Everything burns in January. It’s not only furnace flames that lap at the dried timber and kindling, but the way the icicles pop and snap from their rooftop perches when the shattering cold mercilessly bullies even them. It’s the way the forest sings in creaks and sighs, and the way its pine needles bristle against one another, as if the trees whisper dark secrets to one another about an unstoppable impending doom. Animals gently leave their mark in white beneath the glassy branches, suffering the oppressive gnaw of chill upon their noses, ears, and other sacrificed tips, all under the pale torch of a moonlit sky. This is the season of Belial.

​Thank-you for your incredibly heartwarming and positive feedback. You tell me frequently that this blog been helpful to you on your journey to understand your "Satanic Black Flame," and it’s wonderful to hear that you appreciate hearing my hot-take on aspects of life as a Satanist. I appreciate your enthusiasm for my writing; you may or may not be aware, but there is little more rewarding for a writer than to hear that their words are read (and if they’re lucky, appreciated!)

If that were me--and it was when I registered with the Church of Satan—I’d want to know how I could give back and say “thanks," but maybe I wouldn't know how. You may be surprised how simple it is. There are two easy ways.

​Satanists get a bad rap when it comes to self-prioritization. I’ve gotten into my fair share of “debates” regarding the selfishness of Satanists as a whole, and they never really resembled a “debate” as much as a chilling exposure of how preconceived notions and half-assed understandings can so deeply wound a person’s impression of us. Left unchallenged, it steeps like a rancid odor, and before anyone can notice, a full-fledged and completely misdirected prejudice evolves from the mold. One conversation regarding “What’s best for the group vs what’s best for the individual” comes to mind. The person I was speaking with was adamant that the group’s needs should always win-out in such conflict. I continue to disagree with their position. Just because the herd wants something doesn’t mean it’s good for them. Hello, have we heard of the Holocaust? How about politics in general?

Once I wrote a letter to a personality I called “the Arrogant Apprentice.” This personality archetype is the individual who says they want to research Satanism but won’t do anything to actually learn it. Instead, they seem to think that we can transfer information via the cloud (what would the Hell version of “cloud” be? Smog?) in some sort of fantastical automatic download. They don’t want to spend the time learning Satanism, they just want to already know it, and they want to know it yesterday! They want to be able to take the perceived “arcane” information and turn around to dangle it in front of their friends as a way to feel knowledgeable and superior. After all, look at how fast they learned the religion! Good thing they hooked up with a real Satanist who was able to just explode all this information at them—because in their eyes, that’s exactly what’s normal. They grew up in a world where people are constantly trying to convince them to join their side. Not so with Satanism. We couldn’t care less. Maybe that’s why we react the way we do with respect to their approach with the Satanic Bible?

​Panic! Panic, panic, panic! Panic, panic—when we panic not only have trouble thinking of anything else, we stop thinking entirely. We enter a fight-or-flight mode that once upon a time probably was quite helpful to motivate us out of a dangerous situation, but in the modern era we war against a threat that we can’t outrun. It stays with us then, and it lingers like an odor that we can’t quite wash from our minds. In times like these it’s a daily struggle to evict it from that dark corner of our brain, and all the while it grows like a stubborn black mold over our logical processes, hiding them from us completely. What hope can we have to successfully work through a problem if we can’t reach the tools to solve it with? How can we defeat our internal fears when external ‘validations’ are only feeding the issue? I’ll tell you what: you’re better than this cycle. You’re much better. You’re stronger, and you deserve more than to feel insecure about what’s going to happen in the next few weeks, in the next few months. Let’s put an end to that line of thinking right now… Solid ground isn’t so difficult to find when you know how to go about finding it.

This blog is dedicated to “Satanic styled” self-care during the Coronavirus pandemic, specifically with respect to handling stress and anxiety about the uncertain nature of the situation. I’m not a doctor, this isn’t medical advice, I am just a friend. I am writing these words because I want to inspire you to take control of your situation. As helpless as you feel, you aren’t. You’re a god. You alone are in charge of your fate, and you’re doing the right thing by seeking a different perspective on the matter. Let’s not let you down.

To my knowledge, I have never been a consumer of conspiracy theories. I’m sure that maybe here and there one or two of them have a solitary lick of truth to them, but aside from that I just don’t see the point in putting all of that suspicious energy into something intangible when you could purpose that energy into something productive and useful. That said, there are indeed some outrageous tales of truth out there that if not for the undeniable evidence in support, we’d all prefer to write off as myth, hoax, and simple defamation. There’s a fine line in this. We all have our own, it’s that point where we accept responsibility for ourselves instead of harboring the expectation that other people will always have our best interests at heart instead of theirs.

Deconversion is a perpetual topic in my Satanic corner of the world. When you reach out to me about my experiences, I hear a lot of folks saying that they are coming from a Christian background but they are beginning to question if their god exists and they don’t know where to go from here. The mere fact that I receive these questions tells me that there are people out there who feel trapped and already know that they aren’t Christian, but who can’t fully emancipate themselves from it. As Satanists we have options available to us for breaking past religious influence such as the Black Mass (I mean, hah, don’t make me define “available!”) but those who haven’t yet crossed the line in the sand are still in bondage. These, you folks, you don’t feel like you have any tools to help you free yourself because of the influence that religion continues to have on you, even if you’re unhappy. Thankfully, you’re wrong. Yeah, you’re wrong, aren’t you happy to hear that? You, like the rest of us, have magic within you. You can break imaginary chains with that power if you know how to use that magic. I did it. I used that power on myself and I’ll show you how.

There are some topics which I know I could go on for decades, for centuries about. I’m going to do my best here to prevent this from turning into an endless rant, because I know what goes into a good story, and there is nothing good about this one. This is something that all Satanists, I boldly propose and declare, have encountered. This is something that makes us all ball our hands (even in our minds!) throw them into the air, and bellow a loud “No, you stupid fuck!!” Stupidity, as you may be aware, is one of our sins, and so you can feel assured at the degree this subject grates on us. A rant is overdue. A rant is far overdue.

Like all good stories, this one was unexpected and came about through a series of coincidental events which I could never have expected to unravel the way that they had. If you’d asked me about this in 2016, I would have said to you that it was impossible, that it wasn’t in my plans, and so it would never happen…but the writers of the world will nod with their faint knowing smirks at the truth that sometimes imagination takes us by the scruff of the neck and holds us hostage to where passion drives us. What we plan isn’t necessarily what we end up doing, and by the end of it, nothing is ever as straightforward as it seems.

I'm going to start with an assumption here: we all know who the Grinch is. The first identity that comes to mind is green and fuzzy. He's different, he's a grouch, and he's bitter as heck against Christmas. We remember his appearance in our childhood as the frightening monster who broke into houses, ate all the food, stole all the presents, and destroyed all of the decorations. We remember him as being a character that embodies the spirit of the adversary and he is the enemy of cheer. He loathes Christmas music, and he refuses to engage with any sentimental aspect of the holiday, instead choosing focusing on the horde of trash he protects in his icy lair! He is the "Satan" of Mt. Krumpet, and he unleashes his perilous curse to any who may be as unlucky to interact with him!

I just went toe-to-toe with a vampire who insists on returning to my life. Here's the trouble: I love her (platonically or professionally; this is NOT romantic love/about my wife), and I do feel that her disturbing unwellness does not reflect the butterfly within, sort to speak. It gets in her way. Aside from her professionally diagnosed disorders, I consider this to be an additional type of sickness, and I despise the sickness, not the person. I think of it like a behavioral disability which she cannot currently control with the life-tools in her arsenal. I find her responsible for her actions, but I don't hate *her* for her sickness. I really want to make it clear that they're separate in my book. Illness doesn't need to define us, and it's clear when the sickness is talking vs when it's her. That sickness though...

After I finally broke myself free from Christianity, I took a lot of pleasure in researching other religions. The modern term for this is “path,” and I suppose this is supposed to bring about a gentleness and sense of inclusion to those folks who break off from the mainstream and want to do their own thing while still trying to call themselves whatever title they originally donned. …I suppose. Regardless, I found Paganism. The information available was confusing at best because everyone seemed to be on a different “path.” There was a path for this, there was a path for that… people said they lived under an umbrella, and all I wanted was a book referral to tell me what it was all about. I really was clueless! Hey: I was raised Christian! All of those Pagan-folk were devil-speakers! (Ma, look at me now. #Satanist)

Years ago, in college, a small nugget of bizarre and unwanted advice made its way through my ear canal and imprinted itself firmly in my brain—and it refused to let me forget it. Trust me, I tried. It was like a bad song that gets stuck in your head for like a decade (or maybe I am especially prone to this sort of thing?) The weirder thing is that this advice was specifically advice about business studies—though now that I reflect on it with a Satanic mindset, I find that at its core, it really was much more than that. This advice is important. It’s advice that I had appraised appropriately all those years ago, even though I didn’t know why it was such important advice.


Now I pass it to you. Here it is:

You may or may not be aware, but one of the reasons I made this blog was as a way to keep the blogs that I posted on Satanists Amino. Satanists Amino is an unofficial platform where Satanists, Luciferians, allies, and curious minds gather where we can be ourselves and express ourselves in a little corner of the internet outside of the public eye. I was a little surprised at the reaction of my sharing it, and I am still surprised that it continues to be linked to, read, and commented on. People like this piece, but that wasn't why I wrote it. I wrote it for a personal reason: as a reaction to an outrageous interaction I had in early December 2018 with a chubby snot of a woman at a family restaurant. It was basically an Applebees or a Chiles, if you have either such place near you. It doesn't really matter where it happened, what matters is that it happened, and it angered me enough to do something about it.

The Church of Satan has a program they call Pentagonal Revisionism. If you’d like to learn more about it, I recommend taking a gander of their website or consulting the Devil’s Notebook, by Anton LaVey, where it was published before the internet did its thing. There are five different avenues that Pentagonal Revisionism proposes would make for a better and more Satanic world. One of those avenues has to do with total environments, or, if I were to summarize my interpretation for you, this avenue proposes that it would be best if we could all live in our ideal world. This goes a bit further than just having an aesthetic for your tastes, this proposes something as complex as walking into a 1960s sitcom when going to visit your sister if that’s the environment she wants to thrive in.