I’ll be linking to this post from my websites, as a place for people to post comments not pertaining to any specific post here.
Diane Vera
Everything the religious right wing is against, I am for! (Well, almost everything.)
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November 12, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Hi Ms. Vera, I’m trying to write a novel utilizing themes of pagan symbolism in Christianity as part of the plot device (if you’ve seen the Zeitgeist documentary on YouTube, that gives you some idea), but thus far I have not located a great source documenting the history of that symbolism.
I’m writing to you to ask if you could recommend any such sources that I can use to research. If you have any such sources to recommend I would be greatly appreciative.
Thank you for any help you could offer in that regard.
May 2, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Jugganaut35, you might try Alan Watts’ Myth and Ritual in Christianity, which is a decent though somewhat dated attempt to do something like what you seem to be looking for.
Regards,
Dana
April 28, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I have two questions, in all seriousness. I am a Christian and I know you worship satan.
1. Do you believe that satan is actually more powerful than God? If so why?
2. If the answer to question one is no, then why do you continue to worship him if you know your going to end up in hell?
You can write back [email address edited out by blog author Diane Vera] or just post it here
April 28, 2009 at 10:17 pm
The title of this comment links to my reply to jugganaut35.
Diane
April 28, 2009 at 10:23 pm
The title of this comment links to my reply to meowmixeater.
I would suggest NOT posting your email address in a public forum. Doing so is an invitation to spammers. Hence I’ve removed it from your comment. (I get your email address automatically anyway, when you post a comment here, so you don’t have to give it to me in the body of your comment.)
May 2, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Hi, Diane–
Thanks for visiting my blog. I did indeed contribute to your Yahoo groups when they were still active (some of my webpage articles are adaptations of material I posted there), and I admired the tone you were able to maintain in those groups, by dint of judicious moderation and intelligent discourse on almost everyone’s part. I haven’t found anything else like it since.
Glad you’re back from hiatus, and looking forward to catching up on reading here.
Dana
May 24, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Hiya,
Very glad to see you back in the blogo-net-sphere-tube-thing.
Firstly, I want to thank you deeply for creating and continuing to run Theisticsatanism.com. That site has been an invaluable source of inspiration to me for over three years, now. Thank you.
Secondly, I was reading a bit of your commentary on literary Satanism (specifically from the article and those relating to “Satanism and the History of Wicca”) and a curious thought struck me. Sometimes in literature and folklore Satan is depicted firmly on the side of the common folk. What is interesting is stories where this occurs are invariably those told from the viewpoint of the average townsfolk. For instance, in a tale that bears a few similarities to the various myths of the Wild Hunt (unfortunately, I can no longer lay hands on the book that has this particular story, however the folk-tale was from the 1600’s), a lord of the castle takes to hunting down and killing peasants for sport. As he is pursuing his “game” through a dark and twisted forest, two riders join him. One is dressed all in silver mounted on a white horse with white hounds, the other is dressed all in black, with a black horse and black hounds. The one in white strives to get the lord to leave the hunt, and when he is rebuffed rides off in disgust. The one in black, who is revealed to be Satan, laughs and remarks, “well then, let us make a proper hunt of it!”. Satan throws the lord from his horse, and proceeds to hunt him down and kill him. The peasant who was fleeing for his life is incredibly relieved, and returns to the town to spread the good news that they will no longer be threatened by the bloodthirsty noble.
In a similar note, the poet Robert Burns wrote “The Deil’s Awa Wi’ Th’ Exciseman” (late 1700’s) wherein the Devil shows up and proceeds to dance away with the tax-collector. In response, the villagers throw a party;
“We’ll mak our maut, and we’ll brew our drink,
We’ll laugh, sing, and rejoice, man,
And monie braw thanks to the meikle black Deil,
That danc’d awa wi’ th’ Exciseman!”
Thirdly, have you read anything about this (http://www.childabusecommission.com/rpt/) yet? It’s a 2600 page report on horrifying child abuse in Irish Catholic schools. There is a plethora of online news articles covering it. For instance; http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090520/ap_on_re_eu/eu_ireland_catholic_abuse
Whew, didn’t mean to get so long-winded, my apologies. Please keep your site and blogs alive!
Best wishes,
-M
May 25, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Melhelix, IIRC the alignment of the RCC with the nobility during the Middle Ages meant that commoners of rebellious spirit sometimes found Satan to be a viable alternative. Thanks for sharing your vignettes, they were most enjoyable!
I too am interested to see how Benedict handles his Irish debacle, and especially to see if the meeting with him mentioned in the article you so kindly linked even takes place. Ireland is traditionally a source of religious vocations just as the USA is Catholicism’s ATM, so a failure to reconcile this division within his ranks quickly will mean some short-term damage to his ambitions.
Then again, it’s no accident why Christian laity is referred to as “sheep”, so the effects might be less permanent than I would prefer. The RCC here in the USA seems to have recovered mostly after a few years in spite of occasional flareups in the media.
Meanwhile, the recently increased emphasis by the Vatican on exorcism and (trumped up?) SRA cases might be viewed as damage control via distraction of the public from yet another chronic, systemic travesty perpetrated by the Church. Being identified so closely with the dominant culture confers an aura of credibility even when the underlying facts show the opposite. We could take a lesson.
May 27, 2009 at 4:26 pm
baldassarecossa, you refer to an article that I linked. Which article? Where? It would have been nice if you had posted your comment in response to the relevant post, rather than in the “General Feedback Thread.”
May 27, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Apologies for any confusion. I was responding to the Melhelix comment above, so I thought that this thread was the relevant one.
The article to which I was referring was linked in that comment:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090520/ap_on_re_eu/eu_ireland_catholic_abuse
Thanks for your patience.
June 20, 2009 at 5:53 am
This is just a huge thank you to Diane Vera for her cogent remarks on blasphemy fetishism (on theistic satanism website). What she lays out there makes so much sense and gives me more power over personal delusions. It is very easy, as she points out, to let fantasy rituals mess with spirituality, which as a buddhist I can agree with her must be a rational choice reaffirmed on a regular basis.
Now I can just ‘enjoy’ the melodramatic gothic ritual kink that I’ve been acting out for years as a compulsive way to potentiate my fetish–and recognize it as what it is, just a part of something greater.
Sarah