Observations

The naming of Demonkind implies differentiation from other identities, practices, and paths. With any such identifying name or symbol it does not serve you to accept everything in the package without question.

For example you may admire the social welfare positions of “progressive” Catholicism, but that faith has an astoundingly brutal and rapacious history as well, and the one aspect does not cancel out the other. Many associate Buddhism with an image of non-violence and generally benign character, but recently a sexual-abuse scandal tore apart a large and successful American Buddhist organization, and in Burma mobs of Buddhists have gone on murderous rampages against members of other faiths. Satanists proclaim themselves opposed to social tyranny, but a lot of them have no problem with misogyny, racism, and such, as long as they don’t feel any negative effects themselves.

That apparent contradiction between values and deeds may be unavoidable considering humanity’s long history of self-serving violence. Just look at the glaring discrepancy between the teachings of Jesus –explicitly about feeding the poor, treating the infirm, and overturning capitalism– and the exactly opposite behavior of people that claim to worship him, like a Bizarro World religion. If Demonkind becomes widely known, over time, we can expect that someone claiming our name will inevitably act out in some way totally opposed to our stated values.

Sometimes those reversals come from the top. Practically every week we hear about a bishop or senator who molested children, or who covered up those stories to protect the molesters. Occult group leadership too often includes white supremacists and antisemites. We take it for granted that nearly all cult leaders coerce sex and money from their followers, and that the supporting officers of the cult do whatever they can to protect the leader and gaslight the victims. But again, this does not belong only to “cults”, it happens in nearly all religious, political, and philosophical associations, anywhere a seeker -like you- may look for belonging and meaning. A powerful predator, or a culture of deceit and disempowerment, or a disappointing failure to abide by the supposed values of the group, awaits you.

Choosing Forked Paths

In many cases the problem is that the paths have such a wide embrace, or such abstract terms, that they do not prevent wildly different interpretations, leaving endless room for abuse. For example “paganism” includes a stupendously broad range of roots, and modern branches, with no easy way to clarify what you mean by the term. Even if you get into specific paths, such as Asatru or Vodun, they encompass a widely divergent range of teachings and personal or regional histories. And of course bad actors lurk in them all.

You may also discover that the path you chose has elements that you wouldn’t normally approve of, in any other context, but that you’ll let slide because of your attachment to how it makes you feel to belong to that community. We typically come from difficult or traumatic backgrounds, so when we find a group that wants us, that treats us as members of a big family, that feeling pushes a LOT of emotional buttons and it overrides the critical thinking that might have protected us otherwise.

We observe this any time a prominent figure gets called out for bad behavior, and their devotees say “but think about all the GOOD they’ve done” or “I love their music so much, haters gonna hate” or “they always treated ME well”, so the devotee doesn’t have to take those accusations seriously. Maybe you noticed that the meditation guru gets a bit handsy with his acolytes, but he’s sharing his holiness with you, so you don’t complain. Maybe you heard that your group has a history of association with racists, but everyone seems really nice, so you chalk it up to gossip or bygone days.

So: none of the paths rule out harmful misinterpretations; anyone in the family, including the holy leader, could end up abusing your trust; and people want so badly to belong that they will allow their in-group to continue doing harm. Does that mean you should reject all organizations, and all identifying labels, quit them or never join? Well…

Hold Them Accountable

Firstly of course you need to protect yourself. Belonging to a family does not mean accepting abuse from them. Even “real” blood family, your parents and siblings, do not have some inbuilt right to treat you badly. You may feel obligated to them in many ways, but you do not owe them your own pain or silence! Obviously this holds especially true for “chosen” family such as a spiritual or magical group identity. You can take steps to get the best out of having such a family without having to lie, suffer, or allow others to suffer.

In cases of domestic abuse the best advice is to leave. Abusers will always continue to repeat their destructive behavior, no matter how much they apologize, no matter how much they say they love you, no matter how much they say they’ve changed. They may even behave tenderly and respectfully for a little while, but they will revert to abuse soon enough. Do not pretend otherwise. To be safe, assume the same thing about teachers and groups that have a history of gaslighting, ostracizing members who complain, or a code of silence. Leave and do not look back. The pain and difficulty of tearing yourself free does not come anywhere close to the tragedy of staying on such paths.

When you have gotten to a safer place, speak up if you can. This depends on the violence of the specific people you left, and your own sense of security and ability. But your silence can strengthen the confidence of the abuser, whereas speaking up can strengthen the confidence of other people in the organization that have also suffered; so alerting the public about your experience can bring many more voices together, to effect a change that you might not have felt you could achieve on your own. For concrete examples, look to the #metoo movement, or to recent documentaries exposing Scientology.

When you feel that the concerns you have don’t warrant such an extreme response, you can apply the techniques of behaviorist theory to get more satisfactory results from a problematic person or group. For example you can look for a way to encourage sympathetic members of the organization to press for greater transparency, or rules against unwanted sexual advances, without directly accusing the leader of the group, and without making all the members feel attacked or blamed. Maybe you can create an opportunity for positive publicity, in the form of a human-interest news article, about a “traditionalist” path updating its tenets and practices to reflect modern ethical standards. Gurus LOVE publicity, especially when it casts them in a good light.

Forging New Paths

Throughout the history of humanity, dissenters have broken away from established belief systems, in reaction to the flaws and toxic history of those systems. Sometimes those schisms went on to become vast establishments themselves, while others remained smaller and more personal.  Of course at all scales they involved people who went on to hurt and disappoint others. But the point is that you do not have to settle for a path that demands you suffer in silence. You can either create your own path, if you feel so inspired, or you can read and explore among the currently erupting inflorescence of new micro-organizations around the world.

If you need familial support, find a path that can actually provide that support, instead of empty promises meant just to acquire more followers. If you want to be part of a movement with greater political clout, find one that allows room for internal dissent. For one current example, the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) has their share of problems, but they do allow new caucuses to form, vote, have their own beliefs, and take their own actions. In a contrary example, TST has reacted to dissent by shutting down local chapters, restricting communication paths, and trying to silence anyone who complains.

Demonkind exists because we could not find any other identity that supported our our beliefs. It waits here for you, too, if you happen to share our values. We have attempted to mitigate the potential for the abuse of power by building Demonkind as a groundwork of philosophy rather than a physical organizing body. On the plus side this means far less chance of any sort of mistreatment. On the negative side we don’t have much to offer yet in terms of group activities or the embrace of a family. That balance may change over time; we will shape our policies in accordance with this evolution.

We emphatically welcome your input, including dissent, because we mean for Demonkind as a whole to learn, grow, and correct its errors. If a dispute should ever arise between fellow Demons, we would insist on transparency in the process of resolution, and accountability for all people involved. If anything, we identify this way precisely because we want to hold ourselves to a higher standard than other paths, a standard based on mutual appreciation rather than subservience.

Even if you choose not to call yourself a Demon; even if you feel more strongly drawn to a path that offers more familial engagement, or promises more power, or follows gods that you believe in; you can take what we have written here and bring it with you along those paths. You can hold yourself, and that identity, responsible in the manner we’ve described. Ask the questions that may nag at the back of your conscience. Speak up if you suspect anyone is taking advantage of their power. Know that you have the strength and the right to deny anyone power over you. And most of all, please remember that we ARE here for you, you can reach out to us at any time. We see -and welcome- the Demon in you.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus, known as “the Dark”, “the Obscure”, or “the Weeping”, had a significant documented influence on other philosophers of his era (around 500 BCE), but most of his own writings did not survive to the present day. Only a few fragments remain, for us to unravel, including the line “ethos anthropos daimon”. This usually gets translated as “the character of a man is his fate”. Ethos means character, and anthropos means man or person, but what about daimon?

Academics have largely decided that in this case it refers to a spirit that controls your destiny, and therefore to destiny or fate itself. But this has some problems. First, if a spirit or a dispassionate fate controls your destiny, then what does character have to do with it? No matter how you change your character, either your fate stays the same regardless, or the idea of fate gets reduced to the obviously false “good things happen to good people”.

Secondly daimon had a variety of other meanings, both in the immediate context of Heraclitus, and later as the idea traveled and changed. It could refer to an inner voice that advises you, or the spirit inhabiting a place, or the supernatural source of unfamiliar thoughts or events. With those interpretations “the character of a person” would come from whatever guides or inspires them outside their usual habitual thoughts. And of course daimon gives us Demon, so then a person’s character would come from their Demonic nature.

Heidegger (a despicable person, but deeply studied on this subject) translated ethos anthropos as the familiar places or ways of humankind, and daimon as god or “the unfamiliar”. In this framing, the accustomed or ordinary situations in which we live are also openings for the entry of the divine or the extraordinary.

Heraclitus got the nickname “the Obscure” because he did not explain his meaning clearly. So it falls to modern readers to make their own interpretations; and from our perspective, the translation of daimon as “fate” falls rather short. It implies a fear of acknowledging the more spiritual possibilities of the word, in favor of a toothless and inoffensive aphorism about getting what you deserve.

Demonkind broadly uses daimon/Demon to indicate the part of ourselves that has awoken to the ancient spirit shared among us. The seed sprouts, and we become able -even eager- to change and grow, and our inner senses open to the extraordinary spark of spirit where before we only saw the grind of material life. We feel the sun warming our upper reaches, and we feel nutriment flowing from below, from the dead that preceded us.

The word eudaimonia usually gets translated as “happiness” or “well being”, and centuries of philosophers have debated how to achieve this state, establishing whole schools of thought about it. Etymologically eudaimon reads as “good demon”, meaning either a literal spirit creature of goodness, or an inspiration toward goodness. Eudaimonia therefore is a condition where the spirit of well-being has affected you in some way.

We propose the word daimonia to represent the state of heightened awareness of the Demon inspiring us, in their swirling blend of “good”, “evil”, and indefinable. We call upon you to recognize this daimon, to embrace and honor it, in yourself and in everyone you meet. This becomes your ethos, your character; and every moment of every day reveals a new opening for the unexpected, the divine, the Demon to appear, and transform you from within.

I’d like to tell you about the origins of Demonkind (in the sense that we use that term here). I don’t normally write in the first person, because Demonkind is a generalized premise for you, for all of us. But it springs from visions that I have experienced for many years, and the reasons for its aesthetics and eccentricities come from my personal story.

My parents rejected their own strict religious upbringing, and they taught me atheism and disdain for authority from the beginning: no god, no law, no meaning, no direction. Unfortunately, like many others in that reactionary position, they offered nothing actually helpful in its place–just that we individually strive and stumble through life, we die, and worms eat us, The End. This viewpoint seems rational enough, but rationality did not keep them from generally treating other people with prejudice and hostility, and of course that behavior rubbed off on me by example.

We moved all around the continental US, to a new home about twice a year, which made it impossible for me to keep friendships or build any other attachments. They did not teach me any social skills other than criticism. They fought constantly, each tried to turn me against the other, and they called me stupid and unwanted all the time. To cope, I dissociated, and I read books voraciously.

In reading, I found not only the universe of lives and worlds inside, but also philosophy and spirituality. I read about mystery schools, and monks and witches around the world, and I longed for that sort of exaltation, and for the idea of belonging to an ancient order that kept the secrets of the unseen world. Pretending to have powers, I’d wear “magic rings” that I got from those gumball machines that sell trinkets in little clear plastic eggs. I especially prized skull rings with jeweled eyes. When my mother would catch me mumbling spells, she scolded “you know magic isn’t real, right?”

Over time I dabbled in a wide range of groups and philosophical studies: Sufism, Buddhism, Baha’i, and several branches of paganism and occultism with European roots. They all had strong merits, and beautiful art and literature, but invariably something in their dogma or liturgy would conflict with my deeply-indoctrinated atheism and antagonism toward authority and society. Additionally, I had a hard time investing any belief into details like holy names or ritual requirements, as I saw no reason to accept that any one group’s set of those had more inherent validity than any other.

Satanism enticed me, between its Gothic looks and its overt embrace of societal antagonism, but something kept me from identifying with them. I met LaVey a few times in the 1980’s, and he kept a pleasant demeanor, but most other avowed Satanists I met in those years were arrogant, hostile, and creepy–and not in a good way. I did love their Elvira aesthetics, but I did not want to celebrate selfishness, nor associate myself with narcissistic or mean-spirited people (though my own behavior toward others was not great either).

During one LSD trip I had the fairly common experience of viscerally seeing the connectivity of all life, matter, and energy in the universe. In most people, this perception wears off within a few days, as their ego reasserts its control over their consciousness. For me it went dormant for a bit, but then re-emerged in my awareness, in gradually stronger and more persistent intervals. I began to have clear waking visions of how we all emanate from the same pool, literally drawing atoms from one another, and sharing complex systems across the arcs of both our own lifetime and all lifetimes.

For many years, I could not reconcile these visions with the difficult time I had actually connecting with other people, or functioning in schools or jobs. Once again I dissociated and sank into depression. My visions did not subside but they turned deathly cold. Instead of an enormous living organism, I saw the grinding gears of an unfeeling machine made of endless dust. It still interconnected, more or less, but it did not matter or mean anything.

I stumbled along, torn between attempting to function in a socially acceptable way, and my persistent visions of how little any of our efforts mattered in the void. Applying for jobs, I couldn’t help but imagine the interviewer decomposing in front of me, like a time-lapse educational nature film. While I tried to “do the right thing” in various external ways, pro-environment and anti-war, my consciousness of universal indifference kept me from really investing myself in other people. I made incessant sarcastic jokes to avoid caring too much.

Over time I learned how to bottle up and diminish my visions, in service of behaving the way other people demanded, and paying the bills. Relationships and careers came and went, and I continued to move around the country. With each partner I did manage to learn better skills for building and maintaining relationships. I knew that I needed to develop those abilities, in order to live with some emotional or mental comfort, but I still had a hard time translating my visions of interconnection among all life into actually treating other people that way. I went to therapy and did the talking and reflecting, but real healing evaded me, because my sense of personal alienation kept me from bridging that divide. This struggle still haunts me, and up to a certain recent point I avoided reaching outward with my work.

In 2016 we elected an absurdly repugnant president of the United States. All the previous presidents had their own terrible problems, but this cartoon nightmare signaled a sharp change for the worse. The next morning, I decided to donate some money to The Satanic Temple, as they seemed like the activist group doing work I could most personally relate to. I liked how they grafted a positive ethos onto the aesthetic of Satanism, so I got a membership card; but very soon I saw that their religious trappings served only as a prankish scaffold for their legal actions and self-promotion.

I joined their local chapter, thinking some physical and social activism would make it all more substantial for me, but unfortunately this group had dismal leadership and only a flimsy idea of what they were doing. I challenged them on their philosophy and intentions, which they did not appreciate, and they kicked me out. Later on I discovered the national organization was infested with racists and misogynists anyway.

All of the paths and groups I studied had either failed to match what I had seen of the workings of the universe, or they failed to provide real help to people here on Earth. I set myself to meditation about this problem. As I contemplated, my visions heated back up, and new perceptions came. I saw creatures of purpose and vitality, with limitless physical forms, exploring the darkness around me. In one instance that struck me deeply, at first I saw only the endless void, but then I rotated in place 180 degrees, and faced all of humanity. I realized that neither perspective invalidated the other.

In that moment I started to once again see life flowing through everything, instead of just dust. I saw every injury and every nourishment rippling outward to the farthest cells. As the vision expanded, I wondered if I could find any way to reconcile this fairly universal spiritual conception with the tenaciously rebellious darkness inside me.

Embracing this challenge, I set to writing down page after page of thoughts. Soon it began to cohere around some core values that kept coming up. Some of them contradicted each other, while others only seemed to conflict until I tried new ways of looking at them together. It hit me that each apparent opposition exactly reflected the vision in which I turned from the void toward the living. Any object has more than one side, and we can’t perceive all the facets at once, but that does not mean the sides somehow cancel each other out, nor deny the core they share.

This realization, and the writing I had done, shaped up into a germinal set of beliefs that I could actually support. It occurred to me that other people out there must have had similar desires and disappointments in their search for meaning and belonging–so I decided to give it a name and publish the ideas I had so far. The name Demonkind clicked perfectly inside me as soon as I thought of it; initially I liked its devilish nature, but many other very important qualities behind the word came to light as I studied it further. Seeing my writing inspiring others has invigorated my commitment to follow through.

The deeper I work, taking my visions seriously rather than trying to suppress them, the more vividly the path clarifies before me, and the greater the sense of purpose and meaning I feel. The writings here have already changed, and will continue to change, as my perceptions change, as more of the path reveals its twists and byways to me. I hope that soon more voices will help define and develop Demonkind as an identity and practice, because I do not believe in only my own visions. After all, multiple perspectives unveil more of the truth. These pages do not exist to dictate, but rather to share my visions with you.

Science and faith have battled for ideological supremacy from the dawn of civilization. This battle takes place in both large and small arenas: the larger including theocratic empires and military-industrial capitalism, the smaller including our personal choices while shopping or arguing on the internet. And most of us have a harder time than we realize (or can admit) telling the difference between them.

For one thing, the two approaches get blurred and conflated all the time. An authority figure states that X is true, and because we believe in their authority, we accept their claim as truth. In nutrition, for example, a mix of science, profiteering, and hubris regularly causes widespread fads of consuming or avoiding various fats, carbohydrates, or proteins. Most of us don’t have the scientific tools, skills, or inclination to independently verify whether these dietary edicts really do us more good than harm.

In order to actually understand how life (and everything else in the world) works, we have to challenge assumptions and make experiments to test what we believe. This includes the realms of spirit, metaphysics, and magic. If the results of a test cannot be duplicated by another person then we have to question our own findings.

In many cases this standard will knock a lot of “woo” spiritualism right out. You can have a strong feeling that you communicated with beings from another dimension, but what evidence shows that it did not all happen in your imagination, excited by incense and chanting? That said, if you experience something strongly enough then nobody can take the reality of that experience away from you. To consciously interact with magic or spirit requires someone willing and able to step outside their limiting thought patterns. But we must continually apply the scientific method in order to have confidence in our interpretations.

Faith in Science

People raised on faith tend to accept the declarations of ministers, prominent community figures, and holy books because of deeply-ingrained indoctrination that critical thought should not conflict too much with those sources. But believers in science can make the same error, blindly trusting the claim of a scientific authority, without sufficient testing. The word “scientism” describes this ideology. People in this mindset will take scientific ideas, and abstract them out to erroneous conclusions by misunderstanding the underlying principles, and ignoring contradictory data–sometimes intentionally. They do this while claiming to support only rational thought.

Reactionary extremists such as flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, and audiophiles believe only what their intuition tells them. They reject any corrections from actual scientists, as either propaganda from nefarious corporate illuminati, or ignorance from those who lack the ability to perceive “the real truth” on their own. These deep thinkers will seize on a science-like tidbit they read somewhere, that supports their belief, and extrapolate it out to a fanciful end. They need the science that gave them their idea in the first place (and the ability to communicate about it online), but they reject any science that challenges the original findings or the interpreted conclusions.

This brings us back to the fundamental key of science: it inherently requires challenges by ever-advancing tests. When people say “science is bullshit” because findings published by scientists in one year get overturned by others later on, they miss the point that science has no end. As researchers experiment, gather new data, and refine their analysis, they may adjust or reject even the most widely-accepted earlier claims–as long as other scientists can repeat the new results in their own tests.

Ethical questions

Science has frequently conflicted with ethics over the centuries. Scientists, usually in the service of a corporate or political master, have made some terrible decisions that lead to innumerable deaths and ongoing torments. Racial classification, nuclear and chemical weapons, psychiatric and medical abuses of women and the poor, and monoculture of crops have all caused deep harm on a scale we can barely comprehend. Ideological agents use the science of social engineering to spur deeper tribalism and hatred, instead of using the same technologies to bring people together.

We’ve seen an argument that atheism is inherently racist, because atheism promotes science, and science promoted eugenics and crimes like the Tuskegee syphilis study. But for every example you can come up with where science got blamed for harm like this, the actual culprits were always racism, capitalism, colonialism, and related systems of oppression. Those forces used science to further their objectives. You can use a knife to kill someone, to perform a life-saving surgery, or to spread peanut butter; it depends on the intentions and abilities of the person wielding the knife. Science did not do any of those things on its own, and atheism itself has nothing to do with whether people use science to abuse power.

Additionally, at the same time as some people and institutions committed crimes against humanity using science, other people used science to discover microbes, understand more about nutrition, develop cures, improve accessibility, and communicate quickly across great distances. If you think you would prefer to live without science, first think about how even the smallest of injuries or disabilities would lead to an early death, or at least prevent you from participating in society.

Think about early humans discovering how to knap flint, to plant and harvest crops, and later to forge metal–each of those developments came from the application of science. Even primativists, who long for simpler indigenous lifestyles, would depend on the sciences of tracking, shelter-building, foraging, and healing. All of these involve testing, learning about the causes, effects, and conditions for success, and communication of this knowledge with others, who can then test the process themselves.

Some scholars say “science” is a recent invention, born between the 16th and 18th centuries CE, because that is when Europeans began recording scientific theories based on evidence, and opening those theories up to the test of repeatability by others. Yet this ignores -even erases- centuries of scientific work performed outside Europe. When looking at achievements such as the pyramids of Egypt, Europeans and Americans have found it easier to suggest space aliens must have built those, rather than accept that older cultures had some fairly advanced means of studying and communicating their own technologies.

What to do?

In spite of their innocence -in the abstract- from good or evil, neither atheism nor science includes any inherent means for distinguishing right from wrong. Consequently they are easily adapted toward abusive people and purposes. Various groups have written manifestos or established committees to address this problem, but none of these come with the same sort of ingrained societal belief that early cultural leaders established through religion.

This establishment came about through colonialism and other forms of cultural domination. We must note that religion itself has a thick, deeply entrenched history of abuse, mass murder, and toxicity that equals anything one could attribute to science. Some trolls like to point to the millions killed under the rule of “atheist” Stalin, but those millions died due to imperialism, not irreligion; and again, untold millions more have suffered and died in the name of Christ or Allah.

We cannot presently go back in time to change the way humanity has developed to this point; but until our species finally expires altogether, we can build fresh new architectures, new trellises or waterways, to direct those lives now growing, and the generations to come. So the challenge before us is to simultaneously build trust in the scientific method, and frame that trust in guidance toward compassion and away from venal or amoral misuse.

Humanist organizations have done good work toward this goal, and they deserve our financial and vocal support. Whatever your personal belief system or political affiliation, you can find ways to promote scientific study over faith, while also promoting ethical and compassionate values in that context.

We founded Demonkind on this premise. Though just a new and small philosophical entity, we believe that a tiny pebble thrown can cause wide ripples to spread. We understand that for each of us to grow past the harmful actions of our ancestors -and ourselves– we must gaze unblinkingly into the darkness; we must accept the truths that we wish we did not see there; and we must make the correspondent changes in our actions that will help everyone become more free. As scientists we engage in ongoing experimentation, observation, and refinement of our understanding and our practices. As Demons we do so with a fire in our hearts for uplifting people rather than amoral systems.

I wrote this dragon essay as a speech, hoping to present it at an annual conference of “Left Hand Path” practitioners held locally this year, but the organizers did not respond to my inquiries. I suppose the collectivist nature of our message might have put them off, since some of the main participants have asserted that the Left Hand Path exclusively means individualism and the deification of the self. Even if we took that as an unassailable definition, the fact remains that most people need the support of family, peers, or perhaps an entire community in order to thrive, whether they realize it or not. Even Satanists crave love and respect. -N.K.

~~~~~

The Dragon: Individualism is Not Enough.

Historically, practitioners on the Left Hand Path have promoted a core tenet of individual power: the self as a god, me against the world, übermensch versus sheeple, and generally the acquisition of secret knowledge and powers for one’s own benefit.

European folktales and occult imagery commonly use a dragon to represent this motif, and it is no accident that many on this path identify with the dragon. The stories describe it as immensely powerful, ancient, beautiful, mysterious, independent, amoral, and almost invincible. It isolates itself inside the depths of a mountain, only venturing out to eat and plunder.

But this raises a mountain of questions. Why does the dragon hoard treasure, what good does that do? Certainly the dragon must take some pleasure in it, but we know that retail therapy only makes us feel better for a brief moment — then we slide down to the same level of emptiness and need that we felt before. As Americans we typically respond to that crash by just acquiring new things all the time, trying to fill the gap and chase that endorphin rush; but what if isolated hoarding -whether of objects or of esoteric knowledge- was not actually an effective means for dealing with those feelings?

Is the dragon happy or satisfied with its life? Most of the time stories depict dragons as either sleeping or burning up people and villages. Maybe we don’t really want to spend our entire lives either asleep or in pointless conflict. Notice too that the dragon has a vast hoard of gold and jewels, but he still steals his meat from poor farmers. The villagers bring him their virgin daughters as offerings, to assuage his wrath, but it never works.

Is the dragon wise? Their venerable age and inscrutability makes us think so, but maybe their lizard brain does not have the capacity for anything beyond hoarding and eating. And even if they were in fact deeply intelligent and steeped in wisdom, they are not generally known for using their wisdom in any way, nor helping anyone else learn anything useful apart from “don’t wake the dragon.”

For people who don’t see themselves as the dragon, the “hero” is the young man who breaks into the mountain lair and kills the dragon. The king then rewards him for it with wealth, a property wife, and a prestigious title. We raise our children to believe the dragon’s only purpose is to be killed–in order for its killer to be granted the privilege of having power over other people. The stories may start off with the altruistic wish to stop a scary monster from harming the villagers, but it always ends in a metaphor for individualism, converted by the sword into a literal description of the worst aspects of patriarchal capitalism.

So–if the dedicated individualist, the dragon, doesn’t have any other point to his life beside defending his own preferential status; and if he’s traditionally doomed to death at the hands of a teenager fecklessly doing the dirty work for a feudal regime; then perhaps the folk stories of dragons contain a deeper message: that individualism is not enough.

In Biblical terms, theological artists painted the dragon to represent the empire of Rome. When stories from those books describe angels battling and defeating the dragon, they propose a fantasy that some higher powers will magically come down and save the citizenry from a cruelly unjust government. Most of us here can agree that no outside angels will ever save us; instead we must develop those higher powers ourselves, and fight the oppressive modern empire of apocalypse-fetish theocracy.

Dragon Family and Community

We notice that the dragon has no defenders. Nobody is sorry when he dies. What if the dragon had utilized its vast wealth and power to the benefit of the villagers? For one thing, they would willingly bring him sheep, he wouldn’t need to steal them; nobody would think to sacrifice their daughters to him; and the villagers would not need to ask some pimply-faced boy to clamber up the mountainside and stick a sword in him.

If the dragon had a support network to back him up, the story might end in a different way. But firstly we’re talking about a symbol of preciously defended individualism, and secondly neither arms races nor gang rumbles have ever worked out that well as a way of life. There’s always another force out there ready to humble anyone who thinks their group is so tough. Plus, if your gang is made up of ideological individualists, honestly you can’t trust them to stay by your side when things get rough—they will look out for themselves.

In order for a group of loner types to work as a community, either they must help each other on the expectation of reciprocity, or they must not actually be limited by the simplistic pigeonhole of a fairy-tale metaphor.

In either case, let us reflect on the theme of tonight’s festivities, “darkness indivisible”. We come here from a variety of paths, but with common interests, and I will take a wild stab that most of us think of ourselves as iconoclasts, outsiders, monks and witches studying secrets and living in ways that general society definitely shuns, if not outright forbids. We came here to share with each other and learn from each other. You might go a step further and buy each other’s books and t-shirts, or even sign up for Patreon or other digital subscription programs. This reciprocity is a great start, I welcome it gladly.

But what of the second option, the possibility that we don’t have to be stuck in the narrow bounds of an ideology of individualism? What if our belief in personal empowerment, shared by presumably everyone here today, could extend to a general belief in empowering all those around us?

When you lift up someone else, it does not make you lesser than them. Most of the time, it doesn’t even cost anything. People like to complain about pronouns, for example, but it costs us literally nothing to show the courtesy of using the right pronoun. Same goes for marriage, employment, and public bathrooms—it takes nothing away from one person to let another person live their best life. In fact, we can save ourselves from ongoing headaches and conflict that way, meaning it actually serves our individual best interest.

Sure, there will always be people out there whose only motivation is to take and destroy, whether from greed, narcissism, nihilism, or accelerationism. It makes sense to remove your support from such nasty pieces of work, to protect yourself and others from harm. We can love reptiles in general without clasping a venomous viper to our breast.

Similarly, you can feel kinship with the viper, alert to any incursion and ready to strike, without binding yourself in to only feeling that way. If our entire range of relations with the outside world consists only of twitchy irritation and violent reaction, with no principle beyond “don’t tread on me”, then that blocks you from experiencing a vast spectrum of lived experiences and other truths. Those blinders also prevent us from accessing many inner mysteries only seen by people who make themselves vulnerable and receptive.

None of that means you have to deny the aspects of yourself that resonate with the archetypes of the dragon, the viper, or any other fiercely independent creature. But we must not constrain ourselves so arbitrarily, to our own detriment. Just as the study and adoption of magical attributes expands our perceptions and abilities beyond the basic minimum of human existence, so too we can become so much more, so much richer in wisdom and power, if we allow ourselves to reach outside the narrow corridor of isolation that so many of us find familiar and comfortable.

Yes, society at large vastly under-appreciates the Left Hand Path. Yes we must revitalize and champion the strengths and mysteries of this path. But let us not fall into the easy trap of thinking that this one way holds all the secrets, or that we can thrive -individually or as fellow travelers- by denying ourselves the flexible strength and resilience gained by working together and supporting each other. By rejecting or belittling other vulnerable outsiders, we deny so much to ourselves. We have the potential to become so much more powerful by lending them our strength, respect, and shelter, bringing people to join us in our great Work.

Only in this way can we achieve the full potency and mighty conflagration of Darkness Indivisible.