A few days ago I pulled through to the finish line of something that I’ve been eyeing for the past few years. I did it. Again. I achieved apostasy again. Do I regret it? No. Actually, I feel the same way I did the first time, except maybe better, because not only have I proven to myself that I am stronger than religious framework that seeks to defeat me, I did it on my own but while fueled with the love and care of those who matter to me.

You'll probably want to read this story.

I have concerns.

In the years that I have been a member of the Satanic community overall, I have seen many things, but one thing I am not seeing is something so important that its absence frightens me... Am I the only one that noticed the Satanic population's tribalistic absolution of our own hypocrisy here in Satanism? Or, am I simply one of the few who knows it to exist? I tremble to imagine it's tribalism, and plea to all that is good that it's only simple ignorance, and therefore not hypocritical in itself. I choose to believe that the problem we have here is lack of awareness toward the hypocrisies of Satanism, and I choose to believe that it is not willful.

But, why should Satanism stand alone against the same trials that we use to mock other religions? Is it somehow better, just because it's ours? Does something only deserve to be put to the test when it pisses us off?

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.

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.

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!

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.

It’s around this time of year that I think back on an especially fond memory that wouldn’t have been possible without Satanism. It feels strange to declare that. It feels strange to say it like that even, but it is, nevertheless, true. I suspect that I’m not the only one who feels this way: Satanism isn’t like other religions. While it isn’t something which can be used as an excuse for any particular behavior (personal responsibility is paramount!), it doesn’t change that the religious perspective embraces certain aspects of human nature that other religions seek to suppress; and specifically Christianity comes to mind since it’s the belief system I was raised within. I was raised to militantly observe the values of that faith, and that includes acknowledging the major sins and virtues, even though it was never really fully explained to me what those sins and virtues were beyond a surface level—something I feel likely happens on a mass scale with the general Christian public.

This summer I've done something that makes me very proud. It's one of the reasons why I've been a bit scarce online, but of course, you know that as a Satanist this only means that I'm living life to its fullest, and damn yes, I have been. You see, these past months several major things have happened: 1. I got married and had a Satanic wedding, 2. I took my wife to a place she’s wanted to see her entire life for her honeymoon, and then 3., when I got back home, I decided to curse my boss. Whoa, hold up! You wouldn’t think that I’d jump to something like that after coming home from a nice little happy period of R&R, would you? Well, there is something nice about clearing your head by having fun, but this curse is something that I had been working with for a while. You've heard me talk in the past about how crucial timing is, and you've probably read my post about the use of advanced magic in Satanism—so now you’re probably wondering…just what did Ave do, and most importantly: did it work?

Tarot is not a tool that is associated frequently with Satanism. So, with a show of hands, how many people expected this from me? “This” being: a post about how you can use a tool usually wrapped in superstition and supernatural magic in your pragmatic atheistic practices which have absolutely no room for superstition and supernatural magic? Higher please, I’d like to count them; one…two…three… Okay, let me back up a little bit then. Tarot feels like something special. In its natural element it’s nothing more than a game of cards. There’s a deck, the deck has pictures on it, and we know how the game works—someone has you do something to the deck and then they spread it out before you in a pattern that makes some sort and rhyme and reason to them. You watch as they flip the cards over one by one and hem and haw about what it means to them. “Ah,” they’re sure to say in a grave tone at one point, “That’s not good.” [...]