“The Rise of Satan” Part II

July 28^th, 2019

By Jim Culp

In part one of this discussion, we talked about places in two popular holy books where the character Satan is found. We also talked about Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan. Now we are going to turn our attention to the Satanic Temple…its roots, its cause, and its popularity.

The Satanic Temple is not to be confused with the Church of Satan. The former was recently formed in 2013, and the Church of Satan was formed in 1966. Both organizations bear the name of Satan, but they do not believe the same things, and have very different causes. The Satanic Temple was formed by Lucien Greaves and Malcolm Jarry. The group has been known in the past decade or so to be highly anti-establishment; and opposed to religion being inserted into government in so many ways. They were greatly opposed to the Fred Phelps group in Topeka Kansas. The infamous Westboro Baptist church has been a pain in people’s asses for a long time.

I cannot blame any group for opposing hate like this. I was a security guard in Topeka in 1993, and the Phelps group was constantly picketing and protesting anything that they thought was evil in the eyes of God. Everyone has a First Amendment right to free speech, but actively sowing the seeds of hate (especially in children) is one of the things that is dreadfully wrong with our country as a whole right now.

These groups do not believe in Satan as a real entity, and both follow some of LaVey’s ideals; such as anti-establishment and freedom of self. I also don’t contest much of these beliefs, they make sense to me.

The Satanic Temple contests matters where the Separation of Church and State come to bear. This is an area where I am in full agreement with them, until they want to place a statue of Baphomet in the same place as the Ten Commandments. Why do that? Oppose the religious symbolism in a place where it doesn’t belong, but don’t replace that with something (religious) in its place. It would be like a car being your religious symbol, but you want a Ford in that spot instead of a Chevy.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution clearly separates church and state.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Are the “Satanists” right in their actions? According to the First Amendment they are.

Here’s my take on these Satanists, and I could care less what church, state, or city they are from. I read the Satanic Bible in 2003. It’s a long list of things that a guy doesn’t like about our society. They are things like women shaving their underarms and legs, people controlling themselves instead of punching someone that offends them, and government having control over a person’s body and spirit. In my opinion, Anton LaVey was about as much a Satanist as I am the Governor of California. The guy was anti-establishment, and he used a vehicle that was offensive to religious people, disruptive to “the way things should be,” and way out in left field to most people. As for the Satanic Temple, they openly claim that they don’t really believe in the Devil, Satan, or whatever it is. Why the statues of Baphomet? Why the esoteric symbolism? Why don’t you just drop the bullshit, and make your points without the references to a deity that you don’t even believe in?

My opinion on this matter is this. Groups that use symbolism like this are trying to employ a catalyst that automatically induces fear. Religions like Christianity and Islam are based on it. People from a hundred countries go to church, pay tithes, and never enjoy their lives because they are in fear of going to hell, a place where they burn for eternity. I think these “Satanists” just use the tool in another way and get results because of it.

-Jim

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“The Rise of Satan” (Part I)

July 23, 2019

By Jim Culp

Yesterday was a true “memory jogger” for me, and I scrolled through Facebook and the news, and came upon an article about the Satanic Temple pursuing the act of placing statues here and there…most notably in places where the Ten Commandments are placed in front of Court Houses and the like.

It’s been a while since we heard about the Ten Commandments argument, but we won’t rehash that here. I can rant all day about people wanting to make the USA a theocracy, but will not today.

If you are a person that is unfamiliar with the Church of Satan, it goes way back to the 1960’s. It was a time of change for the USA, and “young people speakin’ their minds” as Stephen Stills once sang. Hippies and revolution were the tempo of the day, and the Vietnam War was in full swing. Enter Anton Lavey…a singer, writer, and anti-establishment show man. It was in this year that Lavey founded the Church of Satan… and subsequently declared 1966 the First Year of the Age of Satan. Lavey had a fair amount to followers; and wrote several books. I ready one of them during my spiritual reformation of 2004. Lavey was rarely taken seriously, but nonetheless had great influence on many people…some of them years after his death in 1997. I had soldiers in the Army that were Satanists. I used to talk to them and find that they were just people that were raised strict Catholics and hated going to all the rituals. We had that in common.

Today let’s talk about this character Satan. For this, we need to go way back. I studied religious texts of many cultures for twenty years… and found some form of this entity in every one of them. For now, let us stick with Abrahamic religions. We’ll have to go back to about 300 BC, and into the Book of Enoch. This person was the father of Noah, the biblical character that built an “ark” (a very big boat or ship) according to God’s instructions, and saved a portion of humans and two of every animal on Earth for purposed of starting a new civilization after God destroyed the surface of the Earth with a great flood.

You are not going to find the Book of Enoch in your modern bible, anymore than you will find the Book of Eli. The Book of Enoch was removed (along with 22+ others) by men over a period of a thousand years because it was not considered canonical (inspired by God). The Book of Enoch spoke of giants and demons that walked the Earth, and it was removed from many texts by the Jews, because it contained prophecies of the Coming of the Christ. It was, however one of the earliest books that I found a reference to Satan. So I am inspired to believe that this creature did not have much prominence until I find him in the creation story of Genesis, and then playing a very important role in the Book of Job, where he directly interacted with a human being, and was allowed by God to torture the man for a season.

Job 2:1

“Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD*, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD*.”

{*: God, the Father, the Almighty}

Job 2:7

“So went Satan forth from the presence of the LORD, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown.”

Satan appears many times in the repetitive books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and many times in Paul’s letters to the many states of the day that were provinces of the Roman Empire

Fast forward to the Isle of Patmos (Patmos is on the far west side of modern-day Turkey, in the Aegean Sea) to about 80-90 AD. John was sentenced to exile by the Emperor Domitian (an act of Grace in those days) to live out his days as John of Patmos. John would live to the ripe old age of 93…but before he died he was said to have had the most prophetic of visions, and these visions would translate over two millennia to books that could be called Revelation, The Book of Revelation, The Revelation of Jesus Christ, and the Apocalypse. There are many books that describe demons and devils, but Revelation accounts for some that will partake in the end of days. If you wish to delve into demonology (as I did); I recommend the Lemegeton; and read the Lesser Keys of Solomon…where he summoned demons and devils to do his bidding. You’ll find it tedious reading, much like a spell book… because that is what it is.

So, John of Patmos wrote down the things that he saw in visions, but for the purposes of this paper, we will stay in the confines of our subject, Satan.

Revelation 12:3

And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.

Revelation 12:7          

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,

Revelation 12:9          

And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceives the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

So, this character lives through the entire bible, and that work is reported to have claimed a period of about a millennium. John’s visons are of the future (we are told) and will happen sometime after the return of the Christ.

But hold on, Muslims (who are devout to Islam) believe there is a devil too. But it is the only one besides Christianity that calls him by his name.

We go to the Holy Quran, the book of Islam. Here we find warning about this entity called Satan.

O mankind, eat from whatever is on earth [that is] lawful and good and do not follow the footsteps of Satan. Indeed, he is to you a clear enemy.

(2:208)

ادْخُلُوا فِي السِّلْمِ كَافَّةً وَلَا تَتَّبِعُوا خُطُوَاتِ الشَّيْطَانِ

O you who have believed, enter into Islam completely [and perfectly] and do not follow the footsteps of Satan. Indeed, he is to you a clear enemy.

(2:268)

الشَّيْطَانُ يَعِدُكُمُ الْفَقْرَ وَيَأْمُرُكُمْ بِالْفَحْشَاءِ

Satan threatens you with poverty and orders you to immorality, while Allah promises you forgiveness from Him and bounty. And Allah is all-Encompassing and Knowing.

In modern times, I have spent many of my hours studying these readings. There are so many versions of the bible, you can get lost just trying to figure out what is original and what is not. The Quran is pretty straight across the board. It is more filled with orders on how to live than it is with prophecy and stories.

So, we have identified Satan as the bad guy, the dragon, the enemy of God. There, that is done. In Part Two we will talk about Satan’s influences on society, and how we came to a time when people are arguing about statues that mean things, just like they did 3,000 years ago.

-Jim 

--Follow me at jimculp.blogspot.com

“Happy Birthday Geezer” 

July 17, 2019

By Jim Culp

It’s very hard to look at website pages sometimes and see that your nieces and nephews are graduating high school or posting photos of being in college. For me, it is a sign that I am getting old and better start enjoying life a little more before I am dead.

One thing that seriously gives me a swift boot in the ass is seeing my musical idols turning 60 something years old. For some of them, I am surprised they made it past 30. Hell, Keith Richards is going to be 76 this year, and Willie Nelson turned 86 in April. It’s funny, because Willie wrote a song in 1961 called “Funny How Time Slips Away.” I never paid it the slightest bit of attention until I woke up one October morning, and I was 50.

Today we celebrate the birthday of one of my guitar idols, Mr. Terence “Geezer” Butler. Geezer is the godfather of Heavy Metal bass guitar, going all the way back to 1969 with the official formation of Black Sabbath. The world would never be the same. In a time when Rock and Roll was all about good drugs, bad drugs, hippie styles, and beach boys…Black Sabbath would perform songs such as “War Pigs” that expressed their opinions on the war in Vietnam, or would sing songs about the Devil roasting people on a fire for his pleasure. Oh my what a field day those “Make sure you leave a check” evangelists had with that.

Geezer Butler turned 70 years old today. He is now in his 10^th band, Deadland Ritual, and still rocking the world with his incredible song writing and bass guitar. People like Geezer make me feel young again, and ready to take on another 10 years of life.

Happy Birthday Geezer. Rock on!!

The Woe of Woman

“The Woe of Woman”

By Jim Culp

July 14, 2019

I’ve heard about this religious theory for 40 years, but a few months ago was the first time I saw a drawn diagram of the principle. If my religious education serves me correctly, this diagram speaks of the verse in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, to quote:

“For the husband is head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church: and he is the savior of the body.” 5:23

I know there are many others, but this one makes the writer’s intentions well known. The woman is to be subservient to her husband, and the husband subservient to the Christ.

The thing I want to know is, how many women today (or even 30 years ago) want to be ordered around by their husbands? Isn’t a marriage one of mutual respect and personal dignity?

In my practice of spirituality, women are a gift to mankind, because they can give a man things that no other being can…love, affection, and sex. The fact that she is probably a better cook is just a bonus. The feminine entity is sacred, and the giver of all life. To say she is subservient to anyone is both ludicrous and condescending. However, I can speculate on two levels that this is not the case with most world religions. I’ll refer to the two that I am most familiar with, and those are Christianity and Islam.

In the version of Christianity (in which I was raised in) of my day, the man was indeed superior to the woman, and even as a child, I marveled that most women of that time (70’s and 80’s) were “waking up.” The preachers would drive the Word of God home on Sundays and Wednesdays, but in between women were learning that they had just as much a right to be leaders and speakers as any man did.

In my travels of the Middle East, I found that Islam practiced a far more radical form of following the Word of God. I will take this opportunity to say that not all Muslims that I met followed the strict regimen of the Koran, or even the teaching of their local elders. They went along peacefully… but did as they wished when behind closed doors. In the strictest forms of Islam, women are indeed wholly subservient to their husbands, and it is no secret that they can be and are sometimes beaten for even the slightest infractions. Again, large numbers of secular Muslims do not practice such insanity; and go about their lives in a civilized manner.

Please stop for a moment and picture the old TV show “Leave it to Beaver.” Ward comes home from work and sits down in his living room chair. The newspaper is already laid out for him, and his wife removes his shoes and adjusts the pillow behind his head. She then proceeds to fetch him a glass of iced tea, lemonade, or whatever beverage he wants. After that, she patiently waits for his next need or request, which she is prompt to attend to, and keep him happy (right out of the 1957 Home Economics Textbook). After all, he’s the provider, the worker, and the reason they live in a two-story house in a safe and friendly neighborhood.

But think about this…how would the people of the USA have responded if they had tuned into channel 13 at 3 o’clock, and found that June had spilled Ward’s iced tea on his lap by accident, and in the next scene Ward was beating her with a cane until she screamed for mercy? Well, that has been happening in the good old USA for 200 years, my friends…and do you know where the man got that mentality? Yes, that’s right. Christianity or Islam. Both religions call for the wife to be silent in the presence of the man, and to be his servant while in the household.

So, when people are calling for the United States of America to become a Christian State, they are calling for something that the Founding Fathers had already been subjected to when they were subjects of King George in England. Religion and Monarchy were one in the same, and just a hundred years before him, James I had instituted the Divine Right of Kings, very much as Augustus (Gaius Octavius) had done years before him, claiming that an Emperor was empowered directly from gods, making him divine in his own right. That’s why the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was written. Let me quote it for you unless you forgot it.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

That means that our government (including the President) can be “religious” all they want, but church and state stay separate. Otherwise, we start governing the people using rules made up in a book that someone wrote over a thousand years ago.

So when would be Dictators like Donald Trump (and many others) speak about their faith in God, and simultaneously talk about “grabbing women by the pussy,” it’s time for Americans to wake up and realize that these kinds of people are no good for our Republic, and need to be tossed out like yesterday’s kitchen garbage. Religion is a sickness that has riddled our planet with death, hate, and greed for 3,000 years. It’s time to rise above it and use our minds for the purpose of bettering ourselves and making our planet a place of prosperity and peace.

“Election”

By Jim Culp

July 8, 2019

(words in Italics like this are the approval board’s members speaking)

In this pre-election year, I have been watching (as much as I can stomach) the candidates for the Office of President of the United States. It’s always fun to see people who cry out for unison and “godly ways” start taking a political opponent apart with anything they can dig out of the media or a shoe closet. They turn on each other like rabid dogs at a cow carcass, and then turn around and are best buddies again after election day. How Amazing!

In watching these events, I decided to introduce a system of election to office that is like the Veteran’s Administration’s process of granting benefits to a disabled veteran.

So, you are running for Representative of a State? Ok, we’ll call you “Mr. R.”

Mr. R must first be found to qualify for this opportunity. Forget the constitutional amendments, we’re using VA rules now.

Mr. R must bring his life packet to the first hearing, and the first requirement is public speaking.

“Um, Mr. R…you don’t have any records of public speaking in your file.”

Mr. R immediately retaliates with “that is ridiculous!! I’ve spoken publicly hundreds of times! There are video and news casts covering it!!”

“ok, Mr. R…. calm down. We’ll review it and get back to you within 90 days.”

Mr. R: “WTF?!?!? 90 days? Candidate X will be ahead of me by then, and I won’t have a chance!”

“Sorry…. next!!”

Over in Texas, Miss T is running for President of the United States. She appears before our precious board as well.

“Good Morning, Miss T. We’ve reviewed your file. Can you tell us the month and date that you attained your master’s degree in Government Law?”

“Oh sure, May of 1992. It was so relieving to finish it and move on to other things. My family was so proud of me.”

“I see…well, there is no record of it in your file, so we can’t acknowledge it.”

Miss T takes a sip of water and breathes deep to calm herself.

“Ok, listen…not only did the school with the original document burn down in 1993, but my home also burned down in 1995. So effectively, there is no document proving that I received it.”

“Oh, no problem Miss T…just provide us with three credible sources that can attest to these events, and we’ll convene again to look into it.”

“Great,” says Miss T…” that will be really easy.”

One year, and eight months later, Mr. R and Miss T receive letters in the mail letting them know that the board has received their claims, and they will be submitted to a Board of Appeals in no more than 120 days.

Six months later… Mr. R has already placed a revolver in his mouth; and ended his life. The elections were over before he could get the election board to act on his behalf. His wife had left him, and he was so broke that his life was in a rolling ball of debt and chaos.

Miss T attends the hearing, and is carrying a stack of documents, photos, and statements from everyone she knows. Upon entering the briefing area one hour before her board time, she is told that there is no case for her college degree, and that the board of appeals will speak for her and let the Judge know that she needs to return another time and hear her plea on a lesser request.

“I want to speak for myself,” she says to the examiner…” I don’t want you guys to speak for me…you don’t know me and don’t give a shit about me!”

“Miss T take it easy. The worst that will happen is that there will be another board in about six months. Besides, you already missed the election!”

Miss T is so enraged that she can’t contain herself anymore. She yells and screams; and is hauled off by the boys in white. She’s deemed unable to cope in society.

What if our elections worked like this? What if people who run for office had to use the VA system to get elected? There would be many empty seats in Congress, and people who shouldn’t be in higher offices are there by default.

Are you following me?

-Jim