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. I used to think that the sin “Lust” was literally about sex. My mother tried to raise me to believe that being amorous before marriage was something to be looked down upon, not just because of the whole “teenage pregnancy” thing, but just because it was seen as something bad in general. There was a time I asked her, as any maturing teenage girl would, about what her romantic experiences were before she met my father. Did she have many boyfriends? Was my father the first and only man she had ever loved, and did she wait, as she wanted me to do? Her response was aggressive. I could see it in her face; her cheeks got red and prickly with anger, and her muscles tensed upon even just hearing what I had asked. I think she verbally scorned me for it and exited the room on that foul note, and I realized that it was just another thing that apparently I wasn’t supposed to seek knowledge about. “Don’t question thy parents!” is another requirement under the Christian faith so I suppose I should have seen that one coming… Though in the end, though it all, I did learn through further research that “Lust” isn’t something that was ever supposed to be just about the carnal. Apparently, Lust was intended to be a way to describe having a love of something greater than your love for Yahweh. You could be guilty of the sin of Lust even if you loved your parents platonically above their god, and I have to laugh because my wife once shared a story with me about this in particular: when she was younger, she got into a dispute with her parents about it; “My heart’s too full for you and Dad and there isn’t any room left for God!” She couldn’t understand why she was supposed to love a fantasy persona that she’d never met before, and she still doesn’t feel that she should today. The sin that relates to this particular memory that I’ve been reminiscing about is Gluttony and Greed. They’re two different sins that aim to condemn two different things, and both are, in my opinion, just as misunderstood now-a-days as Lust is. Christianity tells us that all of these things are bad because they want us to believe that we are sinners, and we will go to Hell to be tortured for all eternity, that we are plagued by sin and in order to be worthy of being close to Yahweh, we need to prove that we are celestial creatures that are above Earthly desires. This isn’t possible. Brass tacks: we are humans. We are animals. We have these desires for the purpose of self-preservation and extension of our own lives. It’s important to recognize that these “sins” are actually aspects of who we are as animals that help us to live a productive and healthy life, and Satanism supports this. It advises indulgence in these facets of the diamond that life can be, instead of compulsion, and I think it’s just another way that the religion has a natural perspective on a natural life. If any human is overindulging consistently, then other areas of their life are being sacrificed to support whatever behavior is being compulsively experienced. In order to enjoy everything, you need some type of balance. Food is something that people have a very strange focus on. Americans are obsessed with it, and in all the wrong ways. You hear some people singing the praises of vegan meat alternatives but these folks fail to realize the dangers of all of the over-processed ingredients in those “vegeburgers.” (For instance, eating too much soy, I have learned, can influence some people’s hormones. Don’t take my word for this, look into it further, Satanist!) Another side of society is obsessed with weight loss (though not fitness) and so we have people actively avoiding all foods in a compulsive fashion. This is just as unhealthy as going to McDonalds every day for all three meals. Christianity’s solution for me was, “Never indulge. Take just what you need and break bread with your neighbors.” More or less, it sounds communist-y, and I feel like this approach dilutes the joy which can be had from food. Of course: we have taste buds for the enjoyment of food! We should be responsibly enjoying food! Food is an important part of our life: we eat three meals a day and sometimes snack in-between. We drink flavored liquids, and food has even become a staple of our society. It would be an extremely unhealthy thing to repress the indulgence of food, and that is why one day my wife and I decided that we were going to make some fun out of it. We went to a local Chinese restaurant that we’d never been to before. We’d heard great things about this place, but we always sort of chalked it up to a “hipster foodie hangout.” It looked expensive. That deterred us. We weren’t worried about the allergies; we were worried about paying an arm and a leg for a huge white plate with a quarter-sized lump of food on it—you know, some of these restaurants... You can see them from the street and you just “know” that it’s going to be overpriced and snooty. Well, on this day we were celebrating my wife’s birthday, which as you may know is one of the most important dates on our calendar, and we decided to give it a shot because she loves Chinese food, I’m rarely in the mood, and this was her special day. It was indeed a special day. The staff turned out to be well, satisfactory, and there was indeed plenty of atmosphere within the restaurant. We were seated at a 2.5x2.5 sized table in the corner by the window, and we snuck our chairs next to one another so that we could whisper our observances and share the food. Neither one of us wanted to have one plate; we had come with the intention to have an experience, and so we did! We didn’t anticipate it walking through the door, but we would order three rounds of meal! We decided to keep each round relatively small, but varied, so we could try a little bit of everything, and by the time we were on round three, we were both laughing to tears. The food was amazing! The company was wonderful, and we “never did this.” We never went out to a restaurant and ordered food without looking at the bill. We knew it’d be expensive, but we were there for the experience, and the experience was incredible. Part of me never wants to go back to that restaurant, another part of me does. The first part of me doesn’t want to touch that memory, it wants to preserve that memory in its perfection since we had so much fun indulging in our whims and well, wasting the food that we did waste. It was so much fun to try something different and to basically engorge ourselves intentionally instead of feeling compelled by our desired to prolong the taste and flavor and fill the emptiness within as so many fellow Americans do. This dinner lasted about three hours and we paid about three times what we ordinarily would have paid for a dining experience. When we left the building we were holding our gut to keep it in beneath our laughter, and all in all, it was, in a single word: perfect. What makes it perfect was that it was rare. It is an event that was made special because it was a small indulgence that we don’t make every day, even every month of our lives. I don’t know if we’ll be going back to that restaurant again, but it may be fun to celebrate in a similar style at some point in the upcoming years or so. What makes it fun is the intention, in the control and the deliberate decision to let yourself loose and enjoy life and its consequences. Be indulgent. Don’t be compulsive. Where to next?
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Who is the Witch?
Once I called myself a Christian, then an atheist, and a Satanist. At the end of the day, I'm just a person who is living her truth one day at a time. I'm interested in religion, its effects on the mind, the occult, and more. Learn more about me on the about page. Hellish History
November 2021
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