This essay is also available as a podcast on anchor.fm and other platforms.

A few weeks ago, late one night, my partner and I were in the kitchen and our roommate arrived home and announced that he had found some amazing kiwis. He insisted that we all try some, and we cut some up and ate them. They were primarily very tart and bright but in a balanced way, with sweetness being the next most prominent flavor, and after that sour and finally just a hint of bitter. The three of us enjoyed several slices before I thought to see what would happen if I sprinkled a bit of kosher salt on one of them, just the tiniest pinch. While I still ended up preferring the unmodified flavor of the kiwi, the transformation was fascinating. The flavor transformed to a rich, mellow sweetness, much more one-dimensional but also pleasantly less intense. I took note that, in that form, they’d work better served with a good vanilla ice cream, still bright enough to complement the richness of the ice cream but not so complex as to detract from it. I’ve looked back on that moment as a particularly treasured experience, and as a model for what I would like my life experience to be like in general: an intense, deliberate, and skillful involvement in whatever I’m experiencing at a given time, shared whenever possible with good company.

Yes, food and cooking is the real subject for this week’s story. I’m definitely having some fun with this one, but at the same time I think that the topic has been very useful in terms of exploring Satanism in an authentic and meaningful way. One of my favorite pastimes is cooking, and this is a skill that is particularly reflective of Satanic values. In fact, I think that the practice is a kind of microcosm of Satanism, a reflection in miniature of the ways that a Satanic philosophy can transform one’s life and experience.

Much of my inspiration for this piece comes from a book that I’m reading, Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychological examination of what Csikszentmihalyi calls “optimal experience.” This is a fantastic book, one of the best I’ve read recently, and I think that it’s of special relevance to the Satanist because it explores, in the most grounded and scientific way possible, what it is that truly makes us happy and how to get the most out of life.

To begin, we all need to eat. That’s unavoidable. We, as living beings, need to consume something from the environment in order to continue living. We have a number of choices regarding how we can fulfill that necessity, ranging from eating every meal at the same fast food chain to eating nothing at all that we haven’t grown and prepared ourselves, and from stuffing something down while our attention is elsewhere to really delving into and fully appreciating the experience. What first comes to mind when we consider the choices we have in eating are the moral considerations that need to be weighed with regards to that activity, because our eating choices have a significant environmental impact and may involve killing living things. These are moral choices that we have to weigh and consider if we’re to be responsible people. I’m not convinced that we have a moral responsibility not to eat meat at all, but I think that vegetarianism and veganism are good options for a more moral, more healthy, and more environmentally-friendly lifestyle; that eating meat is something to be done with great care and consideration; and that we should be cognizant in general of the potential environmental impact of our food choices when considered on the scale of cities, nations, civilizations, and the planet as a whole.

The second consideration is that we all have our individual preferences regarding what we like to eat and what we don’t like to eat. I don’t think that anyone can be a Satanist without their taking the effort to understand what it is that makes them happy, and, inspired here in particular by Csikszentmihalyi, the following being a modification of his own model, I look at happiness as arising primarily from three factors: pleasure, enjoyment, and fulfillment. Pleasure is the immediate sensory satisfactoriness of an experience. Enjoyment is a kind of second-order pleasure, a pleasure taken in experiencing pleasure resulting from an interactive engagement with what I’m experiencing in a way that connects to my immediate instrumental goals. For example, I might find a meal pleasurable if it tastes good but not enjoyable if I’m not able to take the time to actually appreciate it or if it conflicts with my dietary goals. And fulfillment results from the way in which the activity in question accomplishes not only my immediate instrumental goals but also my broader personal goals, as well as the way in which it interfaces with my identity and morality. So there are three questions you can ask yourself to start uncovering what it is exactly that makes you happy: What do you find pleasurable? Of that, what do you find enjoyable (keeping in mind that enjoyment might arise from activities that are not pleasurable in the moment, such as intense physical activity)? And of that, what do you find fulfilling? For me at least, cooking hits all three marks.

When we cook, we fulfill our basic needs in our own individual way, rather than having these needs catered and administered to us by those who don’t and can’t know and wouldn’t even care to know us nearly as intimately as we know ourselves. As an example, I enjoy eating extremely spicy food, as spicy as I can get it as long as it still tastes good. And at the same time, I’ve met many people for whom that is not at all appealing. Rarely do I find restaurants that offer food hot enough for my preferences. By cooking my own food, I can make it as hot as I can tolerate. I once put fourteen habanero peppers in a shakshuka, a North African dish with tomatoes and poached eggs, much to the chagrin of my roommates at the time, who were literally in coughing fits from the fumes. It was delicious and also one of the spiciest things I’ve ever eaten, and I doubt I’d be able to find that experience at a restaurant.

Cooking gives us an opportunity to decide what specifically goes into our bodies. Our energy and thus our power derives from the food we eat; that’s the energy source for the human organism and the source of the matter used to build and structure our bodies, so it makes sense to give it careful consideration. I still eat my share of fast food out of economic and temporal necessity, but as pleasurable as it can be, I resent that I am transforming matter into my body and energy without knowing exactly where that matter comes from and under what circumstances, so I tend to find such eating experiences pleasurable, but not enjoyable, and certainly not fulfilling. I think that that situation is, to some degree, unavoidable — I have the same problem with the clothing I wear and the technology I use — but I try to minimize it, and cooking is a big part of that. I might not know the ultimate source of every ingredient I use, but at least I know what the ingredients are in the first place.

Cooking food for ourselves refines our ability to appreciate life. Eating is such a basic necessity and such a matter of routine: I’d estimate that almost all of us with sufficient access eat at least once a day, so, like other matters of routine such as our commutes and other repetitive daily tasks, it’s something that we may not be paying much mind, but when we properly direct our attention, our eating routines can reveal that there is a great deal of enjoyment and even fulfillment to be had in even the most habitual activities. This, again, is a Satanic value. As Satanists, we seek the most out of this life, because this is the only life that we can be sure of. We’re all faced with the boring and habitual in our lives, and should make every effort to make even those experiences pleasurable, enjoyable, and fulfilling.

Cooking demonstrates a mastery over the physical world. Food has to be skillfully transformed through physical force and the application of heat, salt, and acid into something pleasing to the palette. This is part of what makes us human: we’re the only animals who almost always extensively prepare our food before consuming it. For that reason, to relegate the task to others is to relegate a small part of our humanity to someone else.

There are plenty of resources on the internet for learning how to cook and I’m not going to turn this into a tutorial. I’ll say that I’ve learned a great deal from having some particularly excellent chefs as roommates, and from the Binging with Babish YouTube channel. But I do want to draw attention to three aspects of cooking that I think are particularly important and often not discussed in introductory courses:

The first is selecting ingredients. Ingredients form the base of whatever you’re cooking, and so special care and attention is required at this stage. Bear in mind, though, that fruits and vegetables need not be in pristine condition to be usable, especially if they are going to be peeled or chopped. If you’re selecting oil for frying, keep in mind what temperature will be required and what oil is best suited to the job. Searing meat in extra virgin olive oil, for example, is a recipe for a great deal of smoke and bitter flavor. And while cheaper versions of some ingredients are fine, there are a few things in which one should invest, among them, good kosher salt, good butter, and good extra virgin olive oil.

And the next two elements of cooking must be considered together: time and attention. One of my former roommates, a professional chef, once told me that time is the best and most important ingredient. A beef stew can be safely ignored in the oven with only the occasional check and stir, but many preparations require a significant time investment and a great deal of attention. All too often in my early cooking attempts, I would leave something to saute and go do something else, and then return after a reasonable amount of time to find a burned mess. Cooking is not necessarily a linear process: things can progress slowly until a tipping point is reached where a certain amount of water has evaporated, and then the food will quickly start to burn. This again demonstrates cooking as a microcosm of life: things in the world are always transforming, but what may at first be a linear progression may shift to something exponential once a tipping point is reached. It’s a good, valuable meditation practice to sit with a cooking meal for an hour, stirring slowly, watching the gradual transformation of things. Our food becomes an example for us as to how the world rewards attention and patience.

Lastly, it wouldn’t be A Satanist Reads the Bible if I didn’t recommend some books, but the only specific one I’ll mention here (in addition to Flow, which I highly recommend regardless of your interest in cooking) is Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Nosrat and McNaughton (2017), which also exists as a documentary. This book isn’t so much a primer for preparing specific meals, as with a cookbook, but rather a general look at the fundamental elements of good cooking. If you’re absolutely new to cooking, I recommend Binging With Babish’s “Basics with Babish” YouTube series for getting started, because it allows you to see the exact process in detail. Cookbooks are often aimed at more experienced chefs and thus omit some of the finer details of the process, but once you’ve passed the novice stage, a good cookbook should be your next investment. The choice of cookbook is a very personal selection that should be based on your own preferences, so I won’t make any specific recommendations here, but I will say that I prefer cookbooks over internet recipes because they’re generally more thematic, adaptable, and curated. That said, if I’m aiming to cook something specific and don’t have a recipe in a cookbook, the first place I’ll check is the website Serious Eats.

And with that, I wish you good luck on your personal Satanic cooking journey.

Thanks much for reading, and special thanks to my patrons on Patreon. I hope you’ve found this piece interesting and informative. If you’ve enjoyed it, I encourage you to look at some of my other essays, and to sign up for my mailing list (form on the sidebar) so you can stay current on my latest work. And if you find my approach to philosophy and religion at all valuable, I hope that you’ll stop in at my Patreon page, which features bonus content for patrons, and that you’ll stop back by to check on my new content. I’ll be publishing new work every Friday evening. I also have a reading list, which contains links to the books I used to research this and all of my other stories. Clicking through and buying books is a great, easy way to support my work.