Behold the Liberator who lights the way out of bondage.
I have been fascinated with the Devil since I was a kid. It started with an illustrated children’s Bible my parent’s kept on the bookshelf. Thumbing through it one day I came across a picture of Satan tempting Jesus during his 40 day fast in the wilderness. While I would consider that 70’s style picture a little cheesy by modern standards, I was transfixed at the time. I remember a girl came over to our house to play once, and she said she did not believe in the Devil. I brought out that Bible and showed her the picture. How could she not believe when there he was, flying in the air in all his glory?
That fascination later lead me to check out every book on witchcraft I could get my hands on in my small town library, and inspired me to read the book of Revelation so many times it was the only book of the Christian Bible I knew with any depth growing up. I did not realize it at the time, but tracing the thread back I see that nearly all my fictional heroes growing up could only be described as embodying a satanic ethos: proud and dark, cruel yet noble, self-assured and self-directed. I apparently like my heroes as I like my angels: fallen yet undefeated.
An earlier version of this blog, called Lucifer’s Due, set out to examine Satan as a literary figure and answer the question, for myself if no one else, who was Satan? Why had I, like so many others before me, been so fascinated with him and sympathetic to his plight? Around that time I began writing what could only be described as a satanic version of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, with prayers, psalms, and offices of communion and petition. I told myself it was a creative exercise and nothing more. When I gradually began incorporating those prayers and rituals into my daily routine, I told myself I was LARPing at worst. I write short fiction, and I often do things to get myself in the proper frame of mind for the story I’m writing. Whether it be surrounding myself with the music, food, fashion, and/or philosophy of the characters I am developing, it is a practice that has served me well. Certainly this was no different than that.
But it was different. The line between LaVey-style playacting and actual devotion slowly blurred. To my chagrin, I found myself praying to an entity that I supposedly considered fictional with actual earnestness. I began identifying as a satanist among close friends and acquaintances. Almost always in a joking manner, lest I pay the social price of them taking me seriously, but my seeming flippancy was a lie. It was a mask to hide a very real and growing loyalty to my Dark Lord, both from others as well as myself.
When I realized it was my atheism and not my devil worship that was the act, I am not ashamed to admit I was a little horrified. I wiped out my old Lucifer’s Due website, stopped lurking and posting on satanic forums, and threw out a good chunk of my collection of infernal books. An atavistic terror, no doubt brought on by my Southern Baptist upbringing, gripped me. I poured over my Bible, and begged for deliverance and forgiveness. I attended evangelical churches for several months, dragging my children with me. I got baptized. I prayed morning and night. I was bound and determined to earn my way back into Heaven’s good graces. Until one morning during a family vacation, chanting psalms on a balcony overlooking the sea, I was struck by how fake every word coming out of my mouth was. I could parrot worship of the Christian god. I could say the prayers, sing the songs, and recite the verses, but I did not believe any of it. My heart belonged to another god entirely.
And so this blog was eventually born. My attempt to work out for myself just what faith in Satan really means. I have no claim to authority. I offer only my questions and insights. My hope is that this site will be of some benefit to others like me, stumbling about the dark in search of the Lightbearer’s rays. We unexpected devil worshipers. We Brethren of the Morningstar.