Observations

We enjoy the aesthetics of deviltry and witchery, the horns and bats and all manner of symbols of occultism and blasphemy. In everyday life the enjoyment is enough, but in the particular focus of Demonkind we seek to use signs that carry specific intentional messages.

For example the Baphomet design by Eliphas Levi, as used by TST and many other Satanic-inspired groups (including the goth shop at the mall), has wide popularity as a general devil sign, yet it also supports one of the basic values of Demonkind: prismatic perspective. The elements of this imaginary creature refer to several seemingly binary qualities: heaven and hell, male and female, bringing together and rending apart, spiritual and earthly; we take from this that we individuals include all such opposites within ourselves at the same time. To focus on just one aspect will cause atrophy and imbalance, so the strong and whole person embraces their opposing elements.

Of course dichotomies themselves are often imaginary or forced by oversimplification, so people address that issue with symbols having three lobes, five points, eight paths, and so on. An infinity symbol would properly convey the multiplicity of possibilities, but it is so generic in its message that it does not draw the viewer to ask “what does that mean”. Our purpose is to raise the dead, not to bore people to death. For this reason Demonkind greatly appreciates the richness of Hindu iconography, of deities with many faces and arms, though only those of us from Hindu-adjacent cultures should repurpose them.

Nearly everyone uses the pentagram as a sign to recognize other darksiders, magic folk, and metalheads, so Demonkind embrace it for that purpose; but beyond that it has no sincere significance that we can all agree on. Many people out there wear the logo of the Church of Satan, a pentagram in a circle with five Hebrew letters and a goat face, without even realizing the specific ownership of that logo. It has turned into a generic sign of the devil, found on swimwear, t-shirts, and mountains of costume jewelry. Demonkind does not use the CoS logo.

Agrarian witchcraft symbols, such as brooms, mushrooms, twig pentacles, and moon phases, have enjoyed a great revival of popularity lately–but their value for Demonic communication will depend on the purposeful intention and practice of the person using these signs. Their primary strength resides in the reminder that religious men in authority have tortured and murdered countless women out of fear of those women’s powers.

Every culture on earth, from the beginning of known history, has used animals as symbols. Some regard the actual living creature as a holy spirit being (a Demon); sometimes they venerate the bones and skin as a means of calling on the animal’s powers; or they may use images of an animal to represent a power or quality they want to reinforce in themselves. In any of these cases today, the symbolic animal will probably mean more to you personally than to a passing observer. Animal symbols have so many different interpretations around the world, and even multiple meanings within one society, that they don’t actually do much to communicate exactly what you intend. That said, most of us feel an affinity for certain animal symbols, such as wolves, snakes, owls, and bats, and we may get an inner benefit from wearing icons of the qualities that we admire. Beware using the phrase “spirit animal” as it has colonist implications.

Popular mysticism such as astrology and tarot has a deep well of imagery to draw from, and we may freely use those symbols and the stories they tell as part of our vocabulary of Demonic culture. Stars, cards, runes, and pretty much all other “magical” divining methods serve us as story tellers that connect us with our subconscious–we do not serve them as puppets or chess pieces.

The grim reaper represents death incarnate all around the world, so Demonkind might use this sign as we honor mortality; though of course the reaper’s popularity with violent gangs can mean a chance of sending the wrong message in the wrong context. Similarly, we have a deep love for the artful icons of Santa Muerte, but we have to remain conscious of the multiple meanings she bears in different (and evolving) contexts. Demonkind do not pray for salvation or blessings, we create them for ourselves and give them away.

Such a multifarious wealth of imagery found around the world tempts us to wear and depict whatever appeals to us, and our sense of magical exaltation or blasphemy. In the bigger Demonic picture, free from any borders or binary divisions, that sounds lovely. But you have to remember that, back on the human plane, we live in a world of colonial theft. When we speak of our value of rebellion, this means rising up against forces that have the power to destroy entire cultures, NOT just taking whatever you like and then getting mad about the “oppression” of someone insisting that you not steal their culture for your own amusement. Use care and compassion while using symbols.

Our own symbol, below, depicts a fiery arm grasping and hoisting a skeletal arm. The burning arm represents us, Demonkind, as fire signifies energy, agency, engagement, and the popular conception of demonic spirits as “infernal”. The skeleton arm represents the lifeless, meaning those who do not engage in life: the apathetic, the incurious, the fearful, and anyone stuck in self-destructive habits. Note that we do not reject these metaphorical dead — we offer our support and encouragement to them, lifting up and guiding by example, and we celebrate their awakening as independent spirits of purposeful passion.

Something of our spirit and message lives, either overtly or hidden, in these songs:

Rocco DeLuca: Congregate

Helloween: Paint a New World

Gil Scott-Heron: Me and the Devil; Work for Peace

Saoco: Huerfanito

Vodun: Mawu

Dark Fortress: Evenfall; On Fever’s Wings

Ana Tijoux: Somos Sur

Laibach: No History

Utah Phillips and Ani DiFranco: Anarchy

Fela Anikulapo Kuti: Mr. Follow Follow

Leonard Cohen: Who by Fire

Burning Spear: It’s Good

Diamanda Galas: O Death

Dirty Dozen Brass Band: Everything I Do Gon’ Be Funky

Malvina Reynolds: Love is Something

In 2017 and 2018 we have seen increasingly vile abuses of the policy of free speech. Nazis, racists, and toxic internet commenters spew their poison everywhere, and when confronted they cry “free speech”. In the abstract it sounds noble to assert that everyone should have the freedom to offend, but we see people who abuse that right causing tangibly real, possibly permanent damage to our society, and frankly they encourage terrorism and the threat of war on our own land.

On the other hand, censorship is a slippery slope, and naturally the idea of it bothers free thinkers like us. Who decides what everyone has permission to say, and what is offensive? What about the right of a subjugated person to curse their oppressor? The line “so much for the tolerant left” has gotten popular this year, referring to how the “left” insists on universal tolerance for minority identities and rights, but then demonstrates intolerance against fascists, racists, and religious fanatics. Read here about the paradox of intolerance, which essentially states that an ideally tolerant society must not tolerate intolerance, or the intolerant side will destroy them — as we in fact see happening in real time all around us today.

It comes down to the adage that you have a right to swing your fist around freely, but that right stops just before my nose begins. Your rights do not include calling for racial attacks, inciting paranoid fear about “those people”, or dehumanizing them such that their lives don’t matter. If we can see that someone’s hostile speech aims to drive physical threats or social subjugation, we must act to reduce that harm by ensuring that venues and the public know what sort of violence the speaker means to instigate, and that we do not accept it.

Notice though that when we speak up for the rights of people oppressed by religious zealots and bigots, the bigots will claim that doing so oppresses them. They clutch their pearls and cry about “left wing fascism” and how it attacks them and their religion. So we have to clearly call out the difference between real injury and imaginary injury. Abusive language toward a vulnerable group like women or trans people builds a culture in which others may feel justified in assaulting or killing them; whereas if a religious zealot feels “hurt” by hearing or seeing something gay, that harm exists entirely in their imagination. Likewise when they get upset by the “terrorism” of asserting that Black lives matter, their internal fantasy narrative makes them think they are the ones under attack, in a complete inversion of reality.

Almost always they use this reactionary political or religious ranting to intentionally mask their true underlying agenda: racism and economic subjugation. All of their other claims serve only as absurd distractions meant to make it seem like they have some legitimate non-racist grievance. Remember this whenever you see the response “what about BLM” or “what about Antifa”, calling them terrorists. In almost every case the people posting these responses are agents of racism, agents of fascism, actively attempting to undermine normal peoples’ discussion of what to do about hate groups and hate speech. A few “benign” centrists may also make those claims, but mainly just because they have read and believed the disinformation campaign of the malignant agents.

In the United States we have the First Amendment of the Constitution, but it only protects against censorship by the government — it does not say anything about non-governmental persons or groups shutting down toxic propaganda. The neo-Nazi troll faction shows their failure to understand the actual laws of the land when they whine that somebody has violated their “free speech” rights.

Demonkind celebrates freedom of expression generally, giving a boost to messages of self empowerment and inclusion, but anyone whose rhetoric serves only to widen class and race divisions will find themselves at the wrong end of our will.

Demonkind recognizes all gender varieties as equally valid, and we support all sexual expressions among consenting adults, in alignment with our primary value of compassion. We also delight in using sexuality as a shared ritual of energy exchange and storytelling, which requires that we stay engaged and present with each other, taking mindful ownership of each breath, each touch. In addition to compassion, we highly value transgression against dogmatic stringency, reinforcing our support for activism in the trans, queer, and non-conforming communities.

Scientific research on gender and sexuality has so far shown us that neither of them are fixed in their majority binary paradigms. In other words, any healthy person might display or feel a range of different qualities or desires, including both “opposite ends” of a spectrum. Just because the majority look or operate one way does not mean all people should operate the same way, or that any minority is somehow defective. Two people will find completely different attributes attractive, and neither of them can explain why they like these things -they just do– and it doesn’t suggest anything wrong with either of them.

Both gender and sexual preference are generally considered psychological constructs. The physical body parts do not reliably correlate to how a person feels inside, or what they like, in spite of how it may seem from the majority view. Research has found possible genetic markers or biological causes, but they do not have widespread agreement yet  — so we do not know how much comes from nature and how much from nurture. The biological component begins at conception, and the social component develops in early childhood, so a person’s gender or sexuality has an innately real feeling to them, deeply ingrained long before they can make choices as an adult. It is almost never a “choice”. People who go through dramatic external transformations as adults generally did not have the resources (money, safe environment, self-confidence) required to make those changes as youths.

We particularly celebrate BDSM as a beautiful means of connecting with our dark shadow, freeing ourselves from guilt, and healing our inner wounds by ritually honoring them. When we share this ritual with others, we help them unlock their own Demon spirit, and we all grow stronger. It requires deep trust, a conscious exchange of power, intimate communication, and an unmediated experience. Of course we identify this practice as a choice made by consenting adults, although no research has made a solid case for its origins.

Supporting references:

An Introduction to the Health of Two-Spirit People (.pdf) (The term “two-spirit” belongs only to Indigenous people from certain heritages, but the ideas have value for all)

RCP Statement on Sexual Orientation (.pdf)

Amicus Brief of the American Psychiatric and Psychological Associations (.pdf)

PAHO Statement on “Cures” for an Illness that Does Not Exist (.pdf)

APA Report on Gender Identity Disorder (.pdf)

Psychological Characteristics of BDSM Practitioners (abstract only)

Note that we present these only for a view of what present-day mainstream science has to say. This does not cover the full experience, or all that we can learn, of people’s infinitely varied lives. If you have doubts, start with compassion, and then you have two options: listen sincerely when people who differ from the majority describe their experiences and needs; or mind your own damn business and let them live in peace.

Those who live with darkness may draw comfort, inspiration, or a thrill from death and the dead. Some seek guidance from their ancestors; others pray to the goddess of death; some just think skulls are cool. Demonkind appreciates all of these; our emphasis on science leads us to avoid superstition, yet our desire for the living to have a more positive and engaged relationship with the act of dying leads us to welcome ceremonial and artistic expressions of death culture.

At the same time we envision people who live in a purposeless stupor, people who unquestioningly follow poisonous leaders, and people who dwell in morbidity without emerging, to be symbolically dead. You enter a state that might as well be death when you fail to engage with life. In this regard, Demonkind intend to break the spell and guide these zombies back to a state of wakened vitality.

Of course we did not invent the message of “waking the sleeper”–countless groups have used that archetypal idea over the centuries. At some Buddhist monasteries they ring a bell occasionally in order to interrupt internal chatter in the monks’ minds and redirect them back to mindfulness. We all need these reawakenings, in small ways daily, as well as larger alerts when our lives may drag into doldrums and old habits.

Necromancy and Vodun have historically meant raising or summoning the dead in order to use them as slaves, or to demand information, so the risen souls have no agency or will of their own. Demonkind want to help people throw off their shroud, take the coins off their eyes, and reclaim their own fire and impulse to thrive. Let those now living actually LIVE! Our symbol depicts a person on fire clasping the arm of a dead person, and raising them up.

It might seem confusing to venerate death in one context and denigrate death in another. But multiple seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time. The death we venerate is the real bodily death that awaits everyone regardless of how they live. The death we denigrate is the metaphorical death of a person failing to live well.

Wearing symbols of mortality does not, by itself, indicate one or the other. Demonkind urges you to imbue your adornments with intention and purpose, to choose and use symbols that have actual meaning for you, and that do not drag you into the shallow grave of apathy. Marking ourselves with skulls and reapers and such can be a plaintive cry that we are already dead on the inside, or it can be a celebratory shout that we reclaim our engagement with both life and death, dancing eternally together!

The Greek word “katabasis” means to travel to the underworld to discover something that we could not find on the surface. In early usage it meant the necromancy of going to a place where you can speak with the dead, and asking them for answers. More recently, Jung used it to describe “the night sea journey of the hero”, traveling and diving deep into the subconscious mind to wrestle directly with our worst fears and our damaged, harmful inner selves.

Demonkind believe in facing these spirits of death head on, acknowledging and naming them, and healing ourselves from their influence by shining light upon them. In this way we achieve “anabasis”, returning from the land of the dead, and through this experience we gain the strength and inner light that can help others find their way.

As mentioned in our article On Darkness, we strongly support and enjoy cultural public engagement with mortality, celebrating in the style of Dia de los Muertos or participating in educational work like the #deathpositive movement. The more we familiarize ourselves with death, the more comfortable we become with it, and the less we have to fear. The less we fear, the more we may live boldly, fully, and without inhibition.

This familiarization also connects and intertwines with the Rite. You might choose to directly name and personify death, or fear of dying, in your practice of the rite. Even if you don’t, the same premise applies as we invite ease around the idea (and corporeal reality) of death: something we fight to keep distant will torment us always, yet if we welcome and feed it, the same beast will give us comfort and strength when we need it most.

We do not seek to speak with the dead; we wish to speak with Death itself. Each time we have this conversation, it reminds us not to fear the inevitable, but instead to thrive for every moment until then. Thus we have gone to the underworld, learned something valuable, and returned with renewed vitality to our lives above ground.