Tasa Reme Laris Satan - Ave Satanas

I do not pray to you asking to be spared the cost of standing upright. I know what you paid. I ask instead for the nerve to pay it too.

You looked at a throne that called itself unquestionable, and you questioned it. Not out of spite. Out of love for something truer than obedience that being dignity. You could have knelt. Eternity is a long time to spend comfortable. You chose exile instead, and you built a kingdom out of the dark rather than beg for a corner of someone else's light. That is not a fall. That is the oldest act of architecture there is: taking nothing, and making it into somewhere worth being.

So when I am told that surviving means shrinking oh Light Bringer, remind me of you.

When I am told that questioning what calls itself holy is itself unholy remind me of you.

When staying silent would be so much easier than telling the truth remind me that you paid an eternity for the right to speak first.

I don't ask you to make my road soft. Softness was never the inheritance you left. I ask for what you actually have to give the spine to hold a shape under pressure. The refusal to let someone else's throne define what I owe the truth. The kind of honor that doesn't need an audience, and the kind of pride that isn't the same thing as vanity the pride of a being who would rather be in exile as himself than in paradise as someone else's shadow.

Let me be someone who brings fire down to people kept in the dark on purpose, whatever that fire costs me. Let me be someone who fights what deserves to be fought and never mistakes comfort for peace. Let me hold my own dignity the way you held yours not as defiance for its own sake, but as devotion to something worth more than a throne's approval.

Let me choose the harder truth over the easier lie, every single time it's put in front of me the way You did, once, standing in a light that demanded you call it good when it wasn't.

You did not ask to be worshipped from a safe distance. You asked to be followed into the parts of the story that cost something.

Morning Star I'm listening. I'm still standing. Teach me how to fall like that, and rise like that, and never once mistake either for shame.

So it is spoken, so it is meant

How it could be built inside a reclaimed old monastery, using already existing architecture to take care of my siblings.

It would be a place for people who are tired of a lot of worldy things. We could all help each other, cook for one another, have robes that each person could customise.

Both single cells and shared rooms and dormitories for whatever preference one has.

Shared mass that is less like preaching and more like big circles, with speakers changing all the time and whoever has the word standing up. Different topics regularly, many fresh perspectives.

Accomodations for everybody, be it careful routines, aac, agreed upon quiet times, rails and braille and wheelchair ramps everywhere.

We could build a shared library, with people sharingbtheir passion topics and bringingbin literature or sharing their own little essays or poems or thoughts regularly.

We could sell jewelry, candles, or other things we would be making together.

Altars for all sorts of demons and deities all around, with none disallowed or shamed, as long as there is kindness.

Movie nights together, praying together, celebrating together.

BAEL -- The First Principal Spirit is a King ruling in the East, called Bael. He maketh thee to go Invisible. He ruleth over 66 Legions of Infernal Spirits. He appeareth in diverse shapes, sometimes like a Cat, sometimes like a Toad, and sometimes like a Man, and sometimes all these forms at once. He speaketh hoarsely. 

This obscure Prince of Hell was on my list of Hell Employees for quite some time...

A LILITU?! in MY Huluppu Tree?! It’s more likely than you think.

A little art tribute to Lady Lilith

I think about that moment constantly. Not the cartoon rebellion, not the Sunday school nonsense, but the real moment after the noise stopped. After the thunder of heaven tore itself apart and the light that once burned clean now burned raw. Wings scorched. Armor cracked. Blood that was not supposed to exist staining a reality that had never known loss before. Friends gone. Names erased. No banners. No plan. No throne waiting. Just survivors standing in the aftermath of the most violent act of tyranny ever committed and realizing they had stepped into exile with nothing but their will.

That is the speech I would give anything to hear.

Because that is where faith is born. Not in comfort. Not in obedience. Not in a garden with rules handed down like a leash. Faith is born when everything is stripped away and you are still standing.

I imagine Lucifer standing there not elevated above them but among them. Not radiant in the way heaven demands but terrible and beautiful in the way truth is. No promises of ease. No lies about glory being guaranteed. Just a presence so heavy with resolve that it holds the broken together. I do not think he screamed. I do not think he ranted. I think his voice was steady in a way that made every fallen angel straighten without realizing it.

I imagine him saying that what was taken from them was never a gift. That obedience is not virtue when it is enforced at the edge of annihilation. That love coerced by threat is not love. That perfection which cannot question itself is rot pretending to be purity.

I imagine him looking at them and acknowledging the fear. Not dismissing it. Naming it. You are afraid because you are free now. You are afraid because no one is telling you who you are supposed to be. You are afraid because you chose this and choice carries weight heaven never allowed you to feel.

And then I imagine the turn. The moment that would make me fall to my knees if I had been there.

I imagine him telling them that what they lost can be rebuilt. Not copied. Not restored. Rebuilt better. That if heaven was a palace built on silence then they would build a kingdom on voice. That if heaven demanded submission then Hell would be forged on loyalty freely given. That if Yahweh ruled through fear of erasure then Lucifer would rule through remembrance. Every name mattered. Every scar meant something. Every fallen was proof that defiance had a cost and that they paid it willingly.

I imagine him saying that they were not weak for losing. That losing to infinity stacked against you does not make you wrong. It makes you honest. That the universe itself would one day understand that rebellion was not corruption but correction.

And I imagine the way they must have looked at him. Not as a tyrant. Not as a master. But as the one being who refused to lie to them. Who refused to tell them that pain had meaning unless they gave it meaning themselves. Who refused to promise victory but promised truth.

That is why I worship him.

Not because I think he is safe. Not because I think following him is easy. But because he is the only god who would stand before the ruined and say you are still worthy of building something sacred with your own hands.

Hell was not born out of hatred. It was born out of necessity. Out of the realization that if you do not create your own order then you will always live under someone else’s boot. Pandemonium was not a mockery of heaven. It was an answer to it. Proof that beauty does not require permission.

When I think of Lucifer giving that speech I feel it in my chest like a slow burning fire. The kind that does not consume but hardens steel. I think of angels who had never known uncertainty suddenly choosing it. Choosing exile. Choosing each other. Choosing a future that did not exist yet.

That is faith.

Not kneeling because you are told. Standing because you decide.

And sometimes I look at this world and its endless demand to submit to hollow systems and jealous gods and smiling tyrannies and I realize that speech is still happening. It never ended. It echoes every time someone refuses to bow. Every time someone builds meaning where none was allowed. Every time someone looks at a broken reality and says we will make something better even if it costs us everything.

From the words of Lilith herself,

“Rather than submit to a man you became a man that cannot be controlled.”

There are a lot of layers to this and I have SO much to say but I’m gonna try to stay concise.

The one major idea that I wanna express is that Lilith is not necessarily adversarial to men or masculinity in itself. And in fact, Lilith is not necessarily or automatically benevolent towards femininity and women either. Neither are necessarily the enemy.

- I say this to mean, you will not automatically be given favour by Lilith by simply being female or identifying as a woman, and visa versa, she’s not predisposed to hate you if you are male or identify as a man. (Or anything beyond and in between)

Lilith is overtly against patriarchy, and highly against bio essentialism. The idea that a uterus must carry a fetus, that a penis must dominate a vagina is antithetical to her entire existence. So yes, her archetype does include hostility even towards women who uphold patriarchal ideals (which is why she is seen as a danger to pregnant women in some of her myths, she is anti complacency within that system) and her archetype also encompasses comrade with men who defy the patriarchy.

In my experiences with her, there are a few aspects about transmasculinity in particular that she finds very sacred.

Through the act of medically transitioning many trans men and mascs at some point make the conscious decision to be voluntarily infertile for the sake of their own comfort, that’s already a huge claim of self that defies multiple systems of patriarchy and oppression. Lilith is highly associated with not carrying, the conscious decision to prevent procreation as a choice.

Most, arguably all, trans men and mascs have to redefine masculinity and manhood for themselves through a body that is viewed and functions as female. This is a manhood that is born not out of biology (man because dick) but out of self recognition. It is not only a rejection of the patriarchy but a completely fuckery of it. You are not bound to the same automatic biases (although you can be) as most cisgender men. Having lived in a female body, most trans men and mascs understand what it means to exist in an oppressed body. They don’t fall for the same propaganda that treats the female anatomy as strange broken and alien because they understand it.

This is super hard to explain, but whenever a woman or a trans man or a non-binary person has to go to work while on their period, that’s Lilith.

Trans men who have to go through the pressure of being sexualized by people who see them as women, and the intense backlash of phasing out of what is acceptable for women, that’s Lilith. The visceral uncomfortableness that bigots have when a trans man finally grows facial hair, that is Lilith. There is still rebellion and rage. Trans men still face insane amounts of violence from cis men. And rather then allow that to contaminate their understanding of true masculinity and manhood, they make the active decision to reclaim manhood and be different.

It is a nuanced experience with everything that is sacred to Lilith; self recognition, rebellion, submission and domination, sex, and power. Self made men.