How do Satanists approach Shiva?

[Sutekh]

@Liu I found this amazing perspective from a satanist on youtube, which I want to share with you as what you say is so close:

I used to watch this youtuber he has a lot of good points.

 

[Bhadr]

Shiva as the destroyer god, the lord of darkness

Shiva essentially represents the promise that Satan gave to Adam and Eve, that they too could become gods if they ate of the tree of knowledge. Shiva is a man that became the greatest of Gods through his pure efforts of meditation and penance.

Shaivism - Discussion Thread
Post #90

 

[Cassandra]

That's Kali... not Shiva.

It is Kali AND Shiva.

Shiva is the name of the cosmic principle that keeps everything going. That principle can also be divided in a male and female aspect. Confusingly the male aspect is also known as Shiva. The female aspect as Shakti. And the male aspect Shiva is also personified as the God Shiva. While Shakti is personified as the goddess Parvati (Uma). Parvati again has all kind of manifestations, one of them is Kali.

The Shiva painted here encompasses both Shiva and Shakti and in this enraged form the female aspect is painted as Kali. Kali is the rage of the female aspect.

If you look closer you see that the left side of the painting is Kali. One hand holding a decapitated head of a demon and a blade. The right side of the picture is Shiva holding the typical attributes of an enraged Shiva like the drum and the club with a skull. So we see the male and female aspects of rage here. So yes, this is a picture of Kali (Shakti) and Shiva as part of the greater Shiva.

What puzzles me is why the female aspect is on the right (left side picture). I always see Shiva on right and Shakti on the left. Maybe it is an amateur mistake, or forgery by Christians or it has special meaning. Every aspect of these pictures has precise symbolic meaning. Their posture, whether they are standing or sitting, what they are sitting on, how they hold their arms and hands, their attributes etc. These pictures are precise symbolic representations. Westerners only recognize Shiva, not the story they tell.

Male and female aspects should not be confused as man and woman, because they are symbolized this way. Men and women have both aspects in them, but in men male aspects are more dominant and in women female aspects. The aspects themselves go much deeper and are more profound principles that are found in all of Nature.

 

[Liu]

I agree that the rivalry is probably better explained as between Semitics and Indo-Europeans, but I do wonder what was the relationship between the Sumerians and the Semitics, do they share linguistic, cultural and historical similarities? I know Sumerian myths appear in the OT. Are they roughly around the same area?

Roughly same area, a bit more southern, but the Sumerians were earlier, mostly ~3000-2300 BCE. Their language isn't related to any other known one, but they have exchanged loan words with Akkadian (a Semitic language) and some other languages around. I think the Akkadians have picked up parts of their culture later and they also continued using Sumerian as a second language. But I don't know much about Semitic culture, so, no idea about cultural similarities.

It is all pervasive in Hinduism in fact, not just limited to a few sects. The idea that we are identical with God pervades across Hinduism. It is declared very boldly in the Upanishads in what are called the great sayings/statements: "You are that, My self is God, I am God, You are God" It is encoded in all our gestures like when we say "namaste" it means that the God within my greets the God within you. When Apoloniyus when to India, the sages told him, "We believe that we are gods" The entire religion of Jainism, which is an off-shoot of Hinduism and is very closely intertwined with Hinduism, is fully premised on the idea that we can all become gods through spiritual practice and does not accept any single monotheistic God. Hinduism is premised on the idea of spiritual evolution which Hindu scripture says "Ranges from a blade of grass to Lord Brahma" i.e., we believe that one day we will evolve to the highest level of creator-lord. Advaita, which is one of the most popular schools of Hinduism, emphatically declares Atman = Brahman, there is absolutely no difference between the Self and God.

Thanks for that information. I actually audited an introductory university course on Hinduism a while ago, and nothing which even remotely resembled a notion of self-deification was mentioned the whole semester long - and we even visited a Shiva-temple (not one in India, though, just in a bigger city nearby the city of the university).
But well, I already had the impression it was a ****ty course, mostly focused on historics and basics (what are the myths and names of the main deities, what is karma (the definition there was quite different from what I read on RF), how does the caste system work,..). Advaita for example also wasn't really mentioned, it only appeared in one paragraph of one text one group should read, but was not central to that day's lesson. I already knew about it and similar beforehand, so I would have noticed if it was mentioned.

 

[Cassandra]

and nothing which even remotely resembled a notion of self-deification was mentioned the whole semester long

My view:

Brahman is not a Deity like the Abrahamic God. "Thou are that" is not "self-deification" but simply stating that everything, not just you, is a manifestation of Brahman.

Brahman transcends all Gods, both Hindu Deva's and Abrahamic Gods who have all these personal and human traits (Jealous, merciful, righteous, wrathful etc.) even have favorites. From Hindu view. even the most powerful Gods in heaven are still manifestations of Brahman.

Brahman is considered indescribable and unknowable. To identify any being (God or Man or else) alone with Brahman is idolatry. From this point of view the worst idolaters are book idolaters who use books to pretend they know the plans, wishes, intentions of their God. Thus they describe and know their God they arrogantly equate with Brahman. Thus they use their God as a puppet in the hand of ventriloquists. It is an invention of priesthoods who turned religion into a trade and instrument of power. The result of this is endless wars.

It is hard to define Hinduism as it is a word given to the total of various religious traditions in India. Hinduism is made of endless philosophical and non-philosophical traditions and easily encompasses all other religions in the world and more. Philosophical ideas of major Hindu traditions are not ideas of "Hinduism" at large. Shaivism, Vaishnavism, Advaita, etc. are only a few in the fold. If you ask a Vaishnavist or Vedantist for a Hindu view, They simply give THEIR view. It is not the view of all Hindus or the Hindu doctrine, as there is no Hindu doctrine. You find anything from very monotheist, polytheist, animist, pantheist to atheistic traditions within Hinduism.

What Hindus traditions share is not views but Dharm. They are Dharmic traditions. Abramic religions are non-Dharmic traditions, often even Adharmic traditions.

 

[Liu]

Thanks for clarifying. My statement was meant to include this kind of (not-)self-deification which you are describing, which wasn't mentioned in the course either (except for that one snippet that contained a short definition of advaita).

But well, it's not important what the course taught, back to topic.
We Satanists normally don't belief either that we alone would be the divine, or that we would know its wishes (some theistic ones who have a very personal concept of Satan do claim to know his wishes, but they wouldn't ever equate him with something like Brahman).
But a difference to you Brahmani Hindus would then be, I guess, that we strive more actively for realizing the divinity of self, and also use it as basis for our morals.

 

[SomeRandom]

It is Kali AND Shiva.

Shiva is the name of the cosmic principle that keeps everything going. That principle can also be divided in a male and female aspect. Confusingly the male aspect is also known as Shiva. The female aspect as Shakti. And the male aspect Shiva is also personified as the God Shiva. While Shakti is personified as the goddess Parvati (Uma). Parvati again has all kind of manifestations, one of them is Kali.

The Shiva painted here encompasses both Shiva and Shakti and in this enraged form the female aspect is painted as Kali. Kali is the rage of the female aspect.

If you look closer you see that the left side of the painting is Kali. One hand holding a decapitated head of a demon and a blade. The right side of the picture is Shiva holding the typical attributes of an enraged Shiva like the drum and the club with a skull. So we see the male and female aspects of rage here. So yes, this is a picture of Kali (Shakti) and Shiva as part of the greater Shiva.

What puzzles me is why the female aspect is on the right (left side picture). I always see Shiva on right and Shakti on the left. Maybe it is an amateur mistake, or forgery by Christians or it has special meaning. Every aspect of these pictures has precise symbolic meaning. Their posture, whether they are standing or sitting, what they are sitting on, how they hold their arms and hands, their attributes etc. These pictures are precise symbolic representations. Westerners only recognize Shiva, not the story they tell.

Male and female aspects should not be confused as man and woman, because they are symbolized this way. Men and women have both aspects in them, but in men male aspects are more dominant and in women female aspects. The aspects themselves go much deeper and are more profound principles that are found in all of Nature.

I think they wanted to portray Bhairava but kind of got confused and got a weird pic of Shiva instead.
The iconography is more a mix of Kali, Shiva and Bhairava, but kind of wonky. The skull garland and hair seems more Kali like. The Drum, the snake and moon are really the only aspects that I can see that are definitively Shiva. Although the club with a skull on it is kind of random. The ferocity wants to mimick Bhairava but seems to be more demon like. Also what is with the red eyes!
I suspect that the photo is a demonised flawed representation of Shiva with heavy emphasis on Kali because the West is often frightened of her. The iconography is scary to Christians especially because of the way their paradigm interprets these symbols. Then they just lazily slapped on the label of Bhairava in an attempt to justify the iconography. As you say the iconography is normally very precise, but this seems to be a mishmash of random scary things. If it represents both sides of Shiva and Kali, it's either by accident or the painter did at least some minimal homework.

 

[ScottySatan]

I like Lord Shiva academically. I haven't made up my mind whether to consider it one of the names of Satan yet, I'm leaning towards no. I agree with Mindmaster that it's better to look at what Shiva is in his native culture, rather than what my culture thinks of him.

Honestly, few christians know who Shiva is. And there's this old chirstian doctrine that all false gods are of the devil, so be it Shiva or brahma, doesn't matter.

A small idol of Lord Shiva from India lives on my stove top and I like to ask Shiva to stay his destructive hand from tonight's dinner.

 

[Spirit_Warrior]

Roughly same area, a bit more southern, but the Sumerians were earlier, mostly ~3000-2300 BCE. Their language isn't related to any other known one, but they have exchanged loan words with Akkadian (a Semitic language) and some other languages around. I think the Akkadians have picked up parts of their culture later and they also continued using Sumerian as a second language. But I don't know much about Semitic culture, so, no idea about cultural similarities.

I will look further into this because I think there might be something to this idea of ancient Aryan-Sumerian wars. Some early scholars before the Aryan invasion theory of India, put up ideas of an early Sumerian invasion of India, but I don't know what the speculations were based on.

So the Sumerians were far more earlier than the Semitic civilisation, but they were roughly around the same region and Sumerian culture went onto inform the later Semites. I find this an interesting parallel, because at at the same time 3000-2300BCE there was the Indus Valley civilisation, larger than Sumeria and Egypt combined, which later went onto inform Dharmic civilisation. We also know that the Indus Valley and Sumeria were in contact. But what I find most curious is just how diametrically opposite the philosophy and the societies were, not just in what they later spawned(Abrahmic vs Dharmic) but at their respective early origins. Sumerian civilization is far more centralised with priest-kings living in their massive Ziggagurts(sp?) controlling society, and Indus civilisation is decentralised with no apparent centre, palace, but evidence of a more middle class, democratic society run by a civil administration and mercantile people. If I was living in India at the time I might have used the words "Asura" to describe the Sumerians, as being the exact opposite of what is considered "Deva"

There is very early evidence of Aryan colonisations near that region around 1700BCE with the Hittie-Mittani kingdom what has been called an "Aryan superstate " It does suggest to be military adventures as far as Sumeria.

Thanks for that information. I actually audited an introductory university course on Hinduism a while ago, and nothing which even remotely resembled a notion of self-deification was mentioned the whole semester long - and we even visited a Shiva-temple (not one in India, though, just in a bigger city nearby the city of the university).
But well, I already had the impression it was a ****ty course, mostly focused on historics and basics (what are the myths and names of the main deities, what is karma (the definition there was quite different from what I read on RF), how does the caste system work,..). Advaita for example also wasn't really mentioned, it only appeared in one paragraph of one text one group should read, but was not central to that day's lesson. I already knew about it and similar beforehand, so I would have noticed if it was mentioned.

The most popular sect of Hinduism is Vaishnavism, which is very devotional. The chances are most Hindus you will meet, especially those abroad will be Vaishnava .Vaishnava Hindus will often not express beliefs like self-deification, but rather beliefs of unconditional surrender to Vishnu, often in his most popular avatar as Krishna. Yet you will also hear them say pantheistic things like "He is in everything, he is in me" etc so they are not strictly purely dualist either. You can trace the beginning of these dualist interpretations of Brahman a few centuries after Shankara developed Advaita. Shankara's Advaita is almost, what could be called transtheist, it accepts saguna(with attributes) Brahman, personal forms like Krishna provisionally, until you get to the ultimate nirguna(no attributes) absolute Brahman, which cannot be described, fathomed or conceptualised, and which is not a person, but some sort of ultimate reality or existence you ultimately merge with --- this is Advaitins are called impersonalists.

It becomes difficult to justify bhakti or devotional love to God with an Advaita metaphysics --- you're pretty much telling them that personal god and idols are just fictions that they will later drop when they become wiser. This presented a massive challenge to the devotional sects in India at the time, more particularly Vaishnavism, spurring Vaishnava philosophers, the first being Ramunjanacharya, to come up with an alternative interpretation of Vedanta that allows devotion and allows for the existence of a personal God -- so Ramunja took the same triple-canon of Shankara re: 13 major Upanishads, Bhagvad Gita and Brahma Sutras -- and developed a theistic interpretation(viseshadvaita) that allowed for the path of karma -yoga -- basically doing good deeds, that one day the god Vishnu/Krishna will be pleased and grant you grace and whereby you will return to the supreme heaven(vaikunth) to be with God forever. In other words justifying a personal god, a personal heaven and justifying a path of devotion and good deeds.

Henceforth, most Hindus you will talk to, belong to Vaishnava traditions will have less room for knowledge, philosophy and meditation(certainly not to the same extent as an Advaitin) and more room for devotion, chanting, temple worship and karma yoga.

Meanwhile, in Shaivism and Shakta Advaitin interpretations have proven to be more popular, particular among hardcore tantriks you meet, where self-deification like beliefs are far more common, and practices like meditations to visualise yourself as Shiva are also common. That is not to say all Shaiva and Shakta sects are Advaita, there are popular dualist too like Shaiva Siddhanta in the South of India.

The struggle I see between Advaitists and Dvatists is best expressed as the struggle you have seen by many mystics in other traditions too like Sufism and Gnosticism, "I am God" vs "I am one with God"

 

[Liu]

I will look further into this because I think there might be something to this idea of ancient Aryan-Sumerian wars. Some early scholars before the Aryan invasion theory of India, put up ideas of an early Sumerian invasion of India, but I don't know what the speculations were based on.

So the Sumerians were far more earlier than the Semitic civilisation, but they were roughly around the same region and Sumerian culture went onto inform the later Semites. I find this an interesting parallel, because at at the same time 3000-2300BCE there was the Indus Valley civilisation, larger than Sumeria and Egypt combined, which later went onto inform Dharmic civilisation. We also know that the Indus Valley and Sumeria were in contact. But what I find most curious is just how diametrically opposite the philosophy and the societies were, not just in what they later spawned(Abrahmic vs Dharmic) but at their respective early origins. Sumerian civilization is far more centralised with priest-kings living in their massive Ziggagurts(sp?) controlling society, and Indus civilisation is decentralised with no apparent centre, palace, but evidence of a more middle class, democratic society run by a civil administration and mercantile people. If I was living in India at the time I might have used the words "Asura" to describe the Sumerians, as being the exact opposite of what is considered "Deva"

There is very early evidence of Aryan colonisations near that region around 1700BCE with the Hittie-Mittani kingdom what has been called an "Aryan superstate " It does suggest to be military adventures as far as Sumeria.

That certainly sounds worth investigating further. I didn't expect there to be much evidence for anything of that time, though, especially none about the cultural specifics of the Indus valley civilization. But I haven't really looked into it, either.

It becomes difficult to justify bhakti or devotional love to God with an Advaita metaphysics --- you're pretty much telling them that personal god and idols are just fictions that they will later drop when they become wiser. This presented a massive challenge to the devotional sects in India at the time, more particularly Vaishnavism, spurring Vaishnava philosophers, the first being Ramunjanacharya, to come up with an alternative interpretation of Vedanta that allows devotion and allows for the existence of a personal God -- so Ramunja took the same triple-canon of Shankara re: 13 major Upanishads, Bhagvad Gita and Brahma Sutras -- and developed a theistic interpretation(viseshadvaita) that allowed for the path of karma -yoga -- basically doing good deeds, that one day the god Vishnu/Krishna will be pleased and grant you grace and whereby you will return to the supreme heaven(vaikunth) to be with God forever. In other words justifying a personal god, a personal heaven and justifying a path of devotion and good deeds.

I see how advaita and bhakti may seem difficult to combine for some, but personally I have no issues with it whatsoever. Advaita is the metaphysics, bhakti is the practice, and if it seems contradictory and throws one off sometimes then that only helps with not getting too static or dogmatic.
However, having Satan as patron deity probably makes this easier due to Its inherently contradictory nature.

Your post is pretty interesting as it in a way describes why many people, also in the west, can't seem to get their heads around adogmatic or atheistic religion. People seem to like clinging to dogma and to want a separate, personal god rewarding them for good deeds that are defined as such by him.

 

[Serpent Child]

In my faith Shiva is an aspect/form of Satan.