I just wanted to say thank you.

Every time I have had exchanges with you via email you have been very honest and helpful.

I also want to thank you for the very hard (and I'm sure delightful) work you've put into the website. I immensely enjoy working through the readings and video lists, as well as the articles.

Shemhamforash!

As a newly registered member, here is a short bio about how I have arrived here.

Have you ever had a stranger supply a desperate need just at the right time? Often, over time, such persons become more than mere acquaintances. Other times the person becomes more odious as you get to know them. The later has been my relationship with the Church. The Church was there for me when I needed it (January 1990).

But after the initial emotional high of my experience subsided (which I have since interpreted as a psychological and social phenomenon, rather than a spiritual experience), and after I began to seriously study the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, and to pay close attention to the people I had affiliated with, I began to see beyond the thin veneer of piety into the hypocritical and atrocious reality.

The more I discovered about the Church, its general perspectives, and its doctrines, the less I fit in. This has been especially true during my time in the Catholic Church. The disillusionment was profound, and yet something still stirred within me for religious expression.

When I first began to read The Satanic Bible, it was more an exercise of finding out how “worldly” people were motivated and inspired. Being a churchman, I could look no "lower" than this book. The more I read it however, the more I saw my own perspective staring me back in the face. I also found within its pages a more congruent way to satisfy my desire for religious expression.

I found that my feelings of anger and frustration with Christianity was no mere matter of individual taste and experience, but was shared by a whole host of people within the Church of Satan. Since, the writings of LaVey, the articles on the “Theory~Practice” webpage, and the reading lists have fueled delighted the Black Flame with me!

I am glad to have found this message board. I continue to be find strength and joy in so many of the posts.

Although I am still affiliated with he Catholic Church (I am employed by a local parish), Satanism is my true path, and always has been. The position I find myself in now is a tough one. Being able to choose my own way through life, I have chosen to stay employed, for the time being, here at the church. (It’s a job.) Both my undergraduate and master’s degrees are from theological seminaries and all my employment for the last 20 years has been in the church, in one capacity or another.

I realize the curious position I hold as a staff member and an underground Satanist, but the quote I found from “The Brothers Karamazov” has given me a workable perspective until I am able to set myself up with other employment, “Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in your name, and beyond the grave they will find only death. But we will keep the secret, and for their own happiness we will entice them with a heavenly and eternal reward.

I am beginning to do a lot of writing in my free time on Satanic themes and hope very much to make a solid contribution to the effort.

By way of clarification, by "newly registered member", I mean of this message board, not the Church of Satan (yet).

Great! I look forward to reading some of your material, when it's available. There are benefits when you become an actual member, and part of it starts here. This is a great place to show off your talents. There are so many things to learn right here and the reading is endless.

Welcome to the boards, neighbor!

Thank you very much Waya! I am already enjoying the message board immensely, and I look forward to more.

Greetings,

It has been a while since I've posted here on a regular basis. I've been focusing a lot of time in other directions.

However, I'm coming back around these parts a little more, and I think, with a much better perspective.

Welcome to you. You have a very interesting occupation, I must say!

Hell-o, and welcome.

The nature of your job coupled with your inherent interest in Satanism may on the surface appear to be a contradiction, but in reality it need not be. There is no reason to closely identify with your job; it is just a source of income.

Well, good seeing you here, Bet'phage, and I hope you soon become a registered CoS member!

Hail Satan!

Thank you for the welcome, Mason_Rust, Wolfe, and Dax9.

And I agree with you, Dax9, on the job. I've actually been able to find interesting ways to make it not only entertaining but meaningful. I'm there for hours on end, I might as well.

I am also new to this board, so welcome to us!, and I stumbled upon this posting of yours. I very much enjoyed reading your inner travels, and smiled at the quote above. When I, personally, began reading The Satanic Bible, I had no idea what to expect! I have read The Christian Bible and thought that it was a very good story. However, reading the works of LaVey, I felt *exactly* how you put it. This is my own perspective! With Christianity, I would find something new to disagree on daily, or a new point I could make to disprove the existence of their deity. Satanism makes perfect sense, and is how I have felt for a very long time - even before I knew it.

I look forward to reading your future writings!

A belated welcome to you sir. To piggyback on what Dax9 mentioned, sometimes the insider knowledge makes for an interesting perspective so long as you do not identify yourself with it.

Thank you for your kind welcome, Stilts.

We're in it for the long haul. Stay strong.

Thank you, Psychotherapeut.

You are right, being on an inside track, as you put it, indeed makes for a very interesting perspective.

It took a while to get that perspective up and running. At first it was very challenging. It was hard to walk the razor's edge. Now that I've got the hang of it, it makes for a great Secret Delight. I wear my Baphomet Sigil just beneath my shirt each day. I tell people its my St. Christopher medal. Every good Catholic has one, don't you know?

To make the illusion more complete, I'm now a Lector (Sunday readings from the pulpit) and a Eucharistic minister (passer out of the wafers). It's an interesting experience: the darkness behind my eyes and the "holy" smile on my face meeting with those receiving the bland little crackers.

Sounds like giving the pills to the mentally ill

Ha! It kind of does. Not too far off, one might argue.

{{quoteAlthough I am still affiliated with he Catholic Church (I am employed by a local parish),
}

blah blah that sums it up does it not?

Eloquently put.

Those medications actually have a chance at working; they reduce psychotic symptoms, hallucinations, and delusions... not increase them... like "christ crackers."

There is no need to put words in my mouth. The essntial self hazzard will always relate to the self. VASCA will always win out! Hail VASCA! Hail SATAN!

I'm not sure I understand what you are communicating.

No need. The end result is always the same - thank you.

If more folks took an interest and did something then there would be no reason for a thank you.

Where are you guy's at?

I'm wondering, if you don't mind my asking, how you feel during those times...? When you're face-to-face (or hand/cracker to mouth) with those who look to you for salvation... what is it like? Such a deep secret to be kept, especially in the Catholic church. Is it an exhilarated high? Do you feel nothing at all? Are you, perhaps, amused by the situation in its entirety? Do you ever wonder, even for a moment, that they've seen the darkness within?

I'm curious by nature!

Each person that comes up to me in the long line of receivers is a different experience. It would be the same if I were a bank teller.

This is what I enjoy: meeting the gaze of the person, the facial expression of the person, i.e., the personality of the person. Each person is different, and I enjoy experiencing each person as such.

I connect with certain people in interesting ways too during those few seconds. There are different "acknowledgements" I experience with different people.

With some people I don't experience anything at all: they don't make eye contact, the get the wafer, pop it in their mouth, and go back to their seat. Others are very intentional about receiving the wafer: make eye contact, smile back, etc. Some are grumpy, some are distracted, etc.

I use it not as a religious moment, but as a human moment, a moment of personalities meeting.

Some may see the "darkness within," but in that context it's probably easier for them to think its something else, unless they're incredibly perceptive (and there are a few like that).

To me, that's rather fascinating. The lifestyles, let alone thought systems, are so polar opposite from one another. It makes me curious to know how many others are sitting inside the walls with clenched praying hands, all the while internally shouting "Hail Satan!" The situation as a whole is intriguing to me.

I very often repeat, internally, the 15th Enochian Key. I do this to "contribute" my own power to the atmosphere.

Many Christians fail to realize that their devotion is not "spiritual" but emotional, and those emotional "passions" are a very Traditional playing field for darker powers.

I do it all as a kind of running Experiment. I'm not there to disrupt or convert.

I think their experiences are psychological, which leads to an emotional overload. The human mind is a very powerful, and precious, tool.

I agree that the experiences are also psychological. Its like the chicken and the egg at that point. Does emotional response lead to psychological (cognitive) awareness and meaning (significance), or does psychologically preconceived meaning give way to emotional response?

Either way, I try to give some interesting Direction to it.

Valid point!

Which do you think comes first, emotional or psychological? Or, perhaps, there is no definitive answer, and it could veer in either direction depending on the individual and situation?

This may depend upon a person's experience and learning.

Some people may have a concept of some aspect of life and thus a philosophical/psychological basis for it, but do not really feel or have any emotional connection to it because they haven't actually experienced it yet.

Other people may be experiencing things for which they have no valid psychological or philosophical basis. So they may have emotions and feelings that run deep in the area concerned, but no knowledge of why or how. That may come later.