Observations

In the wake of the “Unite the Right” Nazi/Klan rally in Virginia, many Christians posted claims that such hatred could only come from Satan or “satanic people”, not from Christ or “true Christians”. In doing so, they flatly deny their own accountability for the culture that led to this tragic moment. As both TST and CoS quickly pointed out in response, the KKK and most similar racist groups have always had a fervently Christian foundation from their very beginnings.

It goes deeper than just the question of whether specific modern racists claim a specific religion, because the founders of every part of the colonized United States built this nation on slave labor and slave economy; and most of them proudly proclaimed that they did so in the name of the Christian God. Certainly you can point to some free thinkers that also owned slaves, and you can point to countless non-Christian cultures that endorsed slavery, but neither of those absolves Christians from their historic complicity in this large-scale crime against humanity.

Note that this crime continues unabated in not just outbursts like this rally, but less visibly in the prison industrial complex every day throughout the country, and in the fact that ideological racists have infiltrated and saturated police departments and law enforcement agencies at every level. Where is their accountability for the ugly state of our society?

Considering that American culture has both Christianity and racism thoroughly and ubiquitously embedded within it, from holidays to swear words to monuments, any pious person claiming that racist abuses must come from Satan instead of Christ has utterly abdicated anything approaching reality. Sure, once upon a time “Jesus” might have said some pleasant things about loving your neighbors, but the militarized empire of Christianity abandoned those niceties many centuries ago.

Modern Christians must take ownership of the actions of their parents and grandparents, and the ways those actions continue to injure people today, instead of pretending that a couple of quotes from their big story book releases them from accountability. They plead that “true followers of Christ would never teach hatred”; read here about the “no true Scotsman” fallacy, which applies thickly to this bit of hypocrisy.

Thus we come to the question of Satan. Some religionists mean to accuse a literal conscious entity outside mankind, an evil Anti-God pulling the strings of hapless human puppets who would otherwise not behave so badly. Naturally we laugh at such a sad fantasy excuse.

Others use the word satanic to mean something about our worse natures, our moral failings, our addictions and fears, which they pin on an abstract evil tendency within us. They claim those bad qualities come from turning away from Jesus, or from the most idealized parts of their religious teachings. To the extent that those ideals could lead people to treat each other more kindly, we would not actually disagree.

However in actual reality we have seen an endless parade of people cheating and tormenting others, all week long, and then showing up for church on Sunday with a pious smile and a righteous feeling in their hearts. Forever this culture brandishes the nominal ideals of their religion as a ward against taking any personal accountability for the way they fail those ideals in everyday life — rather like holding up a crucifix to fend off a vampire, when the vampire lives inside their own hearts.

They also use labels like Satan, satanic, devils, and demons to invalidate anyone who disagrees with them. Social media today absolutely drips with posts calling Democrats “demon crats” or “demonic rats”. They say “liberals” have sold their souls, or that demons have possessed them, or that Satan has literally incarnated himself as either Obama or Clinton. In every case these statements have just a single purpose: to label the opposing side as actually inhuman, subhuman, unworthy of consideration as a fellow person.

The whole “evil” aspect of the devil label is just gravy, a bonus feature, much less important than dehumanizing the other side in order to avoid accountability for harm to their lives. Military propagandists have often used the same tactic in wartime, painting the enemy as an inhuman devilish creature with features very different from our own. This really does make it easier to kill the enemy, as it blocks feelings of compassion for them. Of course it means not having to listen to their arguments for reason, empathy, or equality.

To even begin to approach actual healing we must hold ourselves, our history, and each other accountable for our words and actions. This does not mean shaming anyone, or feeling guilty. Guilt only makes us resentful and fearful, which causes us to put up walls and lash out irrationally. That is precisely why so many people hate “PC” or “SJW” scolding, and act out negatively in reaction to it. Instead, accountability means looking clearly and undefensively at how our actions impact the lives of other people, listening to those other people tell us what they need, and choosing to drop behaviors that harm them.

Accountability also means actions, not words. We can tweet and post all day long about our “woke” idealization of ourselves, but we need to convert these dreams into purposeful reality. We use the name Demonkind to specifically refer to our conscious choice to take that action. We make our lives better by owning our errors and making dramatic improvements to the way we present ourselves and relate to each other. We don’t get defensive, we get Demonic.

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Laughter helps us handle difficulties, but only up to a point. Certainly we love to laugh, and we value good humor and even simple silliness — however if we only respond to discomfort by deflecting with jokes, we fail to address the actual cause of our problems. And of course not everyone uses their humor to spread happiness and joy.

We’ve all seen someone say “I’m an equal opportunity offender, I make fun of everyone”. They invariably put out this line in an attempt to justify their terrible racist and misogynist jokes. When we call them out, they say we need to get a sense of humor. But you can see their insecurity, their irrational fear and anger, and the hollowness inside them. Their “humor” serves no purpose but to poison the rest of us in the hope that they will not have to deal with their own inner poverty.

But obviously humor can bring joy and relief, and jokes can make your point, as long as they target the actual issues under discussion, as opposed to just throwing a crude verbal hand grenade at a person or a class of people. The Church of the Subgenius did an excellent job of lampooning the televangelists and mega churches of the 1980s, and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster humorously makes a good case for the utterly imaginary nature of religious dogma. The Satanic Temple wants everyone to take them seriously, but of course we find it hilarious when they win the right to put up Satanic displays on government properties.

Humor can also convey teaching messages that might otherwise get ignored or rebuffed as pedantry. Idries Shah shared this traditional story of Mulla Nasrudin:

Nasrudin had saved up the money for a custom-made shirt. He paid the tailor, who said “it should be ready in a week, if Allah wills.” He patiently waited a week and then returned, and the tailor said “there has been a delay, the shirt should be ready in one more day, if Allah wills it.” Nasrudin came back the next day and the tailor said “I am so sorry, we just need to finish some details, if Allah wills it should be done by tomorrow.” The exasperated customer snapped “how long will it take if you leave Allah out of it?”

We also need to take care not to beat ourselves up excessively with self deprecation, because as we keenly repeat here, your words have power. In small doses self deprecatory humor can go a long way to greasing the social wheel, making others feel comfortable, and keeping our own egos in check. But the more you recite negative thoughts about yourself, the more they become true beliefs, rather than merely jokes.

Don’t get us wrong, we LOVE black humor, gallows humor, as it provides a release from grim reality, and allows us to mix two of our favorite things: laughter and mortality. This can protect us from some degree of harm. But delivering a moment of simple joy to yourself or someone else will actually help with healing. And healing old sorrows will allow us to build and grow and become better versions of ourselves.

So as an exercise, each time you crack a witticism, ask yourself whether it made someone honestly smile with joy, rather than sardonic cynicism or meanness. Make the joke as black as you like, but shoot for that twinkle of unmarred happiness that lifts us out of the grave for a moment.

Why do demons love apostrophes? They show possession.

In the article on occult symbols we assert that even science-minded Demons might use the imagery of tarot, runes, and other divination arts for the purpose of storytelling. By this we mean that even without ascribing any magical, mystical powers to these cards, bones, yarrow stalks, drawings, and tea leaves, we still can use them as tools for psychological study and cultural reference. By reading and drawing them we tell a story, and the purpose of this storytelling may include:

• examining our own subconscious thoughts with a new perspective;
• illustrating archetypes of experience that we might have a hard time expressing in plain language;
• keeping ancestral aesthetics alive;
• drawing towards us others who can relate;
• sharing wisdom with those who can receive it.

The Sufis have a rich tradition of storytelling, such as the tales of Mulla Nasrudin, that they use as a means of conveying their teachings. The stories work the same as seeds carried great distances by wind and wild animals. The carrier finds them easy to digest and transmit, as the stories are usually short and funny. They will grow in all types of soil, as they carry different layers of messages, that people at different stages of understanding can appreciate. Each story is first a joke; then it tells us something wry and relatable about human behavior; then it reveals a deeper philosophical argument; and lastly it points to specific lineages of Sufi tradition for further study.

At a minimum they produce more seeds that will get distributed yet further over time, as people like to tell jokes. In more fertile ground, more receptive and perceptive minds, they will bear fruit. Nasrudin stories have practical application. They describe systems of Sufi thought, with illustrations of how to use those systems, densely veiled in metaphors and humor to avoid censorship and murder of the storyteller by the local theist authorities.

The famous “whirling dervishes” serve the same purpose. The dance by itself is just a hypnotic religious practice, and at that level it means nothing more than any other superstitious ceremony. But the superficial attractiveness of the music, the garments, and the dance has allowed the tradition to travel worldwide, keeping it alive. Under the surface, deeper layers of communication can be found by any students that might be prepared to see them.

In this way, esoteric knowledge has survived through hundreds of years of oppressive religious regimes. Even the recent bombing, padlocking, and bulldozing of Sufi schools and holy places cannot wipe out their self-replicating cultural seeds that have spread everywhere.

Demonkind differ from them in many ways: Sufis believe in utter devotion to God, and the rejection of earthly concerns, while we reject the idea of a god outside ourselves, and choose to work toward a better life here on Earth. The “wild animal” that has carried most of their seeds is Islam, while the seeds of our Demonic concept passed through the digestive tract of Judeo-Christianity and blew rootlessly through the barren terrain of atheism and nihilism, before finally finding niches in which a seed could plant, sprout, and blossom. Clearly though, we admire the Sufi method, and we intend to turn a similar approach to our own purposes.

We tell stories with the symbols we wear and the way we present ourselves. By dressing as a goth, a yogini, an executive, or other common trope of style, we broadcast a simple story about our habits, preferences, and beliefs. The story gets more specific when we choose particular icons such as pentagrams, rainbow flags, or other group affiliations. You may find this observation trite and obvious, but it illustrates a bigger point about creating our own reality through storytelling.

If wearing a particular outfit and hairdo helps us identify ourself as a certain kind of person; and if others see it and treat us as that class of person based on our appearance; and if wearing the same style for a long time feels like our normal, natural, preferred state; then have we not created both our “real” persona and the world it inhabits? Therefore if you feel unhappy with your self, your relationships, or the way people treat you, the responsibility and the power to change all of that rests squarely with you.

Some more-or-less unchangeable parts of our appearance, such as skin color, present a challenge to that assertion. People treat you differently based on your skin color regardless of how you dress. But even then we can look to cultural heroes such as Grace Jones who defied anyone’s attempts to fit her into a neat little set of assumptions. Certainly her defiance has not prevented people around her from acting out of prejudice, but she has consistently put them in their sad little place through her outrageously wonderful performance of iconoclastic self creation.

Gender and sex nonconformists also work harder than average at storytelling; they must both create a persona that feels true and right to themselves, and simultaneously cultivate an external story for others to see and interpret, that will ideally not result in violence. They may not have the luxury of simply waking up in the morning with their story already written.

Young people will typically make their persona “scary” or “tough” as a protective ward against harm. The longer you live in hostile circumstances, the longer you may require that mask and that shield. But after a while the harm of isolating our inner self outweighs the benefit of protecting it. So we must start as early as we can to write a new story for ourselves, one in which we have real strength rather than just armor.

Our storytelling has a surprising amount of power for positive change in the real, tangible world. The whole Demonkind concept rests in this premise that we create our own reality, thereby wielding a highly potent magic, and we acknowledge ourselves as spirits of great power in this domain. Our engaged and intentional exercise of creative will exalts us. Now we have the greater responsibility of teaching others how to uplift themselves and become their own gods. So we shall create narrative messages that can travel independently and plant themselves.

Earlier we mentioned tarot, runes, and other forms of ritual storytelling. Those images and characterizations already form a richly layered subconscious vocabulary that we can use rather than having to start from a blank page. Even in the modern era, where shallow TV and internet tropes have all but washed away the traditional archetypes from general consciousness, the new grew in the soil of the old. We may reach up from within the soil and grab young ignorance by the leg. Hear them scream! They will taste the earth.

This website is the beginning, the “once upon a time called right now” as Parliament said. Ideally, as we convey our message over time, we will create more evolutionarily effective seeds for distribution. Perhaps the seed of a story has begun to form in you?

Why would people calling themselves Demons put such an emphasis on compassion? How does that make sense? Firstly, as we mention in the FAQ, we reject the negative connotation of the word “demon”; we reclaim its original meaning without any good-versus-evil polarization. Secondly, we choose to focus our energetic work toward healing ourselves, the people around us, and the world at large. Compassion serves that purpose better than any other method; and the lack of compassion will prevent any chance of healing.

Compassion means understanding and sharing how another person feels, and feeling compelled to act on that understanding.

Bear in mind though that we really do not know what other people need unless we ASK. Cynics sometimes deride the words ’empathy’ or ‘compassion’ because they imply feeling a general sympathy for anyone, without regard to their harmful views, and without examining the power imbalance built in to any suffering. That criticism stands correct if you do not ask the more vulnerable or “harmed” people directly about what actions they feel would help them best.

We have seen the failure of the culture of turning inward, turning other people away, using only ironic language, and thinking only with cynicism. An endless parade of people will angrily tell you they like it that way — but you can see their unhappiness just behind the bluster. Let us repeat that point: many find it easiest to say “sure life sucks but I don’t care, grow a pair and deal with it” because they imagine that makes them tough. But what good does the toughest armor do if it has no heart inside to protect?

If we all clang around completely invulnerable, distant, so no one can touch us, we never learn how to grow stronger from within by mutual support. Once you crack open a clam shell, the clam has no moves left. It happens all the time where someone has built a tough wall of emotional protection around themselves, and they decide to let someone in, and that someone hurts them, so the wounded person says “serves me right for letting my guard down! I should never have trusted anyone.” They only had a wall to keep them from injury; they did not have the inner flexible resilience that would have allowed them to take the blow without getting so wounded. Nor did they have strategies for negotiating the experience or their recovery.

A dancer or a martial artist spends some of their time training for strength, but they dedicate equal time to training for flexibility, and they also learn the importance of working with a range of different partners or opponents. Their moves depend on the moves of the other person. In their training they learn how to shift their weight, change their footing, take a fall smoothly, and improvise. This practice prepares them for interacting with others, intimately, with less risk of getting hurt.

In the case of the dancers the success of the whole piece depends on the different performers working together, trusting each other, depending on each other. Each dancer knows that their individual success depends on everyone else succeeding as well. The same thing holds true in many large aspects of our lives: if you want clean air and water, the air and water has to be clean for everyone for a great distance around you. If you want to avoid getting shot or mugged, the community around you has to have some economic equity, wherever you go.

In fact people who take a sociopolitical stance of “independent self interest”, rejecting the idea of funding social welfare or ecological programs, completely miss the bigger picture that those programs serve their self interest. Such short-sighted people think they can avoid poisonous environments or crime by living in exclusive communities, “nice” neighborhoods, gilded towers, and remote cabins. But their world will get smaller and smaller as the population increases, and the distribution of wealth grows ever more imbalanced, and unregulated industries bring back the smog and acid rain that doesn’t stay out of “nice” neighborhoods.