Fun with blasphemy

I'm reading a lot about Satanism. I've finished Anton LaVey's The Satanic Bible and The Satanic Rituals, as well as several freely available documents on tikaboo.com. (Actually, I had already read The Satanic Bible once, many years ago, but only looked upon it then as light entertainment.) Well, when I say "read," I mean quick reads. I guess right now I'm trying to get exposed to as much Satanic literature as possible, as quickly as possible. I'm not trying to learn everything all at once, but instead get an overview to help me plan out how to proceed further. To put it another way -- you've heard the saying, "don't miss the forest by looking too close at the trees?" Right now I'm not looking at the trees, but the forest.

I've already found out that, although many Satanists disagree in varying respects with LaVey, his ideas, and the organization he founded, the Church of Satan, just about every Satanist I've talked to has recommended his books. I think that this is good; it seems to me (and I'm far from an expert) that whether one agrees with all of the LaVeyian variety or not, he gives a good overview. Whether I'll join the Church of Satan, join another organization, or stay "independent" is something I have yet to determine, but I already like many of LaVey's ideas, and I'm sure I'll use some of them in whatever context I end up in.

I've also been looking over Diane Vera's website, theisticsatanism.com. As is apparent from the name, Ms. Vera is a theistic Satanist; some Satanists are atheistic. That's something I've gotta sort out in my mind too, exactly where I stand on that question. For the past couple of decades, I've called myself an atheist and believed it, but part of that was because of a fervent belief in science, rationality, etc. -- for a long time, I didn't even allow myself to consider any other possibility other than atheism. I felt that even considering any other possibility would somehow be treasonous to my allegiance to rationality, empiricism, etc.

But lately -- and by "lately" I mean over the past few years, not the past few days -- I've come to believe that there is evil in the world, beyond that which is present in people's hearts, minds, and actions. To put it another way, I think that there is such a thing as "Evil," separate from any person, and that sometimes it operates through people. (And no, I'm not talking about "nine-eleven," or anything of that nature; I'm talking about things far more subtle than that. To explain what I'm getting at would require enough bytes that I'll reserve it for a later post.) But whether that evil is willful, or whether it just is, is something I'm still sorting through.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, in this context, "Evil" does not mean "Satan." Any Satanists reading this already know that, but for other readers, I'd better make that clear. And where anything like "Good" might fit into this, well, that's another thing I'm sifting through.

So as to where I stand on whether I'm a theistic or atheistic Satanist, at present I'd have to say "I guess I'm atheistic ... well, probably ... err, maybe?" But I have done a lot of thinking during my life on philosophy, the nature of existence, the meaning of life (it's "forty-two," right?), religion, and all the rest of it, so I've got a few prior conclusions to toss into the mix. And some things are clicking into place.

Meanwhile, as I'm getting the lay of the land, I've already found something I can start doing now, courtesy of Ms. Vera. She gives a great explanation of the power of purpose of blasphemy at her website. So great, that rather than restate it all here I'll just summarize then point you to her web page. Briefly, it's to bring those last nagging doubts out into the open and face them down. Think of a child who, for a time, really believed that stepping on a sidewalk crack would break Mom's back ... and is now long past that belief but still takes care to avoid cracks, just in case. That's the idea; get the kid to step on the crack, prove to himself that it's just a crack, nothing more, and purge himself once and for all of that nagging fear. Ms. Vera's page on this is at

http://www.theisticsatanism.com/rituals/blasphemy/purpose.html

To me, this makes a lot of sense -- and my academic degrees were in psychology, so I'm not just talking from a personal and intuitive level. (BTW, I've been away from working in the psych field for many years.) The emotional and rational components of a belief don't necessarily line up with each other; in fact, they often don't. That's not necessarily unhealthy in itself, it's just normal. But it is something that needs to be acknowledged and dealt with.

I'm not eager to try out complex rituals just yet. To me, that seems like attempting Michael Jordan's moves while I'm still learning to dribble the ball; not just useless, but counterproductive. But I realized that here's something I can use immediately. While I'm working on getting the lay of the landscape and planting my feet planted firmly on the ground within, I can also get some psychic cleansing done.

So I started off with a simple blasphemy. I Googled for images of Christ on the cross. I found a very nice one and printed it. Then I took it to the bathroom and pissed on it.

My inner reaction ... nothing. It was just a piece of paper. No terror, no feeling that I was betraying something, no fear of punishment. Not even a glimmer of guilt. Conversely, no feelings of liberation, triumph, etc. The end result was nothing more than an empty bladder and a piss-soaked picture. I went to bed right afterward and nodded right off to sleep, no tossing, no turning, no bad dreams, nothing.

This told me three things.

First, I rejected Christianity a long time ago, and I guess over the years, the rational component of that belief has already done a lot of "work" on whatever emotional components of Christianity were left. And I think this is in accord with my experience before embarking on Satanism. When I watched "The Passion of the Christ," it was nothing more to me than two hours of watching some poor bastard getting the living shit kicked out of him. I appreciated and understood how Christians would find it inspiring or even powerful, but I had nothing like that as a personal reaction -- it was like listening to the national anthem of some foreign country, knowing and appreciating what it means to the citizens of that country, but having no personal allegiance to it. Similarly, religious Christmas songs -- e.g., "Silent Night," not "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" -- do nothing at all for me; they're not a veneration of anything I care about at all.

The second thing I realized is that blasphemy, in this context, isn't that simple. It's not enough to merely perform an act, you have to bring yourself into the act as well. It's all too easy to internally divorce an act from its context and meaning; one might burn a flag while telling oneself that it's nothing more than a piece of cloth, for example. You have to bring your attitudes, your beliefs, your prejudices, your fears, etc. into the act.

I realize those might sound contradictory, but they're not. I'm firmly convinced that if I had any significant amount of Christian belief left in me, I couldn't have regarded the picture as merely a piece of paper. But in treating it as just paper, I missed the point. In order to scrape out those last remains of Christian belief, I'll have to "get into it" more; work myself up into something like a Christian frenzy, then perform the blasphemous act while having as close to a belief in Christianity as I can manage.

The third thing I got from this, which didn't occur to me until the following morning, was that act itself is absolutely necessary. Sorting out things internally is great, as far as it goes, but ultimately it has to be married to some action. One has to "practice what one preaches," "live ones beliefs," etc.

So, the big lesson here for me -- in order for the blasphemy to have real value and effect, one has to bring ones rational and emotional beliefs to the blasphemy, and marry those beliefs to an act. (I'm sure some of you with psych backgrounds may recognize this as the cognition/affect/conation triad, and I suppose I may be simply imposing my academic training on this situation, but it seems valid enough.) And I can already see that the same thing applies not just to blasphemy, but to every other ritual as well. Needless to say, that means rituals are a lot of work!

And so I'll try it again, but this time I'll get it right ... stay tuned ...