February-Saturday
Devil Worshiper
I'm February. I generally consider myself a "traditional Satanist," although I'm also fond of the term "devil worshiper" or "historical Satanist." And you might say, woah, historical Satanism? Give me a break. Who's this chick? Just another unsubstantiated claim to tradition.
I do think there are a variety of ways of approaching Satanism through a historical lens, although historical Satanism was rarely a unified movement and instead was often found in sporadic heresy, folk religion, folk magic, folklore, and anti-church movements. In that sense, you could regard me as reviving medieval Christian heresies and superstitions, with a variety of folklore about the devil like the Devil's Sooty Brother to go alongside the legends of Urbain Grandier or the Codex Gigas
Whether these constitute genuine historical Satanism differs both on how you define Satanism and what case you're looking at. Is praying to the devil, for instance, a form of Satanism if you also pray to God? Demonology leads to demons, but can any of its practices be said to be outright demonolatry? They're interesting questions that don't have fully agreed-upon answers yet. I consider them genuine pathways to Satan theologically, regardless of whether they dip into full-on devil worship or not.
You could say that I'm not following what any historical Satanist practiced, and you'd be more or less right. I don't intend to. However, I do intend to carry those heresies into the modern age and gain a deeper historical perspective of them, even if it's only to reinterpret them from the lens of a more modern interpretation of Ophite Satanism.
I have a reading list in my profile for a few works that go into the history of Satanism for those of you that are interested, since it's a topic that still seems rarely discussed. They're some of the works I dug into when writing my dissertation on the topic, and they lead to enough theological differences that I ended up leaving the demonolatry coven I was in and the Luciferian order I was initiated into.
For everyone else, I'm pretty much just another theistic Satanist who wrote an introduction post that was a little too detailed.
I do think there are a variety of ways of approaching Satanism through a historical lens, although historical Satanism was rarely a unified movement and instead was often found in sporadic heresy, folk religion, folk magic, folklore, and anti-church movements. In that sense, you could regard me as reviving medieval Christian heresies and superstitions, with a variety of folklore about the devil like the Devil's Sooty Brother to go alongside the legends of Urbain Grandier or the Codex Gigas
Whether these constitute genuine historical Satanism differs both on how you define Satanism and what case you're looking at. Is praying to the devil, for instance, a form of Satanism if you also pray to God? Demonology leads to demons, but can any of its practices be said to be outright demonolatry? They're interesting questions that don't have fully agreed-upon answers yet. I consider them genuine pathways to Satan theologically, regardless of whether they dip into full-on devil worship or not.
You could say that I'm not following what any historical Satanist practiced, and you'd be more or less right. I don't intend to. However, I do intend to carry those heresies into the modern age and gain a deeper historical perspective of them, even if it's only to reinterpret them from the lens of a more modern interpretation of Ophite Satanism.
I have a reading list in my profile for a few works that go into the history of Satanism for those of you that are interested, since it's a topic that still seems rarely discussed. They're some of the works I dug into when writing my dissertation on the topic, and they lead to enough theological differences that I ended up leaving the demonolatry coven I was in and the Luciferian order I was initiated into.
For everyone else, I'm pretty much just another theistic Satanist who wrote an introduction post that was a little too detailed.
