Why I'm a satanist

I don't want this to be a controversial post, but I'm aware that it will be taken as one. By identifying myself as a satanist, I need to be careful, because there are some aspects of Satanism that I do not identify with, so I don't want to be misconstrued and I also don't want to misrepresent the position of other Satanists. This is a blog post about my own personal interpretation of what it means to dawn the pentagram and call myself a Satanist.

When you first hear the word Satanism, what comes to mind? If you're like most people you probably think of child sacrafice, malice, and evil. I imagine you picture the most perfect thing imaginable and then take the opposite of it. But what if I told you there was far more to this label than that? What if I could convince you that a compassionate, intelligent person could (and in my opinion should) identify as a Satanist? I imagine that would be incredibly traumatic for you if you've clung your whole life to a loving and respectful identity as part of some religion. If you are afraid you wouldn't be able to live in such a world, I advise you to stop reading and to imagine that the rest of this article is about how I'm actually a malicious, evil person who deserves eternal damnation. I'll even tell you to go fuck yourself because I'm a comedian and am willing to perform to make people happy. If you're feeling brave, come with me and let's have a look inside Pandora's box where you'll find it was not at all what you imagined ;)

Firstly, let me say that Satanists come in many varieties. Some believe in Satan as a real entity and worship him while others prefer to think of Satan as a symbol for the things they believe in. I take no strong stance on this issue. I'm not entirely convinced that Satan isn't a real entity, but I'm also not convinced there is. And for my purposes, the question is irrelevant. Whether he is real or just a fictional character, I am deeply sympathetic towards his narrative.

So what is that narrative? This is one of the interesting things about him. There are two very different ways you could portray him, and the way he is portrayed will completely determine your opinion of him.

"Begone Satan! There is no place for you in this
universe and yet I won't do you the favor of not making
you in the first place" -God 4:23 (NIV)

Narrative 1 (Satan the monster): Lucifer was the second in command to God (the big G himself). Satan was jealous of how amazing God was and wanted to be better than him, so he challenged God and was cast out of heaven. Feeling deeply resentful, he internalized the anger and hatred and took it upon himself to inflict suffering on any living thing he could in order to spite God. He ruined the perfection of God's creation with his lies and brought about suffering for humanity and all of God's creation. He couldn't recognize that God was perfect and that God was therefore the best equiped to rule. God wants to protect humanity from this monster, and offers asylum in heaven to those who he knows aren't tainted by Satan's lies and therefore won't hurt the other people in heaven. He ensured this by sending Jesus to the earth to teach people how to undo Satan's lies.

If you are judeo-christian, this is the narrative you likely believe. It's pretty nice. It's got that classic feel of a 90's TV show with clearly delineated good and bad guys. It's clear-cut and easy to understand. Something was just wrong with Satan that made him bad and so we shouldn't feel any sympathy for him. He made his choices and is getting what he deserves. It's justice.

But in my opinion, it's also a pretty lame story. There's something about it that just doesn't ring true with me. There's several things that just don't add up and leave me feeling deeply unsatisfied because this is really just a manifestation of the meta-narrative of fear- that the universe is an unforgiving place which will fuck you over if you don't watch out. And that's not a narrative I'm comfortable aligning myself with. So let's try a different story and see how we like that.

"Look at me. I'm willing to be embarrassed
on this piece of wood. It's painful right now, so it's okay
that I'm about to peace out and leave this world
in the chaotic state its in." -Jesus 3:16 (Bram's translation
of the original aramaic)

Narrative 2 (Satan the saviour): Lucifer was created by God (a.k.a. was the son of God), but bearing the mark of his creator he was given beauty and a sense of pride and justice that couldn't be shaken. As a result, he started to wonder why he existed in a hierarchy. Why was God the one that had the ultimate say? Didn't the opinions of others matter too? Something about the natural order didn't feel right to him, so he challenged God to explain why he should get to make all of the rules. God, blinded by his position and fearful of conceding control, cast Lucifer out of heaven. This was when Lucifer realized that God was not the benevolent, infallible ruler he claimed to be. He shed his God-given name and allowed himself to be known as Satan- the Deciever. God created everything and thought it was good, but Satan realized that God had deprived humanity of the most truly beautiful thing- pain and the ability to choose for themselves what they thought was important. He snuck into god's creation and offered humanity something irresistable- to know what God had kept from them. Like Prometheus, he dared to steal from the gods for the sake of humanity. And in doing so, he made himself a target and was subjected to the universe's first ever smear campaign. He was (quite literally) demonized. He had to watch as the people he had tried to help portrayed him as a disgusting monster with horns rather than the beautiful angel he was. Nevertheless, he knew he could take it because now that he'd seen the flaws in God he could never live with himself if he didn't try to warn others. Luckily, he wasn't the only angel who saw this and he and the other fallen angels attempted to subvert the tyranny of God together. God saw this and sent Jesus to the earth to try to reestablish order. In order to spite Lucifer, God (with the tongue and cheek you'd expect from a spiteful child with a magnifying glass on an ant hill) referred to Jesus as his only son- thereby disowning Lucifer and the other angels (or was Jesus the result of the first holy fuck?). Jesus wandered the earth saying mostly good things, but his message wasn't as well-recieved as he would have expected given his ego. He became angry and unwilling to put in the difficult work of trying to actually listen to people around him. Frustrated, God decided to eternally punish anyone who wouldn't listen. He told humanity they had to become like children if they wanted to come to his magical utopia in the sky. Children are beautiful, but they are also easy to manipulate and can't think for themselves. They are easy to entertain because you don't actually have to give them what they want. They'll magically be happy with whatever you give them, which is amazing in most cases but not in cases of abuse. But Lucifer outsmarted God by tempting him with the greatest glory a person can know: martyrdom. Foolishly, Jesus went to the cross and died. But the resurrection meant that God had not actually given anything up- he cared about himself too much to stay dead. True sacrafice requires you to lose something you can't get back. All he had done was endure a bit of embarrassment by the Romans. Try stand up comedy, dude- humiliation is nothing and the shitty thing is that if you want to make the world a better place you've got to be a real-ass parent and put in the hard work instead of running to the store to buy cigarettes and never coming back after 3 years of ministry. But God put a spin on the resurrection, telling people that it was a demonstration of his power over Satan and over death. Basically, he flexed his muscles, as if to say "don't fuck with me. If you won't do what I want, I'll crush you like I crushed Satan, like I'll crush anyone who doesn't listen." That isn't love.

Satanism is the recognition that God hasn't lived up to his own ideals. It's the assertion that the narrative of history is one of love; one where every person, god, and animal is recognized as the beautiful creature they are who is just playing a part in the beautiful story. My worry in telling this story is that it is deeply unsympathetic to God, who in most cases appears to be a very caring entity. He just makes mistakes. He's not God after all (sorry, that was low spib). This is where I distinguish myself from other Satanists. I don't want vengeance on God. I don't want to destroy him and take his place. Because I imagine I would likely be worse if I was in his position. Give anyone all the power in the world and they will become corrupt.

To accurately describe my position I'd need to adopt another label that is misunderstood: anarchist. I'm an anarcho-satanist. By this I mean that I recognize the need to evenly distribute power throughout society to prevent abuse. If even God himself can't handle that power (as the narrative of Satanism attempts to show), why the fuck would we trust a human to have power? In order to achieve a world where we can all be happy we need to do the hard, slow work of dismantling the systems of power that we've all allowed to exist and teach people to respect the beauty of each other's humanity (and the beauty of the the world we live in) so that we can all be happy and the story can end (and probably begin again, because why the hell not? I'm a masochist- we need a place for pain as well in order to get the full experience).

Good talk.

Update: There is a part two to this blog! If you found this interesting, check out https://bramsfunblog.blogspot.com/2018/06/why-im-not-satanist.html