The decline of a Satanic forum

Satanic International Network (SIN) in 2010 was the latest incarnation of numerous internet forums for Satanists stretching back to the dawn of the internet.  Founded on the back of a successful YouTube channel by a Satanist calling himself Zach Black SIN attracted at its zenith 5000 Satanists, though more well-known Satanists ignored it.

The problems of all forums on the internet is that they encourage mediocrity, slavish group think, a tendency of being overrun by a vocal clique of crowing roosters, with 90% or more of the forum membership going inactive.  SIN had all these problems, in addition some of the roosters let the power go to their heads and were bullying newcomers.

Zack Black appeared on a comedy television broadcast in 2013 involving Satanism, which resulted in envious roosters on SIN clashing with the SIN founder.  In the resulting carnage the roosters were either metaphorically slaughtered or flew away from SIN leaving a forum looking like a graveyard, the thousands of forum members as useful as corpses in the grave.

After the roosters left SIN suffered hacking and technical problems, earlier this month permanently losing all its membership data and content.  Developing ties with the Satanic Temple Zack Black hopes to restart his SIN forum, which so far is a painfully slow site claiming only a few dozen members.

The roosters initially founded their own internet forum, which collapsed in months.  Many of the roosters flew to take over the longest running Satanic forum on the internet called 600Club where they keep it on life support.

It takes no mystical powers to predict that the latest incarnation of SIN will suffer a similar fate that seems to afflict all internet forums, they have yet to attract resident roosters, but they will soon come.

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Rejecting authority figures

The irony of a certain so-called Satanic organization that claims credibility, authority and notability because a couple of academics mentioned them in a journal is to me personally amusing.  Satanic authority comes from self, never from an external authority.  Should I consider myself a Satanist only because an academic mentioned me in his obscure paper?

The deluded game that the power-hungry individual or groups of Satanists play: purchase a title from an external authority, such as reverend; associate themselves with an external Satanic authority such as Anton Lavey; seek notability from mentions by external authorities such as journalists or academics; parade x-number of followers.  Such fools gain the delusion of power because other fools are seduced by such glitter and glamor then deliver their brains and sex organs on a silver tray in slavish devotion to the greater fool – sheep following sheep.  How can an individual Satanist respect such people who parade their credentials given to them by external authorities, knowing that a  core quality of Satanism is authority of self over the life of self that rejects external authorities?

The delusion of power

It was interesting to watch the events unfolding after the Malaysian plane crash in the Ukraine: an insight into power.  It seemed a simple enough mission to quickly return a dead child from the site of the crash to their relatives, but the leaders of the most powerful nations on earth: including President Obama (USA) and President Putin (Russia); the great power groupings of the United Nations, NATO, the European Union; even the overall authorities ruling the Ukraine; could not make this happen.  A little man called Grumpy had the whole world watching powerless to do anything.  Many days after this crash, as I now write this post, only two-thirds of the bodies are recovered, still in transit to a facility that will take months to identify, what are now decomposing, maggot infested and sun bloated corpses.  The reality was manifested in this failing of a simple task of recovering bodies from a plane crash on European soil, that power is a delusion, the rulers spin until they are dizzy but in action they are impotent.

The so-called powerful rulers enjoy their power by consent of those that give to them their time, energy and money.  The policeman that stopped me in the street last year who had always enjoyed an easy stop-and-search from his consenting victims was shocked when I challenged him, in the confrontation I erased all his power over me, I showed to that policeman the limits and hollowness of his power because I did not give him consent, authority over me.

The only worthy power any individual has is what each individual grants to themselves.  The Satanist is their own god in their own lives, in believing and manifesting personal will of becoming god in their own lives the Satanist grants to themselves unlimited potential to become whatever they desire.  The slave, including those Satanists who have appointed external authorities to rule over themselves, have limited their personal power to what those external authorities allow them, acting within limits of artificial self or externally imposed limitations.

It is a hardcore view of mine that if the individual Satanist has no respect for their own power to become their own god, giving away their power to external authorities, they have no legitimate authority to call themselves a Satanist.  Satan in the story manifested his personal will to become his own god, he put aside abdication of his personal power to the external authority of the Christian god.  If it is the desire of an individual to associate themselves with the archetype of Satan, then they should take note of the story of Satan that there can be no other authority but the self over an individual’s life.

Questioning stories

A good place to start our house cleaning in my opinion is questioning the stories we tell ourselves and the stories others tell us.  The human brain is a pattern engine, stories are patterns, the brain eats stories.  The human brain has no sense of reality, those stories we accept without question become our reality.

Even amongst Satanists we are all storytellers.  The unfortunate Zachary Schroder aka Zack Black, owner of the defunct Satanic International Network internet forum had many enemies telling stories: alcoholic; drug addict; pedophile.  The word “pedophile” is thrown around by some Satanists as if it is a magical curse that destroys their victims on contact.  In the case of Black, the allegation of whether he encouraged a 17-year-old woman exposing her breasts on his chatroom qualifies him as a pedophile depends on personal subjectivity and the laws pertaining of the individual Satanists nation-state.

The recent Malaysian plane crash in the Ukraine was interesting in that within five minutes of the news breaking the storytellers were rolling out stories relative to their personal agendas.  Regardless of ignorance of the facts, Russians blaming Ukraine, the Ukraine and the West blaming Russia.  A life insurance company purchased key words on Google to trick those searching for information on the crash online to hit their website instead, their story using fear to sell life insurance.  A Christian blog paraded their story that the Malaysian plane crash was punishment from their Christian god to the ungodly Malaysians.

In questioning the stories of external authorities and our own inherent stories it is fun to uncover the hidden agendas and traps.

Satanism as an idea

A blog I read asked is Satanism a philosophy or religion? I consider Satanism is an idea, from which a personal philosophy or religion may emerge.  My Satanism starts with an idea:

“Manifestation of personal will to become the god in my own life.”

From this initial idea is the foundation upon which I build my values and associate other ideas. I condemn those individuals who enslave themselves to groups, gurus and religions, putting themselves second to those external authorities in their lives because such attitudes and actions runs against my foundation idea. I value the genetic quality of intelligence, for this quality is required for the individual Satanist to question their reality and society in order to become the god in their own lives.

Once the individual Satanist has defined their initial founding idea of what Satanism is to them then it becomes a matter of work and time of building a unique personal path brick by brick on the initial idea’s foundation.  Too many so-called Satanists who wrap the Satanist title around their heads have failed to do the basic preliminary work of working out what Satanism is to them, so their Satanism is like a house built on poor foundations, which collapses the moment it suffers any challenge from life; such people are vapid, shallow and sway from one external influence to another because they have no internal point of reference on which to build their Satanism to anchor them and navigate themselves through the noisy conflict and chaos of reality.

The Myth of Satanic Rights

I occasionally hear of individuals and groups campaigning for Satanic rights.  In my view Satanic rights is a myth and irrelevant.  Satanism starts and stops with the individual, you can live in the most oppressive regime in the world, and with intelligence still practice and be a Satanist in any way you please in secret.

Satanism is not a religion or any other group-minded activity, it is a path of individuality, a path defined by the individual, walked by the individual.  The individual is the god in their own lives, the individual decides what happens in their own lives.

Groups that start treating and advocating for Satanists as a collective are living an ignorant deception.  Satanism is a path of one, the individual, the self manifesting the will to become a god in their own lives.  When activists start lobbying the rulers for Satanic rights they in reality enslave the individual Satanist to the rulers authority, no longer do they allow me to define my own boundaries as a Satanist, some external authority has defined my Satanism for me through their laws and definitions under so-called rights and liberties.

No individual Satanist is alike, ideas, situation and needs are relative to the individual Satanist, thus you cannot encapsulate a set of rules and liberties to the whole of Satanism in a stereotypical view.  It is one thing challenging the stereotypical viewpoints of the world through activism, it is another ignorant thing to impose a stereotypical viewpoint on a bunch of individualists as if they are a collective who can be defined and treated in the same way as a bunch of group-minded Christian sheep.