the blog of a disabled mother who likes to game, and "get in the pit"
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.
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.
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.
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.