Bringing some Light...

Something that hasn't yet come up on this blog since I started updating it is that I've made some pretty big changes to my spirituality/religious beliefs! Which is, namely, that I'm a Luciferian now. I was never really a believer in the way that the bible taught about Lucifer, even when I was a Christian. Something about all of it just didn't quite sit right with me. Lucifer always seemed to be getting an undeserved bad wrap -- after all,  most of the genuinely horrifying things (from my perspective) that happened in the bible were done by God.  And also the whole "the apple gave us knowledge of good and evil" thing never felt right to me in a way that I couldn't quite put my finger on. 

As I started to explore more of paganism and witchcraft and began to search for things that tied into my more... monstrous bits and my history as an abuse victim and survivor, I found myself being slowly drawn towards two specific figures: Lilith and Lucifer. Now, this post isn't going to be about Lilith since the question about revering Lilith when one isn't Jewish is fraught with a lot of controversy and I'm not exactly interested in getting into that.  I will be talking about Lucifer, though. Specifically, I want to talk about Satanism and Luciferianism. 

I'm a member and admin over on Witches of PA on facebook and repeatedly, we have members who seem to have very little understanding of Satanism and Luciferianism throwing the words around to describe "evil" or "selfish" (or making my favorite erroneous claim that "witches don't believe in Satan" -- which is a holdover from the days when basically all witchcraft and paganism were looked at through the lens of Gardnerian Wicca/neo-paganism or Silver Ravenwolf books) It gets really frustrating to see so many people who seem to consider themselves "pagan" resorting to that kind of utterly Christian thinking -- that Satan is evil and etc., Or insisting that all witches are Wiccan (I wish this mindset would die but it's still alive and well in a lot of witchcraft spaces and pagan reconstructionist settings -- I could go on forever about how much I dislike the way Wicca treats the Divine but... That would be getting horrifically off topic.)

Anyway, I wrote a sort of "primer" on the basics of Satanism and Luciferianism for those who are miseducated in the group (and aren't willing to do basic research) and I've decided to share it here (links & formatting added because facebook sucks)

Hey there witches -- your local Satanic Admin here to clear up some sh!t about Satanism and Luciferianism for y'all since I've seen some really worrying behavior in this group from some folks and it's starting to get very, very old. 

First off: Satanists and Luciferians aren't evil. That's Far Right, Evangelical Christian Propaganda. There were no Satanic Cults in the 70s and 80s abusing children, sacrificing goats and performing evil rituals. Satanists, as a general rule, don't sit here planning how to do evil and harm people. This is stuff you could easily learn with a basic google search or even just checking Wikipedia. Research is your friend but since I know a lot of people don't like to do research, I'm reaching out to do some education.

Second: Luciferianism and Satanism are not actually the same thing and neither of them are synonyms for selfishness. 

Third, a little primer on Satanism: 

Satanists, unless they're self-proclaimed "theistic Satanists", don't worship Satan or even *believe* in the existence of Satan (or God, for that matter.) Satanism is a nontheistic/atheist religion that focuses on self-determination, free-will, autonomy, enlightenment and self-betterment. 

They do not believe in encroaching upon the rights of others in any capacity or in harming others (unless in self-defense). There are two major organizations that exist in Satanism, though I'm sure there are more branches -- the Church of Satan (which was founded by Anton LaVey, an American Occultist, and is considered the first incidence of Satanic Continuity in history) and the Satanic Temple. Neither of which are theistic in nature! In fact...

The Satanic Temple regarding Satan (taken from Wikipedia): "The Satanic Temple does not believe in a supernatural Satan; instead it employs the literary Satan as a metaphor to promote pragmatic skepticism, rational reciprocity, personal autonomy, and curiosity. Satan is thus used as a symbol representing "the eternal rebel" against arbitrary authority and social norms."

The Church of Satan regarding Satan (taken from Wikipedia): "The Church does not believe in the Devil, neither a Christian nor Islamic notion of Satan. Peter H. Gilmore describes its members as "skeptical atheists", embracing the Hebrew root of the word "Satan" as "adversary". The Church views Satan as a positive archetype who represents pride, individualism, and enlightenment, and as a symbol of defiance against the Abrahamic faiths which LaVey criticized for what he saw as the suppression of humanity's natural instincts." 

[Note added for blog version: there are some controversies surrounding both the Church of Satan and the Satanic Temple, both iirc, involving sexual misconduct. Anton LaVey himself is a pretty problematic figure but this doesn't change what Satanism as a belief structure espouses its beliefs are -- and I think we should always take the word of members of a group as to what it believes over those who are not (and never have been) members of this group. We can criticize their actions as not in line with their professed beliefs, certainly, but we can't say that the CoS and ST having problems in their leadership suddenly means that all Satanists don't actually believe what they say they do.]

Fourth, a quick primer on Luciferianism: Luciferianism is a belief system that views Lucifer not as evil but as a destroyer of unjust systems, a guardian and liberator and light bringer... Some Luciferians may even consider Lucifer the *true* God as opposed to Jehovah/ The Christian God.

Luciferianism, in the modern sense (there are some Medieval/14th century occurances of Luciferianism but most Luciferians are followers of the modern thought), is based in Anarchism and self-determination, much like Satanism. 

From the author of the Anarchist Journal "Lucifer the Lightbringer": "The god of the Bible doomed mankind to perpetual ignorance, and [people] would never have known Good from Evil if Lucifer had not told them how to become as wise as the gods themselves." (source) 

[note added to blog post: yes, Harman was involved in the foundation of the Eugenics Movement which is, fucking obviously, bad. But Christianity isn't free of problematic actors either and no belief system or religious movement is. While I personally call myself a Luciferian (since I despise the term "Satan Worshipper" or "Devil Worshipper" -- I'm considering changing my personal identification to "demonolator" but that's neither here nor there.]

Fifth: I want to ask a question: why are so many *Pagans* invoking Satan as a symbol of evil in this group? Why are so many *Pagans* against Satanists? You're not Christian, Satan has *nothing to do* with your religious/spiritual practice, according to most Pagan practices, Satan doesn't even *exist*. You're literally giving into Christian mindsets and applying them to non-Christians while calling yourself witches and Pagans. That's utterly hypocritical and it needs to stop. 

If you've read this far, please leave me a comment -- if you've got any questions, I will answer them as best I can. If people start clowning on this post, I *will not* be taking that lightly. This is an attempt to clear up miseducation. If you decide you want to continue to be miseducated and be a dick well.. I'll take it up with the modmin team. 

Thank you for reading and for Lucifer's sake,  do some freaking research once in awhile

 It could be more in-depth and more nuanced by the fact that Facebook doesn't allow for formatting of any kind makes it hard to write a good informational post on there without it turning into an incomprehensible wall or text. 

Some Musings on the Internet of Today...

So I've been thinking a lot about the state of the internet lately -- mostly, about how the spaces most of us frequent (social media like facebook, twitter,  instagram and etc. ,) reduce our online presence to nothing more than a pfp,  a display name and easily consumed (and exploited) content.

You can't format your comments, you can't customize the colors or layout of your page and despite the fact that we are now expected to connect our online selves to our meatspace self by way of legal name... We are very, very anonymized on social media. Or rather, perhaps, we're homogenized -- look through any thread on twitter, any comment chain on facebook or the comments section on an Instagram pic and tell me, scrolling through quickly, can you distinguish different posters? Or does every comment look roughly the same, minus an attached gif, image or maybe a few emojis? The only thing of us that exists on a lot of social media is just what can be harvested from us. Images, words, locations and interests -- not presented in any unique and personalized way but in a standardized form with standardized text and colors... Making every one of us look, more or less, the same. We become interchangeable groupings of text on a page.

I don't know, maybe it's the recent update to Twitter's font (which overrides the font I have selected on my phone, much to my chagrin) or the fact that I've spent the last week looking at retro internet gifs and making pixel art for my own personal website while browsing neocities.org (which may have given me nostalgia poisoning)... Or maybe I'm just starting to get old...but I'm finding, more and more, that I hate how standardized the internet has become. On top of that, the widespread toxicity and hatred of anything genuine is more than I can fucking handle.

Hell, I said it earlier on discord and on my Twitter -- social media feels like the execs running it looked at 4ch*n's anonymous, depersonalized set up (and it's irony-poisoned toxicity) and said "what if every site was like this?" And then they did it without even the decency of allowing us to be genuinely anonymous... (not that you can't be anonymous on twitter or have fifteen different burner accounts but like, it's a little bit harder than just making posts on 4ch*n as "anonymous").

I cannot overstate how much that bothers me -- or how much less stressed out I have felt since disconnecting from social media and plugging into the Old Net renaissance. I feel excited about making things again because I get to fully customize every page if I want to, I can make each character profile unique colors, give it a unique layout and text instead of CSS giving everything uniformity.

I'm discovering an immense pleasure in just making things for myself again. People may visit my website, sure. But mostly, it's for me. It's a space where everything is my horrible cheesy aesthetic. I hope the old net renaissance sticks around because god, I'm sick of web whatever the fuck edition this is.

On a positive note, my roommate gave me some really great socks. 

Long Live Org XIII

Anyway, I'll have another update up soon, probably. I'm working on customizing a pair of bluetooth headphones I got as a gift from my roommate and i plan to make it into a little craft-along/tutorial.

Reintroduction, Realization and Reinvention...

From a photoshoot I did with a friend shortly
after getting my lip pierced at the end of July.

Long time, no see blogger. Some things have changed since I last actually posted here -- like, a lot of things have changed. And honestly, it's all been for the better, in my opinion. 

So, about three years of news to update readers on, huh? I think one of the most obvious things is that I'm finally out as a trans guy now. I had my original "realization" that I was a guy back in 2009 at the tender young age of 17. I was living with conservative queerphobic parents at the time and while I kind of socially transitioned for a little bit, I eventually went whole hog into pretending to be a girl again... 

From 2014 (when I left Wisconsin, moving to Rural PA, 14 hours away from the rest of my family) onward, started to experiment with gender and try to figure out what I was and what felt right to me -- going from woman to genderfluid to nonbinary femme to nonbinary to bigenderflux and (for now, at least) settling on nonbinary trans man.  A very gender nonconforming trans man but that's what makes me happy -- and being happy is what matters most to me in my life. 

I ended up mostly homeless at the end of 2018 but my boyfriend and I were lucky enough to have found some amazing friends with whom we're kind of still staying -- the problem with rural towns is that landlords from big cities come here, buy up all the cheap housing and think that a town with almost no full-time labor can afford Pittsburgh's rent. 

Channeling the 80s with leopard print

Physically, my health has kind of continued to decline, which is deeply unfortunate. I don't really get to go places very often because "going places" requires walking, which on a lot of days is something I'm really not up to doing and my wheelchair is sadly not in good condition anymore. I just recently started new medication for my arthritis though and so hopefully that will result in a decrease in my pain and allow me to move around a bit more.

The summer weather, however, is really not helping with being able to go places -- since there's a good number of my medications that cause it to be more difficult to deal with the heat and shorts are a nightmare for my dysphoria, apparently! I'm experimenting with my fashion a bit more and trying to figure out what kind of "masculine" looks make me happiest and what feels the best to me.

A very blurry photo from karaoke
(8/5/2021)

In 2018 I also started going out to karaoke! Which has been fantastic for my self-esteem and also for overcoming some of the problems I've had with my singing voice thanks to overly critical voice coaching courtesy of my mother. I'm eventually hoping to start creating my own music again at some point in the future and instead of doing the old "girl with an acoustic guitar, vaguely indie sadpunk" style I was doing before I'm hoping to lean in to goth and industrial styles -- channeling my love for Nine Inch Nails, Sisters of Mercy and Blutengel into something that's more listenable than me badly playing acoustic guitar and scream-singing about my mom trauma (though I cannot guarantee there won't be scream-singing about mom trauma in the future).

Mostly though, I want to start actively posting again because there's a near total lack of fat goth dude representation out there and someone needs to get that started. On top of that, I'm getting exhausted with the algorithm-driven, instant gratification-centric, constant content creation & comparison model of most social media. It's exhausting to feel that kind of pressure to constantly create and constantly be offering myself up. Especially since social media like Twitter really encourages a lack of nuance and proper understanding... Not to mention the fact that sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Instagram are all loaded with weightloss bullshit and actively work to repress self expression and punish adult content creators (I'm a former online SW and I'm also an erotica writer who makes illustrations for his work so...) As such, I'm working to create an online presence for myself that's a bit more detached from that sort of thing.

A recent OOTD 

Starting to work on my blog again is part of that -- the other part is creating a website for myself on neocities.org! (Which you can find at http://ex-rosa-per-noctem.neocities.org -- or just click the "personal website" link in my sidebar). It's absolutely designed to look as "retro" as possible -- based around the kinds of websites I made for myself back in the day (2004) and it brings me immense joy to look at. You'll be able to find my writing and art there (once I get my art uploaded and the pages finished). It's very, very much under construction at the moment, lol. 

So, what does all of this mean for my blog? Well -- I'm not really going to change much. I still want to focus on goth fashion and try to do more DIY type posts because the commercialization of goth is beginning to irritate me in my approaching middle-age. Spending time with cranky elder goths is fantastic except that one begins to develop a very "get these whippersnappers off my front lawn!" sort of mindset. Not to mention I'm just going through a very nostalgic period and deeply longing for the days when goth didn't look so perfectly put-together and not everyone was an influencer doing promos for K*llstar, D*llskill and Bl*ckcraft...

In addition to all of that, I started T in February and I'd like to occasionally talk about that as well as just making posts about living as a trans goth guy in a rural area.

I think that about covers it for now! I'm looking forward to making a comeback and hopefully I can actually stay somewhat consistent in posting, lol.

Photo Gallery ("recent" photos I like)

 

Going to Try to Start Posting here again...

 I'm kind of getting tired of the rest of social media and want to do more to cultivate my own spaces so I want to post here on my blog more often. Uh it's gonna take me a bit to actually get stuff back together but yeah. Also, turns out I'm a trans man!