What Drew Me to Satanism?

 I believe every human has a fundamental need to feel a sense of identity, and so did I. Identity is so powerful, that it even sways one's life and death, and it IS one of the greatest factors of modern politics. Lacking the sense of it inevitably leads us to chaos. This confusion makes us vulnerable to manipulation, mental issues, life tragedies, or any kind of immaterial relationship in life. 

The place where any values and directions didn't fill in does not easily replace as liberation and freedom some people have dimly dreamt of but they were void, anxiety, self-doubt, self-abhorance, and deviance that spread like cancer when I couldn't defend myself from social malaise and unhealthy domestic dynamics. It couldn't be ignored, and couldn't be covered up but something to be figured out or it might have choked me off if I let it grow. 

The pure impulse that let me search for life explanation would be the same as others who seek another path. But contemporary major religions seemed mostly outdated, stuck in the past as if we are still living in a medieval society without electricity, which seemed hardly plausible for me to build my future with the old books in the world where I can access hyper-intelligent AIs right away. As introverted and analytical as my personality has always been, I was a born atheist, not a person who mindlessly followed superstitions. 

But why not the Flying Spaghetti Monster? What about Raëlism? Aren't those all atheistic religions? There are hundreds of New Religious Movements out there! Well, I can't find any other religions that resonate with me as much as Atheistic Satanism. Honestly, I was surprised how it was reasonable, individual, aesthetic, and something that fits well with the philosophy I already had as if it was tailored. People in my congregation have been so like-minded, which has no reason to believe another.

PS. A member of Flying Spaghetti Monster asked me to join but that wasn't my taste, so I said "No, thanks." That's totally a parody.

Exploring the Connection Between Language and Religion: Discovering Satanism as a Non-Native English Speaker

I feel profound connections between religion, culture, and language. Before writing about my connection with Satanism, I'm going to describe the personality of English as I feel as a non-native speaker first. For example, I think there are grammatical forms and words that fit the situation in traditional religious communities. "He allows us to do it", "My belief has kept me from the danger of the temptation", "I'm destined to care for others, which is my calling", and so on. As Christianity has dominated Western societies, the religion and its customs are ingrained in English grammatically and vocabularily. I was surprised by how natural and comfortable their speech was when I watched the movie The First Omen. It was simple and optimized as if its language was born for people in the Christian orphanage. 

It cannot be more adequate to start the second paragraph with this famous quote: "Satan has certainly been the best friend the church has ever had" by our uncle Anton LaVey. Satanism is so cultural. It ironically reflects the most fundamental mindset of Christianity and changes it into a modern and rational philosophy with its dark aesthetics. Being the greatest critic, its words resemble Western societies' most favorable spiritual anchor yet use them to shine their shadow it has ever missed. "Blasphemous", "sanctimonious", "unctuous", "impious", and "adversarial", those words weren't something I had ever heard in my native language and opened my eyes to understand the underlying maps beneath easily noticeable elements on the surface culture.

It definitely has affected my thoughts and shaped a part of my identity. Adding related words to my dictionary, I found the context of Satanism was quite helpful in embracing my emotions and interpreting my life as an outsider. Even though my home country is located far away from the places where the religion has ruled, adversarial representations have more made sense to me who has struggled to be a misfit in primary in-groups. Those seemingly high-contextual styles to describe Satanism in English weirdly fit me(it was something like the YouTube Algorithm or YouTube recommendation). As it resonated with me, each word was coming alive and given its personal context.

My story is that having a new religion while learning the lingua franca can be pretty unlikely for someone. Most people in this world are learning their second language for their school mandatory or their monetary incentives. But let's think about it. Religion, culture, and language, those three things are highly relatable and have huge overlaps. Language learners should immerse themselves into the culture of the language they learn and the culture evolves with their religion. Seemingly improbable, however, it totally makes sense.

My Concern About Telling My Story in English(Unsolved)

Thread 1 (25/Apr/2024)

How do I guide readers(if anyone) correctly? Just simply saying my stories is not enough because I haven't lived in America since I was five and it was just 6 months. My stories may not be something to easily understand for some readers who don't share the same assumptions I'm trying to talk about. Maybe, doing a charity, joining a party, bringing my sister or a brother to a sports club, going camping, and doing outdoor sports would be great things to share with people living in the outgoing country(maybe not anymore nowadays perhaps). Stories about dogs and cats would be great, too! If the stories were about darker turns than that, racial and cultural conflicts would be another topic to discuss, maybe, struggling to be seen as a "shy Asian girl." stereotypes. 

However, all these stories above are not things happening here. The norms I had to deal with were COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. I have never actually been seen as a "shy Asian girl" because I have never been there and I just heard about it. What people actually expected to be when I was growing up was not a shy Asian girl because everybody was Korean, not even Korean Americans(there were zero Korean Americans), but a kind, conservative, smart ass who have nunchi(a superpower that allows me to catch all the things others wanted to say without words). I was an only child who didn't have any cats or dogs and almost every child was like me. There was almost no school that stressed the importance of charities here and we rarely throw a party and camping has never been a major hobby here. So, saying "my story" would NOT be like that. It was completely different. Nobody lives like a jock around me avoiding being seen as a smartie nerd. People even can't easily get married, giving birth and making a family isn't a default option here at all. 

So, my concern is, "How do I lead readers to what I want to say?" How do I make them understand that, for example, this doesn't mean loneliness, please read this as peaceful, and that doesn't mean being arrogant about myself but being embarrassed by knowing something nasty that I didn't know about posted in an online space? and being alone is too common which doesn't mean being too asocial and experiencing mental health issues is too common here but most people who admit having that issue commonly feel shame but me? How do I convey societal background knowledge and basic assumptions readers must know? and the last one, how do I make them understand English is extremely rarely used in daily conversation but people are mad at studying English while no English speakers who cannot understand Korean around? and that people who were really eager to learn the language but don't give a shit about what I'm trying to learn about with this language?

That's one of the reasons why I'm just dealing with abstract ideas since it's universal. I have no idea how to convey all these complicated underlying assumptions and biases made from different social environments. 

Thinking about My Happiness While Reading Cultural Psychology by Steven Heine

Translated version of a book I'm recently reading is Cultural Psychology written by Steven Heine. What intrigued me was the specific differences in definitions of happiness between Americans and Eastern Asians. Happiness is for Americans similar to excitement, on the other hand, for Eastern Asians it is similar to feeling peaceful. There are other comparisons between them. American people try to feel happiness as much as they can with excitement, however, Eastern Asians and other Eastern people aren't as interested in seeking happiness as Americans are. The book said it's because they value balance between positive and negative emotions. When Americans feel happiness as much as they can, then they tend not to have depression, on the contrary, Eastern Asians can have depression regardless of how much they feel the emotion. Also, people outside of Western countries tend to report more mixed emotions than Americans. Furthermore, Americans reported their last week happier than Eastern Asians since they actually reported almost the same level of happiness at the end of the day. 

How about me? That was just the general tendency to experience happiness in each group. Let me explain each element one by one. Do I think I need to have a balance between positive and negative emotions as an Eastern Asian? No. I don't agree with it. I want my emotional range should be in the area I can manage. There doesn't need to be a balance between the two of them. I need a comfortable amount of happiness with 80% of peaceful and 20% of exciting versions of it. I don't know about the exact link between depression and feeling various sentiments, so, I can't fully understand why some people from East Asia get depression even though they experience some happiness. I've heard some stories like, a woman who suddenly had depression while her friends didn't know why she did that because they seem get along well with each other. My friend in my college had a sudden depression, too, but I can't fully understand why is that. For me, maintaining a moderate level of happiness is crucial. It improves the quality of my life and productivity, and it allows me to have better chances in my life. But I don't want to be always excited, which would wear me out. 

That said, I tend to feel various combinations of emotions. For example, last week, I said "fun and boring" at the same time to describe my experience of a metal gig. It may seem weird and hard to understand for Americans but sometimes that kind of mixed feelings come up in my mind. Having seemingly contradictory emotions doesn't bother me because one feeling was from a factor, another feeling was from another reason, and so on. It isn't on a linear line but has multi-factors sort of. This was my observation of how my emotions work, and I didn't think about them deeply. When it comes to retrospection on my emotions, I actually don't tend to remember them, but I think I'm trying to remember how I felt at that moment as accurately as possible, which would be similar to Eastern Asians' trait which the book said.

Honestly, I rarely thought about what makes me happy. I did not want to be around people who make me too sensitive to my word choices and any types of people whom I hardly get along with. Feeling that I'm on the right path of my life such as knowing which job or activity I fit the most, feeling most things around me making sense and reasonable are important. Sensing my coherent identity and having logical opinions are other significant thing, which makes me feel safe and strong. Rather be seeking a sense of excitement all the time, I think avoiding things that make me nervous and annoyed brings more happiness in my life. Things don't seem to go right and not knowing what to believe and don't know even who I am are way more detrimental than not having exciting events with people. The former can be disastrous and a significant element that can lead to a mental health issue. For me, retrieving and seeking a sense of safety and building my strong identity is more crucial than most.

My Satanism v0.1(Update is needed)

I updated my viewpoint on Satan as a character who has a multi-faceted personality like a realistic image of a person. A character who has only the bright side doesn't seem realistic and cannot convey the dynamics of a human being. If Satan represents the empowerment of a person, of myself, a rebellion against tyranny or arbitrary authority, and the light bringer who gave knowledge to humans, then I should interpret him in more detail than God since Satanism sheds light on each human itself and not merely idolize him as Christianity did to God. 

The idolization of God is easy. It is like saying and reciting our God is the best, he is more than the sum of all the brightest qualities in the world, and his people who are the creation of him SHOULD follow all the values he said and SHOULDN'T deviate from it because to serve him as an idol. However, idolization myself isn't. I know myself in depth, aware of my strengths and drawbacks, and there are also things I'm proud of and want to hide from the public, as a human. In my own terms, empowering myself can't mean, shouldn't mean being a narcissist. 

As a person who is trying to empower me and acknowledge the thinking and emotions I create, I want to embrace all the things I experience no matter how society considers myself. It is a logical fallacy to deny or suppress a part of me and saying like that. I should be an enthusiastic advocate for myself if I really want to empower myself. Therefore, if my Satanism really means that, it cannot help but have round characteristics like a real thing that all bright and dark sides in my mind to the extent I realized. This would more make sense than considering cherry-picking on my traits as if representing me as a whole.

In this sense, I accept the general usage of words related to demon, devil, and something like that. It would be less contradictory trying to understand the concepts humans didn't know or were afraid of, generally speaking, have been vaguely referred to as 'demons' and ostracized. In fact, I think it's due to their ignorance that makes unable them to call it a more specific name which lets them know what the thing is. If there's something we are not able to name but just the demon or the devil signifies that we should figure out what it really is and how it works. It totally works as bringing the light onto what we didn't know previously just referring to them as demon, devil, or Satan. 

So, there's no room for idolization of Satan in my Satanism. I don't want to replicate the mistake of my past self or my parents, which means, I also avoid idolizing myself as avoiding "worship" Satan. My Satanism is totally aligned with intellectualism talking more objective viewpoints and the process of finding a problem and coming up with a solution isn't always rosy. There are almost always woes and difficulties that urge progress and people tend to "demonize" them. Let there be the light of knowledge that the morning star brings.

PS.  some nuances can be weird or vague. 

The Reason Why I Keep Thinking about Psychological Issues

Mental health issues are on the rise and it affected mine as well. Unfortunately, I wasn't raised in a truly calm and feeling-safe environment when I was young, and easily felt anxious at that time. So I keep reading and finding how to overcome my anxiety into more positive outlets and be more productive and creative. That was a form of intellectualization and sublimation in terms of the Freudian defense mechanism. 

In my journey, I found that one category of emotion cannot be simple. It isn’t one one-line definition in a dictionary. Rather, it affects other emotions that one could feel in his or her life, therefore, more knowledge and more insights are necessary to describe it. That's why dealing with emotions can be tricky. So, I sometimes had to be sensitive toward my own emotions which few people would have cared about. I’ve often tried to suppress and deny their existence, and I was literally physically sick because of the tension I got from my underlying unrest for a long time in my real life. So it was not a mere hobby nor a short-term interest but a real challenge to be tackled to reach and to keep a peaceful life in the long term. 

It has become a habit and a prolonged interest to care for my mental health. Regarding my habit of introspecting and caring about my psychological issues, I want to keep my passion and take it to a higher level to make more insightful and informative content to help others. I know there are a bunch of people who are struggling with their emotional problems. For myself and to help people who are struggling with these mental problems, trying to be more informative would be a highly important thing to have insights to deal with it. Especially, I want to know more about some cases related to psychological issues from verbal harassment and how to cope with its stress and negative impact.

(Revised 07/Apr/2024)

Possible Reasons for Miscommunication #1

Even though the general form of communication we tend to commonly think has its own unspoken rules, we often fail to get a grasp of the exact meaning of what others speak. I’ll briefly look at the reason for the miscommunication in terms of our cognitive biases.

People as social animals tend to figure out others' intentions when communicating, trying to understand whether they are good or bad and who shares the same point of view with oneself or has the opposite idea. Focusing on their underlying intention can be simpler and may feel like more concrete ground in a real-life relationship. However, this approach may make us feel lost when we should give more attention to our cognitive differences in conversation. Each personal expression and personal presumption may tend to deviate from the ideal verbal and non-verbal communication unspoken rules that we unconsciously premise. 

Those unique behaviors and understandings can be from our personal quirks or from a lack of ability to adjust themselves to the norm. The problem is that people are not good at detecting others’ particular biases. People can pick out just what they are able to interpret in their own biases and prejudices no matter what they actually assumed. Therefore, a tragedy happens; when others try to express something but with limited fluency or with an inability to convey natural non-verbal gestures, some people misread that as having bad intentions. In fact, people are not perfect, especially when it comes to the technical ability to properly organize and how to make others understand their intended meaning. 

For example, the duration of intervals in verbal communication can be interpreted distinctively. It’s natural for people to have them while they speak. Since it has no defined meaning itself, people may read the pauses differently, and different interpretations may lead to false assumptions and miscommunications. For instance, an individual may have a particularly long space between words and unusually attentive or inattentive staring, especially, by having a diverse neurological type such as Autism Spectrum Disorder or ADHD. With such a symptom, an individual can have an unusual attention and thinking pattern which might be seen as quite peculiar in the eyes of neurotypicals. Moreover, it may lead to unintended and unnecessary misapprehensions. 

It also can be derived from different cultural backgrounds as well, for example, people from first-world countries may interpret the unusual interval as a lack of confidence, whereas people from second-world countries may interpret it as a rebellion against their ideology. In this situation, the interpretation of others’ intentions may be arbitrary and done by supposition constructed by the interpreters’ environment. 

In conclusion, to overcome this form of miscommunication, we need to remember that there are a variety of cognitive biases and a bunch of possible ways to be understood by other people who see it from different perspectives and their ways of imagination. 

(Revised 07/Apr/2024)

Biased Mental Representation of Naturalness

We all know that there are more ugly things than good-looking advertised versions of it. However, there is also a simple reason we're seeking beautiful fresh-looking things more than "natural" unattractive ones; We want to be healthy and wealthy. For this reason, our society reproduces what we WANT not what is REAL. That massively reproduced BIASED data makes our artificial mental representation of what is real.

There are optimal states of naturalness in our minds. For example, an image of a "natural" apple can be fresh and shiny, but not perfectly symmetrical. For an antithesis, perfectly symmetrical with a monotonous red color and without any brown spots on an apple seems artificial, not natural. On the other hand, with multiple holes that bugs have eaten, brown or black-colored rot apples can seem unnatural, too. Even though there are more undesirable states of apples, we rarely think of those kinds of apples because we don't want them.

This phenomenon happens all over the place. There are a bunch of ugly, wacky, harmed, seemly improbable versions of realities more than the optimal "natural" images in our heads. Therefore, "natural" states are idealistic which is actually hard to achieve, and something that often requires lots of time and energy. People or things that don't have the desirable(by society) attributes the majority generally strive to have, have to discard their undesirable characteristics that they were born with and aspire to take the optimal versions of "naturalness".

This tendency every human has needs to be questioned and explored. In this society that strengthens our biases through the internet algorithm, analyzing our own biases is necessary, and examining exactly what biases we have and correcting what's truly real and fake is important. 

(Revised xx/Mar/2024)

Book Review: The Satanic Bible

Before I write about my impression of The Satanic Bible, I think writing about my cultural background is necessary. First of all, I'm not an American. There is no official translated version of the book here in my country and even there is zero physical copy of it in any offline and online local stores. Almost everyone here in my country doesn't know what Satanism is, what LHP(Left-Hand Path) is, what Wicca is, or something like that, and only the type of person who likes esoteric subjects knows occultism. Some people mix the general knowledge about the occult with Tarot cards, astrology, or some Eastern mythical things but that wasn't my taste. And most of them were interested in it because they wanted to get rich and succeed or just were curious. Praying to get rich is nothing wrong, but I needed another thing, a more constructive and coherent worldview that would make me grow. I searched for other concepts or religions online and I found the Satanism subreddit and the Wikipedia page. At that moment, I was reminded of that general concept of Satanism that I heard in the episode with Lucien Greaves of The Thinking Atheist podcast, and that general rational image of it drew me into the world. 

That time was the first met of The Satanic Bible. Despite my English being a bit limited at reading comfortably enough as a non-native, I tried to read the book and read about half of it. With other supportive materials such as posts on the Church of Satan homepage, online posts, Satansplain podcast, etc, at least I tried my best to fully understand what I wanted to follow. As time goes on, I've read books and audiobooks, podcasts, especially my favorite Hail Satan podcast and its Discord server, and some YouTube videos related to Satanism. And now, as the Satanic Delco, which is my favorite congregation, chose this book in its book club to revisit The Satanic Bible, I finally finished reading the book at the beginning again and was able to write my review on it. 

The first half of the book is aligned with my viewpoints, but the ritual part wasn't my thing. I honestly felt that it is too harsh to treat others cruelly without mercy who annoy me in my lair because people are fallible. People can't be perfect, especially on their first experience of anything. They might have not wanted to cross my realm intentionally. Why did Anton say human is just another animal like other animals, but are in the fantasy of having enough power not to make any mistakes? The person who crosses another's realm can be me. I'm not a TST member but I agree with this 6th tenet of them; "People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one's best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused." Yes, we are human. And I didn't read Might Is Right by Ragnar Redbeard and I couldn't find which parts Anton borrowed them exactly. I'm definitely against racism, sexism, and social Darwinism, and couldn't find any of them. I think I should read the Might Is Right later to know which parts Anton was inspired by. 

The ritual parts weren't very useful. There are a number of types of women and men. People have their own charm and energy no matter what types of beauty they have, which situation they undergo, and what ability they have. So why there are only three characters to describe witches and warlocks? A Satanist is their own God and why did Anton confine people in such roles and types when it comes to charm? He shouldn't suggest that if he follows true individualism. As I think this way, I want to find my way of personal rituals regardless of what is in The Satanic Bible. And I'm really curious how Anton really thought about magic. Is it really a psychodrama or does he believe in a sort of real power of magic like something in the popular book named The Secret? Whatever he believed, I don't believe in the Secret, because I'm a true non-believer.

The most favorite part was The God You Save May Be Yourself. I think this part is the backbone of Satanism. Treating myself as the most important person and knowing the fact that the entity who creates the world I perceive is myself truly empowers me and my life. It reminds me of a true sense of responsibility for myself and more confidence. An individual cannot forget themselves to seek the truth. The individual is the truth and God of their world. I think the most suitable title of the chapter would be "The God You Save Is Yourself." So "Indulgence" should be interpreted as the celebration of self to allow themselves to enjoy their world in this transient life. An individual shouldn't choke themselves to serve something that they have never witnessed, and make happy themselves first before expressing their sincere compassion to others. A person knows what they need and like the best; The energy should be in the right place to be consumed by a person who can satisfy the most than others.

He was a very intelligent and insightful man. I think he was very knowledgeable and the person I can learn many things from. I want to read his other book The Devil's Notebook, since it deals with interesting subjects I currently want to know about. 

This Is What Individuals Live For

An individual needs an identity to live, to orchestrate themselves and not to go insane. It requires control and order to be a human as a human. That is the unconscious reason why individuals seek to integrate their minds and their lives. The opposite form of integration would be a world of anomie and chaos, which means societal breakdown or internal disorder in the human mind. To keep themselves from being schizophrenic, and from having random interpretations of factual reality, an individual must cling to a certain set of systems that gives enough information a) to distinguish one from another, b) to maintain their unconscious motives of doing something coherently, and c) to find values to maintain their lives. Despite that it may not be true or may even be utterly untrue, identity can be maintained by supportive and coherent subjective information observed or forged by an individual.

Since losing the orientation of one's life is painful, the majority of individuals tend to continue to use their biases to align new information with their previous beliefs. Their underlying principles can be any type of ideology, from tribalism, nationalism, or collectivism to individualism, libertarianism, or anarchism. Based on these values, people cannot help but have unique biases to interpret their factual world and other people.

With a highly conscious mind, an individual can choose what they want to believe and how they can see the world. That's the freedom to reform their ways of thinking and perceiving the world, but this ideal condition is not something easily achieved by anyone. Thinking is a skill that has to be developed. Less biased perception can be achieved by perseverant recognition of how they truly see the world. Dealing with concepts requires a lot of time, and even the concept of "I" is not for free; It is an invention of human intelligence to recognize themselves as themselves and appreciate unique personal characters.

It is the beauty and it is the human misery of recognizing how a person sees themselves or how a collective group sees themselves. This is the world all loves and hates cultivated from the richness and the poverty of self; It is one of the factors of why some individuals are so strong in desperate situations and also why some individuals are easily crumbled in front of small hurdles. That explains why there are benevolent people who embrace others with love and compassion, while some people try to pulverize other groups with hatred to gain a sense of cheap superiority.

In a World of Disorientation

I sought to reject unhealthy beliefs at their core and from the fundamentals, to save myself and to live. No one understood me, but I should have done it; to prevent myself from a world where no particular meaning was everlasting and where all contradictory values collide. Inherited ideals were dead, the education once useful yesterday became obsolete tomorrow, and conventional parenting disoriented children. I wanted to rescue my soul from the anomie to keep my human decency.

---

Mental stability cannot be taken for granted. There was something I couldn't help but realize, something invisible which attracted my attention persistently. Dismantled, unbuilt, and antiquated ideas of the past lay beneath the conscious, yet, only a mirage was there as if nothing was eroded. However, a life couldn't be built in the middle of the air; a human wasn't a being can function in such a way.

---

Nothing but a meaningless continuum would be a form of psychological torture. Even when someone shouts at you, it couldn't be stimulation. It's akin to the noise of construction. When even wrongs can't shout at you, it doesn't mean a sense of liberation but pain, the pain of mere existence. 

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The ability of being able to tell a meaning from another is not a luxury. It's a necessity for survival. Dirt should be distinguished from food, red should be different from blue, and "I" is not "you." It is an insatiable instinctual human need. Proper discernment in every situation is like an oasis for a person who's dying of thirst. People can't live without their discerning eyes. Because avalanches of random lights and noises can never be a place where humans can thrive. Individuals have to see what is important and what is not, like, capturing a signal from noises.

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My therapist told me, "Your mother loves you." No, that was not the answer I wanted. I struggled to interpret her random words. It wasn't a matter of love nor a matter of dependence. I couldn't discern what was significant and what to trust in her words. But what made matters worse was my inability to explain what made me suffer the most; The inability to give the most proper understanding to her. That was a total disaster that made me feel disconnected even in front of my therapist.

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A set of beliefs is like a language. Almost all people have at least one native language. A human belief system is similar to it. They have their native ones, in other words, biases. But since I felt too many contradictions in my adolescence, I needed to rebuild it to make sense to me. That was a winding road for me.