Deprogramming from Christianity | Forum

These thoughts are a bit “self-styled” I think. Warning: long and possibly pretentious post comin’ up…

On the one hand, I think there is an alchemical process, which takes place when a Satanist goes out into the world, outside a ritual chamber and engages in practices, which you could call “lesser magical.” And there are a whole range of ways you can do that, whether, for example, you rely on Mortensen’s principles, i.e. glamour or aesthetics, or you use NLP or the sorts of advice that Robert Greene offers, etc.   

The goal of doing that sort of stuff I think is to bring about personal transmutation – and I think that change and transformation could be material in nature i.e., obtaining more money, obtaining property, obtaining more physical pleasure with others, achieving an enemies destruction, more health and longevity, more responsibility or power, etc. This is a purely objective transmutation – I mean a Satanist is actually achieving these tangible measurable benefits and people can actually see it.

I also think this transmutation, which comes about as a result of successful use of so called “lesser magic” is also personal, or subjective, or psychological because obtaining power and pleasure not only heals, but it causes one to grow and grow. To overcome, to magnify or expand ones will, to break through resistance is healing and it leads to growth. It is “soul” or self-enhancing.

If alchemy is the burning off of dross to reveal a perfect essence, which is then refined further still, then this “lesser magical” work in the world is surely alchemical.  

On the other hand, there is something called ritual or “greater magic.”

I don’t really pretend that any ritual designed to achieve a particular outcome, such as the guy who does the ritual because he wants to fuck a particular supermodel or actress, is really ever going to work. I mean I have tried this stuff when I was young and stupid and it doesn’t work. I would be pretty famous and rich if I could guarantee that magic worked in that way every time.   

What I do when I do something in a chamber is a bit difficult to explain. Probably sounds wordy and pretentious – oh well. I’m using a system of esoteric and linguistic/semiotic representation to gain access and to display the results of that access before my-self.

Basically, I am creating, manipulating and refining a design or diagram or a blueprint I have displayed before my-self. There is absolutely no emotion in this process. I am completely calm. I am trying to fathom a part of myself and display it before my-self so I can consider it. People can use terminology like the unconscious or the Id to describe this part of myself if they wish. I think it is Other or hidden or occult.

I like to use this blueprint to try to delve into something even more occult or Other or hidden, which I see as existing objectively out there. The Hermetic principle of correspondence is important to me. I’m trying to get access to something. I think you access it in yourself and then access it objectively out there. It is unconscious and energetic and power hungry and pleasure hungry. You can consider it when you have it up before you, in front of your eyes, so to speak.

I can work with that design or blueprint. It becomes a sort of general personal wish, powered by personal and objective energy. I can impress it mentally upon appearance and hence try to order appearance according to that design. That design becomes a sort of narrative, which underlies and orders the interpretation/the action of phenomena. Hope that makes sense?

Anyway, I never get specific results as if I could create a blueprint where I get to fuck the supermodel. It doesn’t work like that. The results are more “macro” or more generalized in nature.

MatthewJ1, what you're talking about makes sense. You seem to be agreeing that action in the real world is necessary, in conjunction with ritual. We do the ritual to hone ourselves mentally and then we take action to get what we want. Without the action in the real world, nothing happens.

Honing ourselves mentally is what I think of as the Great Work.

The honing can be emotional or intellectual. This corresponds to strength (emotion) and cunning (intellect). It also can be discussed in terms of the higher emotional center and the higher intellectual center, both of which can only be accessed via an altered state of consciousness. Your style of ritual seems to tap into the higher intellectual center. What this ultimately does is increase your cunning out in the world. Ritual that taps into the higher emotional center increases our strength out in the world. All of which is useless unless and until we engage with reality through action.

Dark Enlightenment, there is a third center: the instinctive center. This ties into the senses, the body, and physical movement. It is accessed via an altered state of consciousness which is triggered through mind-clearing exercises such as Zazen or any number of other techniques. What it prepares us for is physical engagement with the world. Most people who practice Zazen have no idea what it's actually for. In Japan, Zen was part of a Samurai's training. In China, Zen was a part of kung-fu training. Forget satori and Nirvana and other mystical nonsense. Zazen makes you  better at physically engaging with the world, in all the myriad varieties of what that looks like, from knitting to sex to knife fights to driving to scuba diving. Western Buddhists are often blind to this because they're not in touch with their bodies. As the Gestalt psychologist Fritz Perls famously said, "Lose your mind and come to your senses." This is another variation of the Great Work, and like the others, it's useless unless and until we engage with reality through action.

Wolfie: 'MatthewJ1, what you're talking about makes sense. You seem to be agreeing that action in the real world is necessary, in conjunction with ritual. We do the ritual to hone ourselves mentally and then we take action to get what we want. Without the action in the real world, nothing happens.'

Ummm yeah…

If you are trying to bring about a particular desired outcome, then I don’t think it really matters how you bring it about. Whatever works...

Being in the world and doing stuff in the world to bring about a particular desired outcome is great if it works for you.

If you can get that particular desired outcome exclusively through ritual, in a ritual chamber, then great stuff – I’m just saying that performing that sort of ritual has not worked for me personally.

If you need both ritual and real world deeds in the real world to get what you want, then good luck to you.

My ritualizing activity is basically twofold:

1. access an occult reality, which I think is Other i.e., obtain knowledge of or insight into a hidden esoteric or mystical subjective and objective reality i.e., employ a form of gnosis and then:

2. perceive an unconscious subject and direct the will or force or energy, which is an effect of this unconscious subject, which is disclosed or identified through gnosis, in order to try and organize phenomenal appearance so it favors you in general.

What I’m perceiving and trying to direct exists independently of me and yet I’m a small part of it. As above, so below: it is in me and I am in it.

The effects of the ritual are generally felt. I don’t ever think I can plead for a certain particular type of event to take place and that I will obtain that desired outcome as a result of a ritual.  That is my perspective on all this.

Ritual has a significance which extends far beyond trying to find a supermodel to fuck. It is all about access, understanding, focus and trying to direct the will. Honestly, a lot of my rituals (at least lately) are really just solitary reflections on the meaning of Satan, Lucifer, Leviathan, and to some extent Belial. It is a study of signifiers, signifieds, and I believe referents.

Everything is just alterity – it is manifest versus hidden; Other versus Other; Becoming versus Being, etc. My thinking and what I do is all sort of formed by that approach.

Currently a deist, and I doubt that will ever change from this point.

Now if you want to say ritual indirectly affects external reality because it affects your behavior and then your behavior affects external reality, then I suppose you will have made a defensible statement, albeit an ultimately misleading one, because it obscures the fact that events in external reality are caused by ACTIONS in external reality.

Tom: ‘Some CoS members do believe that Greater Magic can produce real magical results. Belief in magic has nothing to do with theism. Atheism simply means that you don't believe in literal gods.’

Absolutely Tom – one of the members of the Church of Satan who believed this was Anton LaVey.  

Wolfie: ‘MatthewJ1, you seem to be saying your intellectual commitments trump empirical evidence. I suppose you're correct when you say we're worlds apart epistemologically. For me, empirical evidence trumps intellectual commitments. If, in my experience, ritual does not affect external reality, then I take from that the principle that ritual does not affect external reality.’

Your position, as described in the quote I have posted above, is an inductive one - but that is only a small objection.

Wolfie, on the one hand, we are talking about 2 different types of empirical evidence or more precisely types of experience, which lead to the adoption of a truth claim – hence the difference in our epistemological point of view.

On the other hand, I have stated above, in other posts, that I do believe that ritual magic, by itself, disconnected from actions in the outside work, can and does have an effect in the outside world and my place in it. What I have tried to do is name this effect “general” as a rather clumsy signifier to describe the nature or scope of that effect.

I personally don’t believe that the very basic rituals, which an individual might perform, such as a lust ritual, or a destruction ritual, or a compassion ritual actually work. That is my own opinion based on my own experience. That is an inductive claim, which may not stand up. I mean tomorrow I might perform one of those simple straightforward rituals and it might actually work. Who can say for sure?

Again, the effect I’m producing, as a result of a successful ritual, is more general or abstract. It is about directing or channeling force or more precisely will. It’s manipulating, working with and directing the will, which underlies becoming. It’s a way of ordering or designing the broad context of reality so “things in general” work out in my favor. It is macro-level stuff.  

As stated elsewhere: that will underlying reality implies an unconscious subject, and that subject I have named Satan.

Im going after this: 

Quote from Tom Riddle Belief in magic has nothing to do with theism. 

What about that dark force?  Some mishandled definition of entropy? 

When you argue a position that your magical blue altar killed some jackass actor (AND SAY YOU TRULY BELIEVE IT) you can no longer claim atheism or a position against divine mechanism.

Real question about LaVey should focus on whether or not he was actually serious with all that "Lose all you gave gained bullshit". 

Still, even if you pretend you infer an abstraction that is interchangeable with a godform you are NOT an atheist. Like antitheism, atheism translates like Hitchins across a spectrum of blind belief. And this is how you can tell. You can insert something irreverent and the plausibility remains the same. 

Chain of events.

In Laveyan Satanism mythos: 

Twat A does cursing thing believing Twat B will have their causal experience effected.

Curse draws from "dark force of entropy" which carries the intent from your mind to effect without explanation. 

9 days later during Rush Hour Twat B gets T-boned on surface street intersection after distracted driver runs red light. 

The power of magic cannot be questioned so sayeth Carnie Magee. 

Now changed it up à la reductio ad absurdum. 

Twat A does cursing thing believing Twat B will have their causal experience effected.

Curse travels to magic intent relay station in high earth orbit run by transdimensional aliens. This is where all magical thoughts go.  Then a signal is beamed to another relay station in lower orbit where these transdimensional aliens decide whether or not to use their transdimensional powers and change causality for the person. 

9 days later during Rush Hour Twat B gets T-boned on surface street intersection after distracted driver runs red light. 

That GOES FOR EVERYONE, you can't uphold "magic is real and i can cause car accidents" and simultaneously call yourself an atheist. 

Okay, I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm going to say that 99.9 percent, if not all, of your so-called "magic" is going to come via the interaction of your physical body with the macrocosm. This is pretty much the whole point in having a 'body' in which the spiritual can interact with the material. Even though they are fundamentally of the same essence, they are created as separate and distinct. One isn't really of much use without the other.

People will see what they want to see though, they will see coincidence as causation. Bizarre shit does seem to occur with prolonged and repeated immersion within particular non-bullshit occult areas, but that is sporadic and unpredictable, at least in my experience, so not really the same thing.

That sounds like copy/paste theistic minded bullshit to me. 

Does it seriously line up for you that god's can't exist but disembodied spirits, ascended humans, aliens, and magic can be real? 

Abstraction is abstraction is abstraction.

So what are these powers of darkness and where do they come from? I think I need a demonstration.  Go chant some faggot poser shit with your skull and chalice and I'll let you know if some freaky Final Destination shit happens. I want the force of darkness to rise from the abyss and pull me down! That'll learn me.  

Just know my "backwards crystal" reverses all curses rendered against me and amplifies them 5 fold. I got it from a guy in a black bathrobe and a wizard hat, so I know it's legit. 

Anyway, you have six weeks. After that you time out in causal relevancy, because shit still happens.