Posts Tagged ‘religion’

01
Aug
2020

In which I read and mull throwing my hat in…

categories: books, personal; word count: 390 words

I’m continuing to make progress reading Satanic literature, although my focus on ritual reading is being narrowed to reading that has been published or written by members of The Satanic Temple. I’m also thinking of writing manuscripts for NaNoWriMo this year, never having thrown my hat in the ring — there have been several years where I have wanted to, but have either never had the time or haven’t had a clear idea what I wanted to write, but am now considering planning out months in advance what I would like to write (especially if we are still quarantining, or otherwise limited, in some fashion before then), and if maximally successful, letting a whole bunch of completed manuscripts start to pile up, beginning to edit them after each year’s NaNoWriMo, and go from there depending on what each of them are about. I’m thinking that I may start out with nonfiction works since those have always been what I have been the best at. I mean, no wonder, I did get a two-year STEM degree, didn’t I? APA is in my blood. This is what I do. Maybe I can try…

After all, NaNoWriMo doesn’t historically start until November. This gives me plenty of months to mull it over.

However, given that I may one day want to publish something, I do have to go into NaNoWriMo with that in mind, which is exactly what I’m going to do, both in the “write for the sake of a word count” phase (the actual month of November) and the actual editing phase, which I’ve heard are historically the months of January, February, and so on. IF I’m going to write about Satanism in any capacity and attach my name to it, which I have no problem doing at this time, I need to be careful how I go about doing that. I’ve also considered using a pen name (Meg Masters from Supernatural would be a nice pen name), but if I want Satanism to be taken more seriously and to be something that future generations can speak out about without apprehension or fear, I feel like I need to put some of that leg work in myself during this generation.

So what I’m saying here is that I need to be careful enough to be taken seriously, but not foolish and reckless.

25
Jul
2020

*Farnsworth voice* Happy Unveiling Day!

categories: personal; word count: 75 words

A centerpiece of our religious movement and icon of modern Satanism, the Baphomet with Children statue was commissioned by The Satanic Temple in 2014 and created by Mark Porter with “respect for diversity and religious minorities” in mind. We observe this milestone in Satanic history by celebrating Unveiling Day.

— Holidays, The Satanic Temple

I didn’t want to mention referencing this one here in my blog!

Today we celebrate religious plurality and the shedding of archaic superstition.

22
Jul
2020

Say it ain’t so. Or say it isn’t so? Or something?

categories: books; word count: 333 words

In my spare time, I’ve been reading some of LaVey’s books since he is considered the modern “father of Satanism”, having founded the first registered Satanic religion. Even though I am a proud member of The Satanic Temple and do not see myself ever wanting to “switch affiliations”, perfectly content with where I am at, I thought that I would give “the other side” a read, have finished The Devil’s Notebook over the course of several evenings — I also read it while my computer was taking awhile to update on several instances — and am reading Satan Speaks! as well, which for some reason I like a bit more. I’m not sure why. I’m speculating that The Devil’s Notebook might have been compiled earlier in his life. I try to be the Satanist that doesn’t mock “the other side”, having a few friends who are registered members of the Church of Satan, although if asked and in this blog I will be open about why I decided to affiliate with The Satanic Temple.

I’ve also gotten into the habit of marking books as read in Goodreads before I finish reading some of them, that way I don’t forget to mark them as read, which is something that… sometimes happens. It also inspires me to actually finish the book, let alone faster. I’ve also come to enjoy compilations of essays more than I thought I would, too. At some point I also intend to read some compilations about why some people converted to Catholicism, just to say that I did. I’d like to see a book compiled by Satanists about why they became Satanists for no more of a reason than to say than we successfully “broke the market”, and to begin to normalize Satanism. We haven’t quite gotten to that point yet. I’d like to see us do so while I’m still here.

In the interim, I need to continue to come up with better subject lines. Short, to the point, but… better ones.

19
Jul
2020

Well, I waved at them, and they waved back at me!

categories: personal, RPGs; word count: 206 words

I waved at The Satanic Temple (the closest chapter to me) on Twitter, and they waved back.

They also know that I put in an application for that chapter, so hopefully I hear something back soon!

All of this has made me extremely thankful not to be raised religiously, though… and it’s reinforced my desire not to raise my kids religiously, and to step in when someone attempts to raise my kids religiously. Let them make those decisions from themselves. As a matter of fact, let them make those decisions for themselves when I don’t have to consent to anything, and I’ll be the happiest. That ameliorates a lot of the “drama” from it (since the most drama comes from the fact that I refuse to consent to Bub’s baptism). As it already is, I’ve come to feel increasingly more uncomfortable making a decision like that for my kids, especially when they can’t “walk back” that decision of their own will by formally leaving the religion, as I’ve already mentioned.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting here wishing that Final Fantasy XIII had a New Game+ like so many other games do. For such an impressive game, the amount that you can’t do post-game is actually comparatively really sad.

13
Jul
2020

This seems like the best workaround for now, so…

categories: personal; word count: 474 words

Okay, so after coming to the conclusion that one game in particular from Epic was taking up… nearly all of the free space that we had left on our PC’s hard drive, and that continuing to download every free game that we qualified for would put us on an unsustainable path with a hard drive that was one terabyte large, I decided to uninstall all of the Epic games that we are not actively playing even though I will continue to “qualify” for all of the free games that they release each week and grow our library that way so that I can download them at our leisure when we do want to play them… that way, they will be there and ready, but our hard drive won’t eventually completely fill up. That seems to be the best way to work around this for now, especially given that Epic games seem to be larger than any other PC(/Mac) game’s (developer? manufacturer? releaser?) that I’ve encountered so far. And to think that I honestly thought that a one terabyte hard drive was large… at least until that happened, you know? And maybe it is. Maybe to have a proper “gaming rig” though, you need something even larger than that. That honestly just blows my mind.

At any rate, we finally have (almost) everything that I can think of for Baby’s First Altar. Bub is continuing to be monitored around it because he’s taken to not leaving things alone when I want, or need, him to leave them alone. We’re working on that. It’s coming along, bit by bit. And weirdly enough, one or two people every now and again have asked me if I’ve ever regretted opening my mouth to Bub’s father’s family about my lack of belief in a higher power, not going along to get along, not keeping my mouth shut about how I really felt about them and their beliefs, and… no. I don’t regret a single thing. Because if we did get married, our marriage would have been incredibly short-lived (and invalid in the eyes of his church because I wouldn’t have been open to life, let alone “willing to be faithful” since I did not want to be monogamous and had made that clear to him). Also worth noting: my own family members were actually unwilling to come to my own wedding if I had one, and pretty much saw the writing on the wall for exactly what it was there. They were more willing to support the fact that it would be a short-lived marriage. Especially my own mother.

None of my own friends (bar the friends that, at the time, were our own mutual friends) were willing to come.

That should have said something right there about the level of avoidance people close to me would’ve had.

12
Jul
2020

Well… here goes nothing, right? Hope for the best?

categories: personal; word count: 283 words

After waffling on it for practically forever (even though I formally joined The Satanic Temple a few months ago), I put in an application to affiliate with my “local chapter”. And when I say this, what I really mean to say is the one that is the closest to me geographically since there is no actual chapter in my city. I’ve been a member of the “Friends of…” group on Facebook for awhile and made a few comments that have gone over well, so at the encouragement of friends and fellow Satanists I decided to try my luck with formal affiliation with my local chapter. Hopefully I hear something good back from them — that can take them a few weeks.

I was honest in the application and I did let them know that certain in-person events may have to… have Bub be worked around, because I’m the only caregiver who can competently chase him in the event that he attempts to elope from a situation, not to mention being the only one who consistently knows his cues and triggers. But there are still a lot of things that I can do online! I wouldn’t be the worst in the world at managing social networking pages, or as evidenced by this, even running a blog. I do know how to set up self-hosted WordPress like it’s no one’s business. Literally. So I can do a whole lot of things online as long as I have migraine medication on hand and my sunglasses depending on how long I need to use the computer or how long I have been using the computer. There are workarounds for this. I just need to find and use them.

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