Jamie Stick wrote:
Edan wrote: I'm a Satanist, once a theistic one but no longer, and I would never consider anything I believe, have believed, as being abrahamic in origin or nature, when Satan for me is more related to Set of Egyptian myth than the devil of Christianity. The same would be said for other Satanists I know. Satanism is incredibly diverse.
Many Satanists try and escape this idea that we actually believe in God and Devil.. And I'm not convinced even LaVeyan Satanism fits in abrahamism because there is no belief, it's a use of symbology.
Well, I sit truly amazed. I haven't heard this perspective before but then again I don't usually interact with a ton of Satanists outside TST.
I guess I'll have to do more reading up on that myself. I will say for myself and the material TST uses, none of it is to be taken literally nor does TST believe in Satan and God as anything more than literary characters. The message is what is important: one of the most venerated servants of the most powerful being in the universe refuses to accept tyrannical rule and rebels against the most powerful being in the universe simply because it can. That in mind, TST's material is derived directly from Christian material.
The TST is quite young in the Satanic community if I understand right.. I don't remember it being around when I first found Satanism. Many of the online communities that did exist for Satanism have either disappeared entirely or are pretty much defunct, being either completely inactive or (as I discovered recently) overrun with spam. I don't know what happened in the last ten years or so but Satanism's appeal seems to have dwindled. The site I used to call home, Satanist.net, was a odd mash up of atheistic and theistic and my experiences there are the main reason that I would call Satanism an umbrella term rather than a fixed definition of any set beliefs. There were theists there who followed him like Set, as I do, but he was also associated with Marduk, Prometheus.. and other similar deities from a range of pantheons.
Have you ever read anything on the Temple of Set? It was founded by Michael Aquino after he left the Church of Satan. He's quite active in a certain community online and the Temple of Set is certainly still active. I considered joining for a while but I decided that committing myself to another community organised by rank and one that seems quite opaque was not the right choice for me. I do like their literature though.
