Goals against enslaving distractions

People selling me things harassed me all day yesterday: e-mails; stopped in the street; mail; phone calls.  The selling ranged from religion to boiler replacement, which is a tiny fraction of the daily noise that bombard the individual Satanist demanding their time, energy and money.  Personal space is randomly and frequently invaded by the salespeople of unwanted junk.

Once the Satanist has defined their important goals, then with discipline focused their attention upon those goals, an invisible filter comes into existence as a barrier to the distractions demanding slavery to others gain at the expense of self.

Question everything

One of the qualities of the great individual Satanist is their ability to question everything.  Human society attempts to enslave and manipulate the Satanist every moment of life.  The individual Satanist who proceeds through life questioning all they see, hear and read, even questioning their own motives and thoughts, become liberated and powerful in the face of enslaving ignorance.

Satanism inside

I was taking my wolfhound for a walk today in the grounds of an old Christian church, now all ruins, roof gone and the walls standing as a forgotten relic of its religious past.  The walls conveyed to me the harsh restrictive nature of the religion it once contained.  I was glad to be a Satanist, an outlook of liberty, free of restriction.  I know of Satanists who dream of building their own Satanic building.  I am glad that these dreams are unlikely to happen because Satanism is inside the Satanist never out there in the world.

A Satanic view on Easter

Tomorrow is Good Friday, a festival that the Christians celebrate involving nailing people to crosses, echoing the stories of Celtic Esus and Nordic Odin who suffered on a world tree in order to drink of its eternal wisdom.  I can guarantee few of the Christians as they go about their rituals, singing and worshipping will leave the Good Friday celebration any wiser than they entered it.

The best way to learn from anyone or anything is to do what they do.  So if one is to be like Satan for instance in the Independent Satanist paradigm one must actively pursue various Satanic ideas through the experiential doing.  Wisdom is active, it is sensory experience, like eating apples rather than talking about apples.  If Independent Satanism expresses liberty, what then is the Satanist doing developing liberty in their own lives?

If you participate actively in improving yourself in some skill such as learning to juggle you are going to suffer the pain of failure, the errors, the sweat and tears of struggle in evolving from a novice to a master of that skill.  This suffering to improve in a skill is what wisdom is, it is active and experiential, instead of an intellectual theory, the skill has become a part of you, internalized, a part of who you are, something wise and insightful.  In suffering to develop the skill you have metaphorically nailed yourself to the tree of life like Odin and you will drink deeply from the wisdom this activity will reveal.  The Christian unlike you will act out much like spectators at a sports match the life journey of someone else, but since they did not literally live out a journey through experiential doing they will remain the ignorant unwise parrots at the end of Good Friday as they were before that festival.

An introduction to magick

Introduction

What follows on the subject of magick is my personal views, some that you the reader might agree with, and some you may disagree with.  Question everything, and use what I say as contrast against what you believe and experience.  Each individual has their relative truth, I have mine.

Magick, science and nature

All things are nature, there is nothing beyond or outside of nature, thus to say supernatural or things beyond nature are relegated rightly to ignorant fantasy.  Magick follows the laws of nature, and thus using science in relation to the use of magick is a good strategy. Science deals with what is known and visible, but magick deals with what is unknown and invisible, what some call the occult (occult means “hidden”.)  Regardless of visible or invisible, science and magick both deal with nature, and as science progresses the division between the rational and irrational in nature blurs.  In all things an approach of the natural philosopher who treats all things as like an empiricist who can observe, demonstrate and experience a truth, regardless as visible knowledge or invisible wisdom, is a way of staying centered between the rigorous demands of the material and the spiritual aspects of magick.

There are in the Left Hand Path two recognised divisions of magick, which some describe as lesser and greater magick.

Lesser magick

I would suggest that lesser magick is better called magic without the “k” for it deals with known variables solidly within the known visible world of nature.  Lesser magick is a knowledge-based process. Lesser magick manipulates outcomes by using solid science to move visible objects to defined goals, such as striking a match will make a flame.

There are two types of lesser magick: technology and mentalism.

Technology

Of course the magick of Harry Potter is entertaining fantasy, for magick follows the natural laws of science, so that waving willow wands in the air whilst making meaningless noises in the Latin language results in impotent nothingness.  But through the application of science in technology, all that which is seen in the Harry Potter films is possible from invisibility, to firing bolts of lightning to walking on water.  Technology is a form of lesser magick.

Mentalism

The manipulation of the human senses and processes of the brain is mentalism, which includes card tricks, seduction, hypnotism, visualization and plain old commercial marketing.  Mentalism manipulates the mind into thinking and doing things under the control of the mentalist.  Mentalism is a form of lesser magick.

Greater magick

I define greater magick as making something out of nothing.  Greater magick deals with the invisible side of nature, manifesting the hidden into the visible world.  Those who deal with greater magick are philosophers for they deal with wisdom, whereas lesser magick is knowledge-based and is useful to the scholar in the Left Hand Path.  Those that follow the knowledge based road of rationalistic Left Hand Path outlooks will limit themselves to the known visible world of the lesser magick.  Those that follow the road of the greater magick step outside the domains of known science, they must use irrational methods of intuition and speculation in order to find the invisible in a wisdom-based situation.  The scholar is blind to the wisdom-based road of the greater magick, they will reasonably reject it as meaningless delusion; their blindness limits their ability to go beyond their self-imposed boundaries into the highly irrational states of greater magick.

Greater magick is based in nature, it is only the invisible side of nature.  The greater magick is a form of creativity, for those that use the greater magick are creating visible objects out of invisible material.  The greater magick is like art, and the rules of creativity apply, to see, build then activate the object from the invisible into the visible state.

Pseudo-Satanists charged with murder

Two Satanic brothers with a Harry Potter obsession have been charged with the murder of a taxi driver in Prague in the Czech Republic.  Typical pseudo-Satanists these brothers have adopted the name Satanist and the usual ignorant Christian viewpoint that Satanism is about murdering people.

Satanic hysteria as child turns into a snake

Africa, and I can never tell if what the news media reports relating to Satanism is an April Fools joke or the usual hysteria, I am sure Africans are as confused as me.  A report circulating on several African media news outlets dated 1st April allege that hysteria has swamped a school after a student apparently turned into the colors of a snake.

Four children with tattoos, a student claiming a dead person was speaking to them, and a student parent’s car with a vampire image on it were all presented as signs the forces of darkness had engulfed the school.  There is a campaign to remove the school head who is being blamed for unleashing hell upon the students and school.

A Satanic view on the State

Recent news that the US spy agency the CIA had been spying on the senators supposed to oversee them was the moment that the State lost all meaning to me as a Satanist.  The senators who were supposed to be leading the USA had been undermined by a rogue out of control agency.  Neither supporting or seeking the destruction of the State, I use it to advance my personal goals and nothing more.

At its core the State ideally is comparable to a cooperative, working for the benefit of the members, but in all cases throughout present and past history the State has served a minority at the expense of the majority.  It is estimated in recent figures that the top 1% control 39% of the wealth of the world.  All the laws, processes and institutions of the State are weighed in favour of the top 1%, who through financial influence can always swing the State in their favour.  A poor citizen can rarely challenge the top because money is required to challenge and make sense of the complexity of law and process the top 1% spin around themselves to maintain their hegemony.

Carl Jung said it beautifully when he described the State as like a religion:

The dictator State has one great advantage over bourgeois reason: along with the individual it swallows up his religious forces. The State takes the place of God; that is why, seen from this angle, the socialist dictatorships are religions and State slavery is a form of worship. But the religious function cannot be dislocated and falsified in this way without giving rise to secret doubts, which are immediately repressed so as to avoid conflict with the prevail trend towards mass-mindedness. […] The policy of the State is exalted to a creed, the leader or party boss becomes a demigod beyond good and evil, and his votaries are honoured as heroes, martyrs, apostles, missionaries. There is only one truth and beside it no other. It is sacrosanct and above criticism. Anyone who thinks differently is a heretic, who, as we know from history, is threatened with all manner of unpleasant things. Only the party boss, who holds the political power in his hands, can interpret the State doctrine authentically, and he does so just as suits him.”

As a Satanist I am past the delusion that the State works for its members benefit, instead I make the State work in my favor by playing its clockwork-like mechanisms in ways that benefit me.

Satanism and censorship

Sometimes censorship is desirable.

As Satanists many of us are already aware that good and evil is subjective, yet many continue to be caught by this delusion in areas such as censorship.  Censorship is a tool, like my knife, it is how censorship is used that makes it either a tool of tyranny or one that is constructive.  My knife can be used to slice cheese or kill someone.  Censorship such as Akismet on this blog censors spam, but the censorship of President Obama against whistle blowers who reveal corrupt practices in his government is a harmful form of censorship.

I hope people can get away from the notion that censorship is evil in all cases.  Censorship is a way of placing boundaries that filter out harmful elements, such as a firewall and virus software protects my computer from viruses.  I have no desire to let random strangers into my home, access to my bank account or steal one of my kidneys.  I have boundaries to protect my life from undesirable outcomes, which is a form of censorship.

On this blog I do censor comments. I have deleted comments that are spam, off-topic, retarded, racist and personally abusive.  This blog is my personal space, and I will with maximum prejudice have authority over my personal spaces in life.  I have had angry commentators tell me I am evil for censoring their abusive comments, but then I point out to them censorship is a tool, and their claims of authority to be able to write whatever they like wherever they like is a delusion.

Independent Satanism and the internet

Although there are hundreds and perhaps thousands of Satanists who identify as Independent Satanists, those that follow a personal form of Satanism free of the influence of group, dogma and externally influenced structure, the Independent Satanic paradigm is still in its infancy on the internet.

Internet breaks group monopoly over Satanism but hides group-minded traps.
It is directly thanks to the internet that the monopoly of group-think has been broken up, where the Satanist via a few clicks can access information on Satanism whilst avoiding affiliation to the enslaving influence of groups via the internet.  Sadly most information sources on the internet fall into the trap of becoming group-orientated, for instance Venus Satanas an internet pioneer of Independent Satanism created a contradiction when creating a now defunct group for Independent Satanists called the “Infernal Horde.”

When a web site offers a service in support of Independent Satanism there is a fine line between enslaving the individual in group-think and respecting the personal sovereignty of the individual Satanist.  It is fine for a blog or YouTube channel to offer fixed viewpoints, since these are tools of personal manifestation, one however has to be careful in offering a service such as say the Sect of the Horned God, which quickly falls into the RHP group-minded trap.

Satanic political groups and businesses have to be group-minded to function.
It is okay for a political activist group such as The Satanic Temple or a Satanic business to take the group-minded route, since the success of the goals such groups pursue is dependent upon the constituents acting as like an organised army or become a disorganised mess.  With such groups the independent Satanist temporarily surrenders individuality to participate in a team where all constituents benefit; most Satanic groups however demand that the Satanist permanently surrenders individuality, where there is no discernible personal benefit to slavery even from the outset.

There are few quality internet sites on Independent Satanism.
Beyond a good blog article by Venus Satanas on the concept of Independent Satanism that she wrote in 2009 there are few resources available on the internet on Independent Satanism that does not have a hidden trap of enslaving the individual attached to them.  An example is a recently formed Independent Society of Satanists (I.S.S) based in New York, which right from the start excludes spiritually inclined Independent Satanists:

“I’m sorry to say right off the bat that there are no Theistic Satanists allowed, it just to much of a hassle.”

An ideal internet site for Independent Satanists
The ideal internet service for Independent Satanists offer a one-on-one relationship, that caters for the needs of that individual without undermining personal sovereignty, or enslaving them to group-think.