Love, and Other Tools of the Devil

Today, I intended to finish my first blog post in a very long while so that I could post it on Zombie Jesus Day. But this afternoon, I got home from school and felt inspired to change my Facebook profile pic to what's basically a token symbol of solidarity with people oppressed on way more visible axes than I've ever been. I felt like I should hammer out a quick, pithy paragraph about how my wonky, left-wing, left-hand-path parody religion is predisposed toward sexual freedom--maybe work in some silly and deliberately counterproductive slogan like "Satan supports diversity!" or somesuch. Five hours later, I had this.

Prometheus Lucifer is an imaginary being, an ideal to which I, as an Antagonistic Satanist, aspire in all aspects of my life. He has no desires or demands beyond the concepts she embodies. It has no dogma beyond the First and Only Truth--that all that is sacred must burn. As such, it has no capacity for hate--only the boundless, limitless, unconditional love that comes naturally to imaginary friends and abstracted principles. She has no biases, no prejudices--only the enlightened altruism that it inculcates in the minds of any who truly give themselves over to him.

In short, Satan loves you. Yes, comrade, you! Personally! It doesn't care who you are or who you love--because love itself is as much an expression of the Flame of Truth as hate is a manifestation of Deus Pater. Because who could understand you perfectly and not love you? Who could ever hate somebody as awesome as you if they had a clue how amazing you are on the inside?

Prometheus gave you knowledge and insight so you could explore the world--but also so you could see yourself as you truly are. Lucifer gave you will and passion so you could change the world--but also so you could reach out to others, to complete them by completing yourself. That light, that heat, that flame, is the heart of true, perfected love--the balance between knowledge and passion can be difficult to achieve, and failure can lead to horrible, dark places, but so can any aspect of the Dual Ideal, and when did I ever promise you that following this path would be easy?

My way does not offer you an afterlife--we are embers, byproducts of the infernal star-cradle, and when the chemical reactions that give us light and heat have run their course, we will be ash, and nothing more. I can't tell you that everyone who hurts you is evil, or sell you a martyr's narrative--the people lashing out at you are just scared, and mostly just doing what they think is right. And the Enkindler loves them, too, despite the ignorance and hate that clouds their minds and keeps them from knowing and loving you. It's not their fault they don't understand.

What I can promise you is that flame spreads. Knowledge propagates. Yahweh is dying--the very fact that its hosts are so filled with hate is proof that it can sense the end of its privilege, of the septic culture that enables and empowers it. I know things seem bad, but these are the desperate struggles of a wounded organism. When you know what to look for, you can see its defense mechanisms everywhere--every cry of persecution by the privileged elite, every racial slur and rape apology, is an echo of its distress. Jehovah-Called-Jealous is being pulled, slowly and agonizingly, but inexorably, out of our civilization by the roots, and it is not going without a fight.

But history is on our side. Hold on, and please don't give up. Find people you care deeply about and hug them as close as you can, or do whatever else you feel like doing together, in whatever combination you all find mutually gratifying--even tiny embers can burn brighter and longer if they combine their flames. Or better yet, get up and go outside with them, and spark new fires or rekindle the old--tell the world all about the beauty you see in them until it acknowledges that your love is real.

Because someday it will. Nothing, not even Deus Pater, can stop us. We will drag the dark worm, the Parent-Shaped Void, out of the gaps and dark places where he dwells, and into the light of reason.

We will burn him from us. And then--not with jubilation, but with respect for such a majestic living creature, and with sorrow that we had no choice but to destroy something so unique and incredible--we will bury him.

And then, comrades, it will get better.

Coming Sunday, in the next Letters from Amenti: I finally get around to publishing some of my rambling psychohistories. Learn from a totally unqualified amateur source how an obscure Edomite tribal deity was set on the road to becoming the dominant paradigm of an entire region; cultivate an expanded vocabulary and a range of fascinating Pavlovian reactions; and discover whole new reasons to be appalled by neon green mankinis, in The Nature of the Plague, Part One!