An interesting phenomena with baneful magick is people being uneasy with it while also claiming not to believe it “works.” Such a position raises the question: if you don’t believe it works, why do you care if people do it? I suspect there may be an issue here with not understanding what the baneful practitioner is actually even doing. I’d therefore like to try to clear up what I’m fairly sure are atheistic misconceptions.
Something I’ve been wanting to do for awhile now is a series exploring the performance and implications of baneful magick. This includes such things as ethical considerations, metaphysical mechanisms, and rationales for recruiting one entity’s assistance rather than another’s. The current entry provides a tentative summary of some things I’ll be covering in that series.
How does magick “work”? I have enough background in Chaos Magick to consider this a non-urgent question – that it works is more the point. It occurs to me, though, that misunderstandings about magickal mechanisms may aggravate misconceptions Satanic denominations have about one another. Toward the end of addressing such issues, the current entry discusses the extent to which magick is “one’s own” power – i.e. how much of magick is the magician themselves “doing something,” vs. how much comes from an external entity/force/ etc.?
In a few recent conversations I’ve had on social media, some interesting issues have come up re: “What is Satanism?” In particular, if atheistic Satanists “don’t believe in” Satan, what do they believe that justifies associating themselves with the name? To outsiders, it may well seem that the theistic Satanist “really believes in something,” whilst the atheistic one is “just” trolling – either for one political side, or the other. So is atheistic Satanism “just” slapping Satan’s name on your preferred form of progressive, reactionary or libertarian politics randomly? Such a question leaves me feeling it might be beneficial to walk folks through the logic of “a Satanic ethos”…
What exactly do we actually mean when we throw around labels like “Satanist”, “Luciferian”, and related terms? What follows is a meditation on what “counts” as “Satanism,” issues I have with the theist / non-theist distinction, and other such label-related thoughts. There’s also an interesting tidbit or two re: what I was up to occult-wise before Tenebrous Satanism came along…
Many Satanists will point out that the upside-down cross is “not a real Satanic symbol,” contra what popular culture seems to think. I can appreciate a number of reasons for this position. Nonetheless, I would argue that the inverted cross can be used as a legitimate symbol in Satanism. This entry explains my rationale.
The fourth tenet of the Tenebrous Creed identifies zeal, wisdom, honor, empathy and perseverance as foremost values for Satanists. But in what sense is empathy “Satanic”? Part 1 of 3 discusses the Serpent in Genesis and the fallen Watchers in Enoch. Read the introduction to this series here.
Despite being of a tradition whose initiation protocol uses astrological symbolism, astrology is among several parts of the occult that I have little use for. How does one go about drawing such lines, though? For instance, how can one believe in “spirits,” yet be critical of other folks’ anti-scientific worldviews? This entry is about where I draw the lines of magick vs. science in Tenebrous Satanism, and why…
The fourth tenet of Tenebrous Satanism’s Creed identifies zeal, wisdom, honor, empathy and perseverance as foremost values for Satanists. But in what sense is empathy “Satanic”? An intro to a three-part series…