Re: Reclaiming Lucifer Good message! Every known religion supplanted an earlier religion,

From:  Tim Maroney
  Re:  Reclaiming Lucifer

 Good message!

 Every known religion supplanted an earlier religion, and usually some
derogatory mythological niche was created for the deities and spirits of
the older religion when this happened.  In the case of Satan, he is a
fusion of our old friend the Horned God (especially in the Pan-form to
which he was best known by the Greek-speaking world) and the Judaic mythic
figure of Satan from the book of Job.  But far from the loyal prosecuting
attorney of Job, Satan as formulated to insult pagans was made into an evil
nemesis of God, and the exemplar of what to the pain-worshipping Christians
was "sin", that is, anything ecstatic and joyful.  Satan is constantly
telling us to get drunk, pig out on good food, and have sex in the
Christians' accounts, to which my reaction is "Amen".

 I think you have put it very well when you say that "Even though [new
pagans] have thrown off the chains of Jehovah they still fear Lucifer.
They cringe at the sound of his name." Over and over we hear this shallow
refrain, that witches are NOT NOT NOT Satanists, and I think:  Why the Hell
not?  There's more wisdom in any one page of William Blake's overtly
Satanic "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" than in the whole corpus of
Starhawk's work, after all.  (But then, Blake wrote sophisticated and
literate poetry, not folk tales, so few neo-pagans have read him.) What are
these people so afraid of?

 Not only are neo-pagans NOT NOT NOT Satanists, they are quite nasty toward
anyone who recognizes the deep truth of Satanism.  One widely liked member
of this board called me a "neurotic Christian-lover" for espousing the
reading of Blake and Shaw's Satanic works.  Needless to say, no neo-pagan
objected.

 Within the last month a person interested in invoking Lucifer had his
account removed by one of the sysops, who said the reason was that "he was
extremely abusive"; of course, he didn't mention that the guy started out
polite and only became abusive after the aforesaid sysop himself sent some
*very* nasty and prejudiced messages to him.  Again, zero objection from
the neo-pagans.

 Similar examples abound; but I think things are beginning to loosen up on
this front, thanks to people like yourself, and (I like to think) because
of my continued pounding on the counter-consensual drum.

 Tim

 PS.  You called for resources; aside from the Blake, there is Shaw's "The
Devil's Disciple", and you might want to check out Campbell's "Masks of
God" for more information on the mythic disparagement of older deities such
as happened to the Titans in Greek myth and various matriarchal deities.
Campbell's sympathies are clearly with the underdog.