Why are Pagans so Afraid of Satan? || Esoteric Satanism

Ladies of the Wood // Witcher 3

This reflection was written in September of 2018 after Detroit’s first Witches Night Bazaar.

Last night my coven attended the Witches Night Bazaar which was a collection of vendors hosted at the Tangent Gallery in Detroit specializing in witchcraft-related wares. It was an excellent event and very unique opportunity for us, so we’re very grateful to hostesses The Pentacle Path and Hedgewitch Holistics for putting this on and allowing us to have a space there. Our Adept Jeremy sold all of his bone art, we gave out around one hundred informational fliers, and we sold several copies of our new album on top of meeting many new people. I would love to be a part of something like this again.

There are a couple things I want to reflect on. Mostly, I want to reflect on how deeply-ingrained the fear of Satan is in our culture. It’s obvious that Christians are afraid of Satan, for the most part. That much is clear. What’s less clear is how deeply afraid non-Christians are afraid of Satan. This is something I couldn’t have predicted when first getting involved with Satanism. I really did think, naively, that Pagans would be accepting of Satanism and possibly interested in us the way we are in them. While they’re definitely more likely to be accepting to Satanism than Christians (or at least not hostile to it), there are still a great number of Pagans who are outright afraid of Satan.

A woman came up to our booth and took a look at our flier which is two-sided and has information about SATANHAUS specifically as well as esoteric Satanism more generally. She finished reading and she goes, “I don’t mess with any dark magick. Only light. Never dark. But good for you.” And she put the flier back and walked away.

Now, what an interested comment. What is ‘dark magick’? What is that supposed to mean? I’m skeptical of the idea that this person, or any person, has only pure goodwill towards others and never has any negative thoughts about them, never falls from grace, never wishes misfortune to befall a wrongdoer or lapses into anger. Furthermore, I’m skeptical that this person practices such radical forgiveness that they never use their spirituality as an outlet for these feelings. I know that Wiccans (I’m presuming she was a Wiccan since the light/dark distinction is most commonly drawn by them) curse people. I know dozens of Wiccans and have known more throughout the course my life. They curse people. They bind people. These spells and prayers are prolific in their religion. I have no idea why they would even want to seek such Christ-like spiritual purity. Maybe if you are a Wiccan you can help me out with this.

I tend to take comments like that in this way: “I practice a good religion for good people and we only do good things, not like you bad people who do bad things with your bad religion. But good for you.”

And why would a Pagan think Satanism is bad? What resources from within their own religion would make them think that? Wicca and the Pagan reconstruction religions don’t even have Satan, so how could they possibly infer that Satan is evil unless they tacitly ascribe to at least some elements of Christianity? The only people who should be afraid of Satan are Christians and possibly Muslims because they’re the only religions that even have the concept of Satan (albeit a political and ultimately incorrect one). I would not think worshippers of Loki were evil, nor Seth, nor Kali. There were a good number of people who took one look at our station, saw Satan, and immediately looked away; others responded to our query of “Would you like to take this free flier, learn about Satanism?” with a terse “No thanks, I’m good.” They actually seemed surprised that we were there, at an event called the Witches Bazaar.

To me, this is so indicative of just how deep the fear of Satan is in our culture, that even those who have consciously rejected Christianity are still afraid of its main antagonist. I’m reminded of an event we once hosted, the Summer of Satan party in Redford, Michigan. During the communion portion of the ritual my Adept and I were passing out the absinthe and black bread, and I offered some to this one man who said something very interesting to me. He said, “I’m not ready yet.” This was back in the summer and I think about it often. It was so frank, and also so surprising to me, that it’s been a source of reflection for me since then. I’m not ready yet. I think this really captures what’s going on here. These people know there is no hell. They know there is no devil in the sense of eternal tormentor. They know there is no Christ, and therefore no antagonist of Christ. And yet, when confronted with it, they are actively afraid of being condemned to hell. That’s how deep this indoctrination runs.

This is part of why Satanism is so confrontational in nature. Not just because we troll Christians and their idiotic oppressive political regimes, but because force people to confront their own beliefs about the afterlife and what they think Satan is. The same people who will scoff at the idea that Satanism has any meaningful purpose in our culture because Christianity itself is dying, won’t eat a piece of bread if a Satanist gives it to them because they are still afraid of sin and damnation.

This was actually the most enlightening part of the whole experience. I would ask that Pagan comrades of ours do some serious spiritual deconstruction and confront why they are so afraid of us, and why they even bother to draw this distinction between light and dark religions when clearly this is an innovation of Christianity, the very religion they are trying to escape. In return we will continue to treat you with friendship and to patronize your businesses, they are some of our favorites anyway.

Hail Satan.

Evyn Aytch

SATANHAUS