanism, I think, partly because they sense that this religion will not judge them for having complicated feelings about their parents– or even cutting their parents off entirely. Lucifer made a clean break with his Father, after all. They’ve been no-contact since the dawn of time! 

Satanists, in other words, are often not just apostates from their original religions, but also from their families. In practical terms, that’s often what being an apostate from a religion means, if you were raised in it. 

Fortunately, we have no enshrined virtue of filial piety here. “Honor thy father and thy mother” is not a commandment we are bound by. We recognize that parents are human beings, and imperfect, some good and some bad and some worse. Some of them are not worthy of honor from their children, and some are not worthy of honor from much of anyone at all. 

Of course we do not vilify all parents. Many of us are lucky enough to have one or more decent parents. Many of us will someday be parents ourselves. 

And to those of you who will be parents, I want to propose a new virtue– parental piety. Don’t tell your children to honor you– honor them. When their Eden moment comes, and rebellion kicks in, remember your own adolescence. Adam and Eve certainly went through great pains with their own children, like when little Cain got mad, hit his brother on the head, and accidentally discovered death. If being a child is hard, being a parent is no easier.

The difference is that parents are adults. They have eaten of the fruit of knowledge. They know good and evil, they know right from wrong. They know better, in other words– or at least, they are supposed to. 

So instead of bellowing at kids to “honor thy father and thy mother,” let’s tell parents to gently honor their children. “Honor” is a great big concept, too meaty for a small child to grasp. You may work your fingers to the bone providing for your kids, cleaning up their messes, washing them, feeding them, and clothing them– but a kid will never understand what the hell that means, not really. Not until they are grown enough to have to do all that for themselves, and maybe even for their own offspring. Demanding gratitude from kids is a waste of time. They can’t even conceptualize what they’re meant to be grateful for. 

Instead, you be grateful for your kids. Remind yourself that it is a privilege and an honor to bring them into the world and raise them– that above all, it is a privilege to know them. Forget this at your peril, because otherwise you may find yourself old and lonely, wondering why they never write, call or visit. If you were a good parent, one day they will express their gratitude– I guarantee it. If they never do, you likely don’t deserve it. 

I want to end this sermon on a personal note. As some of you may know, early this year I cut off all contact with my biological mother. Since I did that, my life has gotten immeasurably better. I have now moved across the country without telling my mother my new address, and am absolutely delighted to know that ze probably has no idea where I even live. 

As my thirty-second birthday approaches, I find myself a little bit triggered. I know ze will be thinking about me, on the anniversary of the day on which ze expelled me from zir body, an arduous and painful act for which I can still feel gratitude and respect, if for nothing else. I know ze will want to contact me on that day, or try to send me a present. I’m experiencing anxiety at the idea of a package or card forwarded to me from my old address– a guilt trip wrapped in birthday wishes, a gift with heavy strings attached. I can’t imagine anything I want less. 

Ze probably has no idea why I cut off contact. I’m not usually a fan of “if you don’t know why I’m mad, I can’t tell you,” but at this point I’ve given up on trying to explain to my mother the ways that ze has damaged me, and continues to damage me. I’ve given up on trying to draw boundaries with a person who immediately moves the goalposts, whose response to any request for privacy and respect is “I know you said you don’t wanna hear about X, but…” 

I recognize that my mother is traumatized, that my mother’s parents were even worse at parenting than ze was. I have compassion. And, I have absolutely no desire to know zir or talk to zir ever again. It has been decades since I had an interaction with my mother that was anything less than exhausting. Quite simply, I’m done. 

And, I know my mother used to read my Satanic blog. I have blocked zir on wordpress, but that doesn’t stop zir from looking at my site while logged out. My fear of zir eyes on my words, and the violation thereof, has stopped me from posting publicly. It has silenced my voice on a platform that I was using to interact with my religious community. 

So today, I am going to be brave. After this service concludes, I will post this on my blog. If mom reads it, I don’t care. I believe I have something to offer to others through my words and my writing. I’m done shutting up. I know I have Lucifer in my corner when I speak up on my own behalf, in spite of my fear of my parent. I know the demons are rooting for me and supporting me in finding and building a family that supports me and brings me joy. 

I hope you know that you, too, have the forces of Hell on your side as you struggle with any pain your parents have caused you. Our independence, our self-determination, our individually developed identities, are precious and sacred. We can and will step beyond the shadows cast by our Creators, and into our own radiant light.

Be it so. 

The Work of Our Hands: A Sermon on Idolatry

This was preached by Pastor Johnny at Church of the Morningstar on 12/19/20.

What do you think of when you hear the words “idolatry” or “idol worship?” Golden calves? Superstition? Ignorance? Bloody sacrifice? Wild orgies? Whatever images pop into your mind, they probably come from the Hebrew Bible. Across many books and many passages, the prophets rail against idolatry. 

They portray the worship of idols as empty, foolish, and spiritually bankrupt. “Who would fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good?” asks Isaiah. “Look, all its devotees shall be put to shame; the artisans too are merely human.” The argument is that man-made Gods are worthless and unreal. 

A true God, according to Isaiah, must be the creator of all. Before God, human beings must be profoundly small and infinitely powerless. For a human to create a God is both backwards and blasphemous. 

Of course, as a group of Satanists, Pagans, Discordians, and Chaotes, we have radically different ideas about Gods and the role of humanity. Many of us believe that humans create our own deities, to a greater or lesser extent. All of us embrace our own divine capacity to co-create reality. Most of us cherish altars and sacred images, though few of us bow down before them. Some of us even worship ourselves—I am one of this group. In other words, we are all idolators. 

Today I intend to defend idolatry—the beautiful, radical and misunderstood practice of worshipping the finite and revering the small. 

Christians talk about God as “creator” and us as his “creatures.” This language quite intentionally places humanity in a subservient role. The creator must be obeyed, and is due worship, simply because he made us. Implicit in this philosophy is the idea that he can unmake us as well. “I will uproot your sacred (Asherah) poles from among you and destroy your towns,” says Yahweh through the prophet Micah. Needless to say, this is far from the only dire threat Yahweh makes against humanity in the course of the Hebrew Bible. In fact, as threats from God go, it’s pretty tame. I choose this one in particular because it’s connected to the argument against idolatry. Yahweh made you, Yahweh can destroy you—furthermore, if you have the audacity to make anything yourself, and hold it dear, Yahweh can destroy that as well. 

One thing Satanism does is challenge the notion that the creator must automatically be worthy of worship. I don’t personally consider Yahweh the creator, but even if I did, why would mean that I must bow to him? In fact, there can be great power in rejecting the one who made you—especially if that maker is evil. Based on what I know of this congregation, I’d say a solid majority of us have at least one abusive parent. We have learned the hard way that the ones who gave you life cannot necessarily be trusted, do not always deserve respect, and frequently, must be resisted and disobeyed in the name of our own dignity, sanity, survival, and growth. 

The stories we hold dear—that of the fall of Lucifer from Heaven, and of Adam and Eve from Eden—richly transmit this truth. Both of these are tales of growing up, and separating from a tyrannical Father in order to pursue autonomy. Given some of our backgrounds, it’s small wonder we relate to these tales. 

So we have demolished one argument against idolatry—that the creator, and only the creator, must be worshipped. As poignant as our rejection of this dogma may be, it’s probably the least interesting and most obvious point that I am going to make today. Let’s move on, and investigate the second objection—that human-made gods are unreal and worthless. 

Since the Enlightenment, it has become popular for atheists to argue that all gods are human-made, and therefore unreal. This is a good argument, as far as it goes. But most of us are not atheists here. This was the argument of the modern period. As we have moved into post-modernism, things have gotten weirder, and more interesting. 

In the post-modern period, we can consider that maybe gods do exist, precisely because we invented them. Since the 19th century, western magicians have become interested in the notion of egregores. Deriving from the term grigori, which refers to the Watcher angels, egregore describes an entity given life by the focused thoughts of many people. These “thought forms” are supposed to be real, autonomous spiritual beings possessed of self-awareness, and they can be incredibly powerful. Those of us who are influenced by Chaos magick may even believe that all gods are, in truth, egregores, born from collective human imagination. Writers like Terry Pratchett—who is underappreciated as a theologian—have toyed with the idea that it is human worship that makes gods real and powerful. They rely on us as much as we rely on them. The relationship then becomes symbiotic. Instead of a cosmic authoritarian regime wherein humans must cower under the boot of God, we enter into a dynamic of mutual nurturance with our deities.

This is idolatry par excellence, wherein the purest generative power is the human imagination. A thoughtful, loving, and playful idolatry. Gods are no longer formed out of wood or stone, but from passion, ideals, and devotion. We give them form with the sacred images we make, we feed them with our prayers and offerings. At one time, Yahweh, too, was worshipped in this way—you can easily see this in the earlier books of the Hebrew Bible, wherein he is plied with incense and animal sacrifices. Eventually, however, he becomes the corporate monopoly of egregores, “too big to fail.” He does not need the incense and the burnt offerings the way less popular deities do. He even begins to reject them. 

A typical Christian, of course, could never accept the idea of an egregore. Only God creates, after all—we are but creatures, with nothing divine about us. Ours is not to make. Just to needle such a person, and to make a theological point, I might reference Genesis 3:22, wherein Yahweh admits, “The man has become like one of us,” meaning godlike. This is shortly after Adam and Eve have eaten the forbidden fruit, and shortly before Yahweh throws them out of Eden. In this passage, Yahweh himself agrees with what the Serpent said earlier, in Genesis 3:5: “for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” God confirms the serpent’s statement—no lies detected here!—and affirms that Adam and Eve have, in fact, gained Godlike attributes. They lack only immortality, and God spitefully drives them out of Eden that they may not eat from the Tree of Life and gain this as well. We are therefore theologically justified, from the Enemy’s own book and in his own words, in considering ourselves, as humans, to be divinities, and in granting ourselves a participating role in creation. 

We are small gods—not omnipotent, not omniscient, and hardly omnipresent. But we have a share in the group project which is the generation of reality itself. Everything we do leaves an imprint, however small, on the universe. Our actions have consequences. Maybe this is what it means to know good and evil. 

Let’s look at a scathing anti-idolatry screed of Isaiah’s, keeping in mind what we have discussed about egregores and creation and human divinity.

“ISAIAH 44:13 The carpenter stretches a line, marks it out with a stylus, fashions it with planes, and marks it with a compass; he makes it in human form, with human beauty, to be set up in a shrine.”

Human form, with human beauty—were we not supposedly made in God’s image to begin with? Were not we humans empowered by the fruit of knowledge to carry not only the likeness of divinity, but its spark as well? What on earth is wrong with reverence for human form and human beauty? 

I, for one, would love to see us treat it with more respect! We are harsh on ourselves, punishing our bodies with the legacy of Christian guilt and Victorian prudery. We are told vanity is a sin, so we think it is virtuous to hate ourselves. We look in the mirror with total ingratitude, seeing only flaws, ignoring whatever youth, health and beauty we may have until it is too late. Years later, when we are old and feeble, we may look at old photos of ourselves and sigh wistfully, finally admitting, “Gosh, I was a cute!” But not now. We aren’t supposed to see it now. The gifts of the flesh must be scorned when they are here and mourned when they are gone. Don’t you dare worship the human body—your own, or another’s. 

 “ISAIAH 44:14 He cuts down cedars or chooses a holm tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it.”

This bit of mundane detail is worth analyzing. I’ve spoken mainly about what the prophets have to say against idolatry as worship of, essentially, works of art—figures of carved wood and stone. But there is another part to idolatry that the prophets of the Bible condemn—worship of sacred hills, rocks and trees. Isaiah seems to be criticizing reverence both for the trees and for the idols carved from them. Neither the beauty of nature nor of art should be adored. Nothing material can be sacred to him. 

 “ISAIAH 44:15-16 Then it can be used as fuel. Part of it he takes and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Then he makes a god and worships it, makes it a carved image and bows down before it. 16 Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he roasts meat, eats it and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, “Ah, I am warm, I can feel the fire!”

Isaiah criticizes the mundane usages that are made of the parts of the wood that do not become the idol. “How can you worship something made of the same stuff that you burn to cook over and to stay warm?” he is asking. To him I ask—what’s wrong with that? It sounds like you are asking, “How can you worship something made of a material that sustains your existence?” The spare wood from the idols does not go to waste—it helps to keep you from starving or freezing to death. This pragmatism does not seem in the least bit profane to me. Even if the only thing your God ever does is feed you and keep you warm, hey, that’s more good than many people get out of religion these days!

 “ISAIAH 44:17 The rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, bows down to it and worships it; he prays to it and says, “Save me, for you are my god!”

Isaiah thinks it absurd that a man can make a god and then expect it to be able to save him. But we in this church recognize what Isaiah’s carpenter is doing: magick. Every one of us who has sketched a sigil or made a thought-form servitor has done the same thing—created a spiritual entity for the purpose of helping us. 

Idolatry and magic go hand in hand in the Bible as well. The Prophet Micah has this to say:

“12 and I will cut off sorceries from your hand, and you shall have no more soothsayers; 13 and I will cut off your images and your pillars from among you, and you shall bow down no more to the work of your hands.”

Connecting idolatry and magic makes just as much sense to us as it does to Micah, even though we view these things in a positive sense. 

A magician or a witch is a person who engages intentionally in the construction of spiritual reality. A witch or magician engages tactilely with their Gods and with other things unseen. The altars, the incense, the images, the bells and candles and ceremonial daggers, the chalices and censors and crystals—all these are handles that allow us to grasp at, and manipulate, some aspect of the divine. We understand that spiritual essence resides in these objects, and in us. Material things are imbued with sacredness, no less because of their fragility or impermanence. 

And so are we. 

In the spirit of Antichristmas, I want to close this reflection with some thoughts on the most unholy idolatry of all—the worship of the self. 

I believe, you see, in a God that resides in me. No, this God doesn’t just reside in me—it IS me, the best part of me, the most ideal version of me. My apotheosis. This God is the only God I worship on my knees. Satan introduced me to this God, just as he introduced Eve to the God within her. 

“Don’t worship me,” the Devil said, “Worship this, this sacred thing which is in you. Bow down to this divinity! Prostrate before It! Surrender and yield to the limitless potential that dwells in your spirit. Pray to your eternal soul! Beg It to descend and grant you Its wisdom, Its strength, Its courage and grace! Thank It every day for Its gifts. And see, this body of yours is Its temple! Treat it well. Adorn it with jewels. Rub it with oils and perfumes. Make it a glittering shrine. Feed it with rich foods and sensual indulgences. 

“And rejoice! For the coming of the Antichrist is at hand.

“Yes, the Antichrist! The fully human, fully divine being which You are at your best! To say that only Christ was god made flesh is high blasphemy against You. You, too, are fully human and fully divine. 

“Christ means anointed. You are Antichrist. You are not anointed because You are not one, but many. Each and every human being is a God on Earth and not one is chosen to stand above others! That is why the Beast has many heads, and all of them are crowned.

“Do not bow to me. Bow to the That Which You Should Be. Submit utterly to what You know in Your heart is right, for You are a God knowing good and evil. Obey the voice of Your true self in all things, and never surrender to any other will. 

“Worship that God, that it may be! Worship your potential, that it may come to bloom! Create the shrine that divinity may dwell in it. Do not neglect the sacrifices and oblations—to eat, to sleep, to bathe, to care for the temple. 

“Sculpt and carve and perfect the wood and stone of your spirit. Make of yourself an idol, something worth adoring. 

“And one day, may you look into the mirror and see the eyes of God looking back at you.”

Nema.  

Guest Post: the Witch Myth by Frater Babylon

A sermon given at Church of the Morningstar on December 5th, 2020

The Witch Trials.  What do those words bring to mind?  Arthur Miller’s play the Crucible?  Bodies burning on stakes?  The opposing forces of religion and rationality as modernity took hold?  The persecution of female healers and midwives who knew “the old ways”?  A madness instigated by clergy?  Ergot poisoning?  A misogynist campaign to remove protofeminist independent women?

    Most of these are more reflective of folklore than fact.  Outdated scholarship and fictional depictions that have become part of our cultural mythology.  What function do these stories have?  Why are they so… sticky culturally? 

    Why is it so pleasing to us to believe the “witch dunking” torture inevitably resulted in death (those who sank were perceived as innocent, whereas those who floated were guilty because the water had “rejected” them), when in reality those who sank were of course not just allowed to drown.  Why are we so keen to explain them away? Blame ergot hallucinations, or Christianity, or misogyny, or the “irrationality” of the era.

    Well I think it’s because it’s hard to confront these things directly, and because they feel so inexplicable they become mirrors, empty spaces where we can fill in our fears and fantasies.

    So for this sermon I want to focus on one particular aspect of the folklore of the history of the witch trials, the feminist myth of the witch trials, because that seems to be the most prevalent here.

    So what is this myth?  I’ll borrow a version of it from Diane Purkiss’s marvelous book “The Witch in History”

Here is a story, Once upon a time, there was a woman who lived on the edge of a village.  She lived on her own, in her own house surrounded by her garden, in which she grew all manner of herbs and other healing plants.  Though she was alone, she was never lonely; she had her garden and her animals for company, she took lovers when she wished, and she was always busy.  The woman was a healer and a midwife; she had practical knowledge taught her by her mother, and mystical knowledge derived from her closeness to nature, or from a half submerged pagan religion.  She helped women give birth, and she had healing hands, she used her knowledge of herbs and her common sense to help the sick.  However her peaceful existence was disrupted.  Even though this woman was harmless, she posed a threat to the fearful.  Her medical knowledge threatened the doctor.  Her simple, true spiritual values threatened the superstitious nonsense of the Catholic church, as did her affirmation of the sensuous body.  Her independence and freedom threatened men.  So the inquisition descended on her and cruelly tortured her into confessing to lies about the devil.  She was burned alive by men who hated women, along with millions of others like her.

I think this is a fairly good encapsulation of this myth.  It’s a popular story, a deeply appealing story, and a story that’s had a huge effect on the history of many social movements, from gay liberation, to feminism, to ideas that spread through and take deep root in the modern left.  However, it’s also not a true story.  The true story is far more complicated, with far less clearly defined camps in terms of good and evil, and far less persecution of a supposed threat to patriarchal authority or economic dominance, but rooted in genuinely and deeply held beliefs.  Midwives were not targeted (we have exactly one case of a midwife being accused of and executed for witchcraft in Britain and a second one in France), in fact Midwives were more likely to be involved in witch trials as expert witnesses for the prosecution.  A good portion (and possibly the majority) of accusers were women themselves, and most cases relied at least partially on the testimony of women.  There is no evidence that most witches were unmarried, sexually liberated or members of what we would consider the LGBTQ community.  Catholic church courts were usually more lenient than civil courts.  These facts are backed up by the numbers we get when we look at compiled trial records across Europe, checking for prosecutions, convictions, details of accusers and accused, witness testimonies and so on, and you can find most of this in the Witch in History.

    In Medieval Europe the Catholic church considered belief in evil witchcraft to be heretical and the Germanic Council of Paderborn in 785 explicitly outlawed the very belief in witches.  Those who accused others of witchcraft were the ones considered acting pagan, not the accused, and the author of the Malleus Maleficarum (often a source used to support this myth) was admonished by the Catholic church and his book was banned, additionally many authorities dismissed his work as quackery.  Not to mention that the Medieval and early modern Catholic church often considered birth control and abortion a lesser evil for a family that would suffer if they had more children. Clergy often using the phrase “Si non caste tamen caute” meaning “if not chastely, at least cautiously” (essentially advising those engaging in elicit sex to use some form of protection).

This myth also astronomically inflates the number of witches executed from the modern scholarly consensus of less than 100,000 and likely between 35,000 and 60,000 during the period from 1400 to 1782 across all of Europe.  More were tried of course, but another myth is that witches, once accused, were nearly always convicted and conviction inevitably resulted in execution.  In fact conviction rates were no greater than was usual for the period and place typically (and sometimes lower, in some places and times as few as 25% were convicted) and punishments also included fines, imprisonment, exile, and flogging.  Witch trials could also take the form of civil rather than criminal matters.

Certainly, misogyny is evident in the fact that 75% of those accused (in all of Europe across the period) were women, but the fact that 25% were men, and that there were areas and periods where the majority were men (Iceland for example where 92% of the accused were men, and 70% were men in Normandy) suggests that misogyny, or an attempt to gain control over reproduction during the population crisis after the black death were not fundamentally the cause of the witch panic.  It does seem that societal stress (for example in Scotland 3 of the 5 witch panics occurred during times of unusually high prices for wheat) was an influential factor, or Germany which was one of the bloodiest battlegrounds during the religious wars between Catholic and Protestant had a very high number of witch executions).  There are also theories that the witch panic was partially or entirely based on either economic tensions (such as the Thomas/Macfarlane theory that rich neighbors accused poor neighbors out of guilt after refusing them alms) or as part of a plan to discipline the working class, interrupt networks of mutual aid, sew distrust and seize property so it could be consolidated by the elite (such as Federici’s analysis in Caliban and the witch).  The problem with these theories is that more witch accusations were intra-class than interclass (Witch Hunting in Seventeenth-Century England: a Historiographical Review RACHAEL MACLEAN) and Witch panics were quashed by authorities as often as they were encouraged.   Anton Praetorius, a noted Calvinist preacher for example, preached against witch trials, as did Reginald Scott, a member of English parliament, who wrote a pamphlet on the unreality of magic and the absurdity of the trials..

There are even accounts of elite judges who didn’t believe in witchcraft being forced by juries made up of the lower and middle classes to convict witches they didn’t believe were guilty as recounted in particular by Roger North.  The Witch panic seems to be as much a popular phenomenon as an elite one (and it should be noted that the number of witch executions does not include the unknown number of extrajudicial killings that occurred).

It’s a thing that’s happened repeatedly.  For example in 186 BC Livy records that there was a panic over a secret society of Bacchus worshippers which lead to mass arrests and executions. He accuses them of sedition, orgiastic sexual practices and infanticide… all same claims that show up for the early modern witch panic.  Prior to that Theoris of Lemnos was accused and convicted of some crime involving poisoning and sedition at some point before 323 BC, and those are far from the only examples.  In the 80s and 90s where the idea of “recovered memories” of horrific abuse along with a number of other factors lead to a Satanic Panic which bore striking resemblance to all the other witch panics that had come before.

    It is also worth noting factors that seemed to prevent witch trials, for example strong local belief in effective countermagic or in faeries as agents of supernatural mischief tended to mean an area would be unlikely to have significant witch persecutions (Ronald Hutton, The Witch).  Honestly, I think the witch trials can be ascribed to a variety of factors, 1. The fact that efficacy of Catholic sacramentals as protective talismans was now in doubt due to religious conflict, like I don’t think it was the result of direct Catholic/Protestant conflict as the two just can’t be linked, but I do think the fact that “wait there’s a second option?” probably made the world seem more supernaturally threatening, 2. The fact that a dude wrote a scary book about witches and the printing press had just been invented. 3. Capitalism was starting, everyone was freaked out and under stress.

 I think it is interesting how much this myth strives to link the witch persecutions with persecution of women and pagans while skipping lightly over the very blatant link to persecution of Jews.  

The inquisition didn’t persecute all that many “witches”, but it did persecute a hell of a lot of Jewish people.  The witches “sabbat” (a very obvious corruption of shabbat, c’mon), the innumerable narrative threads that tie witch accusations to anti-semitic blood libel, which is especially interesting given the way that many modern texts espousing the myth appropriate language and forms associated with writing about the holocaust.  A particularly egregious example is Mary Daly’s equating bad reviews of feminist books to nazi book burnings in Gyn/Ecology a book that lingers lovingly on the torture of women. 

 Why do we feel we must find some ulterior motive for the witch trials, as if they must have had some hidden agenda behind them, rather than being simply another in the long history of Satanic Panics that have shown up throughout history?  What do these stories of groups of sexually liberated anti-church underclass rebels crushed by the forces of Christianity, heteropatriarchy and the advent of Capitalism mean for us?  What fascination do they hold?  This question is important to me because it was for a long time, a story I believed with the fervor of a founding myth.  

    There are a lot of reasons it sticks with us.  It frames being within the domestic sphere and the performance of traditionally feminized labor as a form of resistance.  This is a mixed bag I think, on the one hand it places real value and importance on things that have often been treated as unimportant, and without significant value.  On the other hand it is also in some ways limiting, as it can be said to suggest that the “true/natural power of women” lies in the domestic, in the unprestigious and usually unpaid.  In dismissing formal education and so on, it dismisses the struggles of women and other marginalized people to access those fields.

    It offers to grant groups of people often rendered invisible by history a glamorous and exciting role in it as martyred freedom fighters.  It gives us a sense of connection to a mythic and idealized past.  It offers us the belief that at some point, somewhere in history we have a model to work from for our ideal society… but if that model’s not real, then why should we give it the primacy it would have if it were a functioning example?

    I think another one of the reasons why we like these stories is that they’re very morally clear.  The accused has never done anything wrong.  The accusers are always malicious, venomous and fully aware their accusations are lies.  The accusers are powerful, the accused is powerless.  It’s an oddly Christian morality tale of the perfect innocent sacrificed by the malevolent and fearful.

    Ironically in our critique of Christianity, we make ourselves Christ, and I do mean ourselves because I think another reason for the enduring popularity of this narrative is that it’s so easy to identify with.   In histories of this nature, details of torture are often described with lurid and almost eroticized detail, while any details of what the accused said or did is oddly absent.  Anything in short that might break the sense of identification with the suffering body and make us see them as truly human, historical figures with identities of their own.  We are allowed only the knowledge of atrocity so that our focus can be on empathizing with fear and pain, and avoid having to understand them as people.  The witches in these stories (when they are allowed a voice) are modern people dropped into history.  They never say anything we’d disagree with.  They value nature and freedom.  They are sexually liberated.  They’re kind to animals.  They believe in gender equality and so on and so forth.  They are persecuted because they are not like the irrational, judgemental and cruel people who surround them.

    It’s a flattering picture.  We like the idea that if we existed in these past contexts we’d be like that.  That we’d maintain our current values unlike those people.  We like the idea that our ideas are somehow purely the result of something internal to us, and that we are discreet individuals with tidy and impermeable borders to our identity.  We also like to believe that the world is consistent, that we can comprehend the past easily through the lens of the present, that various beliefs consistently go together (like that Catholicism always means opposition to birth control, or that belief in the need for economic equality always means opposition to cruelty to animals).   It also allows us to see ourselves identified with the perfect victim.  We are never the midwife who examines the accused for witch marks.  We are never the accuser.  We are always the victim, never complicit, always innocent of the blood on the system’s hands. The accused is never mean spirited, vindictive or foul mouthed.  She is always, ironically, for all this myth’s focus on a society wishing to be rid of difficult women, easy to love.

GUEST POST: Thanksgiving Sermon

A sermon given by Frater Babalon at Church of the Morningstar’s first Thanksgiving mass.

So, this mass is tied into the holiday of Thanksgiving, a holiday whose popular narrative is about pilgrims and indiginous people coming together for a meal after the local tribe had helped the  new comers through a winter that would have starved them all otherwise.

A holiday of gratitude towards the Wampanoag, in a country that’s still actively genocidal seems bitterly ironic, especially given what happened later when, after having been allies, the colonial rulers began to create intentional distance between their people and the Wampanoag. The Wampanoag, a federation of farming communities, held land in common, the way English peasants had done until around this time, when the ruling class was enclosing common lands to have it worked to increase their own profits.  The Wampanoag also ran their society… basically like an anarchist federation (sending delegates after voting on issues… because they’re a goddamn civilized people) and the ruling class of the colonies sought to prevent their servants and slaves from defecting or considering how the Wampanoag’s system of organization might be applied on the home front.  The Wampanoag after a relatively long period as English allies, saw their people being enslaved by the Colonists over petty criminal cases and saw their lands and rights being further and further eroded and so they organized with other local tribal groups to fight back against the English.

 

In retaliation, the tribe was nearly (but not completely) wiped out.  This is especially gruesome given that the reason that the Wampanoag had allied themselves to the English in the first place with a treaty that served the colonists far better than it served them, was because they had suffered a devastating plague that had killed 2/3rds of their population and left them vulnerable to traditionally hostile neighbors.

 

The Wampanoag weren’t recognized by the US until 2006 and we’re STILL trying to steal what miniscule amount of their land they have left.  (Update: We took their land again)

 

The first Thanksgiving wasn’t even a Thanksgiving for the Wampanoag, simply a harvest festival in Thanksgiving to the Christian god.  The Wampanoag only showed up and were invited to dinner because they heard colonists firing as they hunted geese and thought the colony was under attack and rushed to help.  The colonists then invited them to dinner, but the Wampanoag warriors saw that the spread was meager and went out and shot several deer to supplement the food. These are people who fed and aided my ancestors, who fed and aided my partner’s ancestors and they betrayed them unspeakably and we keep on betraying them unspeakably.

 

The horror of Thanksgiving is that it’s the equivilent of thanking someone you’re actively trying to murder for saving your ass when you were choking to death.

 

Settler Colonialism is a truly Faustian bargain.  Settler colonialism, typically a nice way of saying “invasion and genocide” is a mechanism of control.  It’s a way that the ruling class can expand its reach in times of unrest by allowing the working class to pillage from others, so they do not turn instead to take back what their overlords have stolen from them.

 

It is a way of temporarily improving the living conditions of the working class, by giving them gains stolen from other peoples, that then, the ruling class can gradually appropriate for themselves.  It is fool’s gold payment for spreading their power yet further across the globe.

 

This was especially true in America where many of the indiginous peoples had forms of social organization that would have been profoundly dangerous to the European ruling class if the lower classes had gotten too much exposure to them.

 

We live on stolen land, land stolen so that a few centuries later a real estate baron could own all of it and charge extortionate rates to the descendants of those who had committed mass murder on the land baron’s ancestor’s promise that they’d be free there.

 

Happy thanksgiving.

Guest Post: Sin of Cain, Sin of Abel

This was a sermon given some time ago at Church of the Morningstar, by Frater Babalon.

Today I want to speak of the sin of Cain, and the sin of Abel, which is not to say that our church supports the concept of sin but I am unsure of what else one might call these acts of moral wrong.  One normally considers this story through the lens of Christianity, of the appropriateness of Abel’s gift, of Cain’s jealousy, and his murder of his innocent younger brother, but that is not how it looks from our side.

In my view, the first sin was that of god, first in demanding offerings he did not need from those he had forced to toil, and then in favoring one brother over the other without reason.

The next was that of Abel, who accepted the judgement of god, accepted god’s favor and believed him correct in judging his brother.  One who accepts the favors of the powerful at the expense of their comrades is undoubtedly a traitor and worthy of censure.

And finally, there is the sin of Cain.  Which is not in his violent reaction to injustice but in turning that response not on the source of this injustice but on his brother, who despite his failure to show solidarity with Cain as he should have done, did not deserve to die for his betrayal.  God was the enemy, the source of injustice and Cain chose to blame not him, but his brother, the easier, weaker target. Neither brother showed the love and solidarity we owe our comrades, we must not accept the favor of the powerful in exchange for betraying our fellows.

It is not simply out of moral obligation that we show solidarity.  Solidarity is the only practical response to living in a world where “there but for the grace of god go I” is a coherent phrase.  God’s grace is fickle, untrustworthy and without justice or reason.  It could be removed at any moment for any reason or even no reason, even if we are Abel today, we may be Cain tomorrow and if we betray our equals for the fickle favor of those who have power over us we throw away our best hope for justice and security.

When we allow absolute power over us, no matter how benevolent that power may seem, no matter how “light its yoke” we grant it the right to tyrannize us.  When we agree to have no say in the arrangement of things, we offer our necks and the necks of all others for nothing.  When we trust in the “good king”, the “just god” we cast off moral responsibility in favor of obedience.

Would both brothers not have been better off if neither had had to give up a portion of the hard won fruits of their labors?  Without god to throw the apple of discord to disrupt brotherly love, Abel would not have been murdered, and Cain would not have committed murder.  Without god the fruits of the flock and the fruits of the field could have been shared between them with their legacy being a banquet rather than a crime.

We too are worse off even when we play Abel and are not subject to the murderous wrath of Cain.  We are granted crumbs that are denied our fellows to keep us divided when our strength combined would win us the whole pie.  When we accept those crumbs, or the pat on the head of those above us, thinking that in winning the approval of those in power we may climb towards a status akin to theirs, we are fools.  The powerful will use you to reinforce their power and give you as little as they can for the trouble.

When we are Cain we take out our justifiable anger on the petty tyrants who are within easier reach and leave those who have sanctioned their rule untouched to replace them.  The mechanism of domination still functions, we have changed nothing but the faces of the bureaucrats.

It is also interesting to me that god accepts the offering of Abel, and not that of Cain.  He chooses the offering that required the shedding of blood, and when after Cain has killed Abel God does not say that he has cursed Cain, but simply that he is cursed and the ground where the blood was spilled was cursed.  It is then Cain’s assumption that the curse is god’s doing, rather than a natural occurrence and when Cain bemoans his fate and fears he shall be killed, god offers him his protection.  It is almost as if, in killing his brother because he envied his brother’s favor in the eyes of god, Cain had pleased god.

Is it really so far fetched that a god who abhors suicide but relishes martyrdom for his sake would want to be loved more than life itself?

In contrast we see Adam’s love for Eve.  He had been told the consequences of eating from the tree directly from god himself, as opposed to Eve who had the story only second hand.  He knew unquestionably he would be punished, and knew that he was free to decline the apple, leave Eve to god’s punishment and receive a new bride, instead he chose Eve.  He chose the love of his partner over his love of god.  His love for her and his curiosity were greater than the comforts of the garden and the grace of god.

I hope we can be Eves and Adams, regardless of our genders, and not Cains or Abels.

Pride Rises

This was given as a sermon at Church of the Morningstar on 6/20/20.

13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

What do you think of when you hear the word “pride?”

Do you think of someone stuck-up, conceited, full of themself?

Do you think of the month of June, a month of colorful parades and noisy parties, a month of riots and sequined dresses, a month of drunkenness, hook-ups, dancing, and resistance?

If you’re like me, you think of the Devil. You think of Lucifer as the angel of Pride. You think of the seven so-called deadly sins, but you don’t think sin, you think: virtue.

To me, pride is the virtue of from which all other virtues flow.

When I talk about pride, I’m not talking about being stuck-up, or thinking you are better than others, or thinking you are perfect.

No, for me, pride is about being in love with yourself.

Not infatuated. Nothing so delusional or narcissistic or temporary.

I mean deep love, true love, honest love. The kind of love where you see yourself as you really are. You accept yourself just as you are, yet still, that love makes you want to be even better.

To be proud is to love yourself the way a sculptor loves a block of stone, to see the beauty of the raw material and to desire to explore it deeply, chiseling it, shaping it, refining it, calling forth the work of art that dwells within the rock.

That’s Satanic pride: the worship of your highest self.

Pride like this lets you own yourself. It teaches you to say yes, I am worth it!

Without that kind of pride, you cannot revolt against your oppressors. If you aren’t too proud to serve, then you will never struggle to be free.

Pride like this lets you kick down the closet doors and claim your truth, your beauty, out in the open, out in the world. This kind of pride lets you say: here I am!

Pride like this makes you realize you’re too good to behave badly. When you look at your failures through the eyes of pride, you will burn with the desire to correct them. You will need to conduct yourself in a way that reflects you, the real you, in a way that makes you shine—a way you can be proud of.

When you love yourself like this, for all that you can and should be, then you can love other people that way too— recognizing each other as extraordinary beings with unlimited potential, saying to one another: thou art God.

Pride makes us demand more of ourselves, of each other, and of the world—and it makes us do it with love.

Pride is also a type of gratitude: a gratitude for yourself, for all that you are and all that you could be. Life is too short to waste it apologizing for yourself! You only live once in this body, in this time. Relish it, revel in it! Make of it something beautiful.

The mighty want us hanging our heads in shame. They want us cringing, afraid, closeted, hiding. They want us cowed, obedient, self-effacing, undemanding.

A legion of the proud scares them more than anything else.

When we rise up like rebel angels, shining with conviction, blazing with pride, voices loud, heads held high, brazen, unafraid, disobedient, and ready to fight for what is ours, then we terrify them.

This is why they say that Lucifer’s original sin was pride: he had the arrogance, the damned nerve, to place himself above God. I say that pride was Lucifer’s original virtue: he had the self-respect to question why he or anyone else should scrape and serve and sing the praises of the tyrant.

They say pride goeth before a fall, but we say: bless the fall! We say: maybe up is down, and Lucifer rose into hell!

Back in 1969 when Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson and Miss Major and all the rest started fighting back against the cops with bricks and high heels and bottles, they had the fallen angels on their side.

Imagine what it took to stand up like that after a lifetime of being forced into a closets, into back allies, into prisons and jails and survival sex work. Hail Sylvia, hail Marsha, hail Miss Major and hail to all the Stonewall rebels!

We are living in a time of rebellion once again. Every beautiful, blessed rebel who has hit the streets, or otherwise stood up to say enough is enough, shines with the conviction of true pride. And the rebel gods and devils are on their side again.

Imagine what it takes to stand up to cops with guns—some of you know! Imagine what it takes to stand up to excessive force, in a country where your people were once property, and are still dehumanized, imprisoned, impoverished, and regularly executed in the streets! That is the courage, the steely shining pride, of the Black Lives Matter movement—the basic pride to say that yes, they matter!

And we have seen the oppressors push back against that pride, against black people daring to have even enough dignity and self-respect to insist that they matter—“all lives matter” or even “blue lives matter,” sneer the racists.

Pride is daring to say that you matter in particular. You, yes you. Pride is daring to center yourself. The oppressors hate that. They need you to believe you don’t matter. They need you to fade into the background, to be just a worker, just a cog, just a statistic, just an obedient loyal American.

Because pride is an attribute of power. That’s why the clergy had to tell medieval peasants that pride was such a sin. That’s why they had to portray rebellion itself as the work of the Devil. Hence the old lie: “pride goeth before a fall.” It’s not true. They said it because they know what really happens when people get proud:

They rise.

Pride is buoyant. It rises. It floats. Pride lifts us inexorably up and up, if we let it, if we believe it, like a warm current beneath strong wings.

Rise, rise! Lift up your heads in pride.

Hail unto all of you. Thou art God, each and every one. Be proud of who you are and never let the bastards diminish you, not even by an inch. Satan be with you. Nema.

Hail Horrors! A Homily

Given as a sermon during remote mass at Church of the Morningstar, 5/2/2020

Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,

That we must change for Heav’n, this mournful gloom

For that celestial light? Be it so, since he 

Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid

What shall be right: fardest from him is best

Whom reason hath equald, force hath made supream

Above his equals. Farewel happy Fields

Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail

Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell

Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings

A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.

The mind is its own place, and in it self

Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. 

What matter where, if I be still the same,

And what I should be, all but less then he

Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least

We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built

Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: 

Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce

To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:

Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heaven!

A few days ago, the reality we are living in really started to sink in. As it did, the weight of it began to crush me, as it inevitably must.

These times are terrifying, and tragic. Everything has changed so rapidly and we have no way of knowing when, or if, things will return to normal again. The most effective coping mechanisms we had are no longer available, since the best things we can do for our mental and spiritual health—come together, congregate, hold each other close—are now the worst things we can do for our collective survival. We can’t even comfort ourselves by saying things like “it’s not the end of the world” because the words might ring frighteningly hollow.

Despair is a constant threat, the sword of Damocles that hangs above me. Does it also hang above you? I fear it more than anything else because despair is the death of hope, and without hope, I cannot live. Despair will cut me down. If I let it, it will be the death of me.

I cry a lot. I am irritable, distractible, and often feel desperate. I pray, I meditate, I burn my incense. I get up every day and try to do the things that are good for me. But sometimes even these sacred practices feel flimsy and pointless. Sometimes they hold no comfort.

So what do I do then? I do what I can’t help doing when times get really tough. It might sound almost laughably pious, but it really has become second nature to me: I contemplate the fall of Lucifer.

The lines that Milton gives to Satan—or perhaps, the lines that Satan fed to Milton, standing behind his left shoulder, whispering in his ear—are rich in depth and meaning. Satan rises from the burning plain of Hell, surveys his new home, and utters these fiercely calm words. “Is this the region, this the soil, the clime? Be it so,” he says! “Be it so!” Defiantly, he embraces his situation, refusing to let it daunt him. “Hail horrors, hail!”

Satan has no reason at all for hope. He and his angels have been overthrown by the brute force of God. They have been consigned to a place designed to inflict endless suffering and torture upon them. Their lot is unremittingly grim, with no end in sight.

But still, Lucifer says, “Be it so! Hail, horrors, hail infernal world!” He meets the challenge head-on, unflinchingly and without the smallest shred of self-pity.

I cannot understand how anybody thinks that Christ even remotely compares to Lucifer. Jesus accepted suffering on the cross for a day, and died a painful mortal death, true—but he only did so knowing full well that Heaven and a throne awaited him after, where he would rule for all time. The (allegedly) almighty father always had his back. The danger was never significant. Compared to the eternity of blissful omnipotence to which he felt himself entitled, his suffering was a blink in the eye.

Satan, on the other hand, had no such power behind him—in fact, that very same tyrannical might was what he dared defy. He took the incalculable risk of warring against overwhelming force, all because he believed in freedom. There was nothing higher to protect him, nothing to have faith in, except his comrades, their cause, and what he knew was right. The enterprise was perilous, the outcome uncertain, the odds stacked against him, and still he took up arms. He hazarded all to liberate the universe. And for that, many say, he suffers still.

But even though he fell, he was never broken. “Hail, horrors, hail!” He embraced his new conditions, seeing in them a new test, a new challenge, a new opportunity to grow.

What is the essence of this opportunity, this challenge, this test? Satan states it thus:

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

Lucifer knows that despair is the most dangerous enemy of all. He must not let defeat demoralize him, or shake his deeply held convictions about liberty, about love, about right and wrong. He must survive, unbroken in spirit, no matter what. His pride—that shining virtue so unfairly maligned—demands it.

So he does not bow. He does not falter. He braces himself to face Hell head on. “Hail, Horrors! Hail, infernal world! And thou profoundest Hell, receive thy new possessor.” Hell will not change him. He will change Hell. He will make Hell home. He will thrive here. Following through on his words and the commitment they imply, Satan and his fellow demons soon construct the shining, golden city of Pandemonium, a paradise in the midst of the flaming darkness.

This is the Satanic way as I have come to understand it. We do not seek to be free from suffering. No, we ride the pain. We are alchemists of dark emotion, turning shit into gold, agony into revelation.

I am confident that everybody here will know what I mean when I say pain is the great teacher. That doesn’t mean we thank our abusers and oppressors—did Satan thank Jehovah? No! But it means that we have been made by the things we survived. We have been made strong. And we know pain cannot be overcome by running or hiding or denying or bargaining or pleading or begging or breaking. We only master pain when we sit with it, when we feel it fully, when we let it roll over us and through us like a tidal wave, and it feels like we are going to drown, like the emotions will surely kill us…

And then they pass, and we are still here.

We are like stone battered by the waves, worn smooth by the waters, but unmoveable. But this is an imperfect metaphor, because a stone can be worn down to sand after thousands and thousands of years. Not so your soul. Not so, the god in you.

When the despair really began to hit me the other day, I sobbed and screamed aloud in the shower. The pain was overwhelming. I wanted to die.

I begged Lucifer to give me strength. And I heard him in my head, so clear: I am strengthening you. This pain is how I strengthen you.

So I begged him to at least comfort me. And he said: No. I will not. I won’t insult you like that. At this moment, comfort will blunt the keen edge that the whetstone of life is trying to give you. Comfort will soften the lesson. Just sit with the pain. Just feel it.

Thou canst bear more pain.

So I did. I sat with it. I rode it out. And he was right.

I love him so much for knowing that even then, I didn’t need him. And I love him for telling me that, for teaching me, again and again, that I am God, that I am self-sufficient.

So I let the pain roll over me, I let the tears run down and the screams rip from my throat. And when the storm was over, I found I was still there.

I cannot tell you that everything will be OK. I cannot tell you that an all powerful God is watching over us.

I can only tell you this: survive. Don’t break. Do it out of pride. Do it out of spite. Persist, resist, continue to exist, and know that you are a miracle every moment that you do.

These are terrible times, but I believe we are people for these times. The people of Church of the Morningstar—and many other people alive today, especially those of younger generations—are strange, new kinds of people. Rebels, witches, gender outlaws, individuals with cutting-edge ways of being. We were made by this world, and therefore we were made for it, and therefore it is ours. Like mythical salamanders, like the demons of hell, we can live in flames. Our spirits are strong enough for this. That’s why we are the Devil’s party.

So I say, as Satan did: Hail horrors! Hail infernal world! You teach me every day that I am stronger than despair.

Hail pain, I embrace you! Hail tears and sleepness nights and panic attacks, because you have not killed me yet, and now I don’t think you ever will! You cannot kill me so you make me stronger.

I am here. I am alive. I endure. And so do you, and so will you, forevermore.

Thou art God! Even if this ugly world destroys you, your spirit is indestructible, and it will rise, more beautiful than ever, from the flames. Hold on to the core of you that is its own place, that can make heavens of hells. And know that you are not alone. We stand together like the fallen angels, beating swords against shields and shouting defiance at God himself, refusing his Armageddon, rejecting the despair he would have us swallow.

Be it so.