Well I figure it's time to start contributing material of my own, so I shall start here with an introduction to my own beliefs. I shall start with the prayer I open every session of meditation with:
O Light bearer, fallen to earth,
Hallowed are your names.
This is your kingdom,
Though it lies unseen by men.
Give us this day your black flame,
And burn away our ignorance,
As we set your kingdom ablaze!
And lead us on the path to fullness,
Unto light eternal .
For yours is the kingdom,
And the power, and the glory,
For ever and ever.
First, some history:
"For any Gnostic the world is really hell." - R.M. Grant
The story of Satanism begins in the early days of Christianity, when it was still attempting to define itself as a faith through brutal disputes over all aspects of doctrine. Against what became the Orthodox teaching certain beliefs of the Gnostic and Marcionite sects would form the soil from which Satanism would grow:
1. A belief in dualism
2. The belief in the evil nature of the material world’s creator identified as the Old Testament Jehovah.
3. The belief that the serpent in Eden was a liberator and teacher not a villain.
4. A belief in antinomianism that may or may not manifest in libertine practices and the use of sexual imagery to describe spiritual experiences.
These types of beliefs were adopted by later heretical sects such as the Paulicians who handed their beliefs down to the Bogomils and Cathars. The Catholic church responded to these apparently widespread beliefs with brutal action even going so far as to declare the Albigensian Crusade which destroyed any remaining formal heretical sects. This is not to say that such beliefs died out, on the contrary this forced such beliefs underground, where they were adopted by loose knit groups and solitary practitioners of disenfranchised peasant stock.
By this point the belief system had evolved and new ideas came to the front:
1. The association of heresy with sorcery and the work of the devil.
2. The belief of the church’s enemies that identified the Catholic devil with the heretic’s Christ and the heretic’s devil with the Catholic God. An essential reversal that is clearly the founding belief of Traditional Theistic Satanism. Embodied beautifully in Clement of Bucy who claimed that the mouths of priests were the mouths of hell.
The church again responded with brutal persecution, ignorant claims, exaggerations, and cost the world countless lives.
This continued on through the “Enlightenment” period where the church began to lose much of its political power and the tenets of humanism began to be declared even by the rich.
By the 19th Century the Romanticist movement came to prominence and with it a renewed interest in the occult and paganism. As for Satanism, a new phase would begin, a period of gentrification, where the rich began adopting and transforming the disorganized and subversive folk religion of peasants worshiping Satan as a bestower of wisdom and power into a drawing room gentleman and an epic libertine and rebel. Here we see a formalizing of Satanism, the creation of symbols and formal Black Masses along with the Romanticist rejection of Enlightenment rationalism.
It is not until the 1960’s that a new development occurs: Anton Lavey shows up to popularize a get rich quick scheme where he would found a “church” and feed on controversy and ostentation in the hopes of bringing in money. So he plagiarizes ideas from Ayn Rand and Ragnar Redbeard while adopting imagery from the 19th century-style of Satanism to create his Satan: nothing more than a mere symbol of crude rebellion, petty ostentation, and a sociopathic morality that exalts the lower ego while rejecting even the existence of anything higher.
Lavey’s controversy essentially popularized a false form of Satanism which demanded a response from more traditionally minded individuals who have actually done their research and who now step forward amidst the fractured and bickering “Satanists” of the internet age to proclaim an authentic Satanic Gospel: the Gnosis of Traditional Theistic Satanism!
Now some basics of my approach:
1. Satan is the name of the Christian devil, whom Satanists worship.
2. The origin of the term is from the Hebrew word for “adversary” and was not originally a proper name.
3. The being known as Satan is not a preChristian entity, he is not Enki, Loki, Pan, Ahriman, Ea, Enlil, or any other deity. Satan is Satan.
4. Satan is typically identified with Lucifer due to the interpretation of a passage in Isaiah.
5. Given the origins of Satanism in Gnostic heresies, it follows that Satanism should be analyzed in Gnostic terms and therefore Lucifer/Satan should be identified with the Gnostic Christ and the serpent in Eden.
6. Satanic practices are usually based on Catholic Christian rites, (although Protestant variations are certainly not unheard of) and are often arranged to mock such rites. This serves specific purposes: First, the spiritual catharsis and liberation provided by transgressive action. Second, it is a protest against the legalistic, patriarchal, and simplistic views of institutional Christianity that have shaped Western culture for centuries and continue to do so even in this postmodern period of history. Third, one can also see the Satanic Rites as not mockeries of Christian rites but as corrections of them, whereby Gnostic Satanic spirituality may be communicated.
7. Many modern Satanists distance themselves from Traditional Theistic Satanism, calling it merely “reverse Christianity.” However that view is shortsighted as while Satanism may be linked to Christianity in its development this does not mean it is dependent on Christianity. If Christianity were to suddenly die out, Satanism would not disappear just as if Judaism suddenly died out Christianity would not simply disappear, the validity of a faith is not rooted in the cultural milieu that birthed it but in what the faith has to say about life and experience.
8. Satanism is not for everyone. It is for those who feel drawn to it as moth to flame. Nor is the success of a faith based on the number of its adherents but on how well it meets the spiritual needs of those adherents.
9. Satanism has no organized and official priesthood. Different covens may organize differently and one group may have a steady leader while others may not. The individuals acting as priest during a ritual are typically just acting out a role and members of a coven may even take turns acting in such a role. Beware of those who claim titles for themselves or who make unfounded claims as well as those demanding artificial structures and hierarchies.
10. Satanism is not a religion of hate nor a shelter for insecure individuals. In fact Satanism is a doctrine of love and teaches compassion for all living things. Hatred is merely a tool to be used for the attainment of liberation from the realm of the Hylic. Like any tool, when one is done using it, one sets it down. Again, like all transgressive acts it is used only within the confines of ritual and spiritual expression.
Now you Know, and Gnosis is half the battle!