Hail Satan

Is this a plausible claim or just someone balls deep in the western esoteric tradition trying to save a big aspect of it from cultural appropriation accusations?

Ive come to believe that 99% of use of the term "Cultural appropriation" is thought terminating. One of those terms like "male gaze" that just need to be put up on a shelf until people actually use it correctly. There's a sense of "well it's closed, so I don't have to actually learn about it." And! "well I don't care if it's closed, I don't have to actually learn about it!"

Kabbalah is "closed" in the sense that like, being a rabbi is "closed." Like, I could read mishnah for the next twenty years, I would learn a lot and it would deepen my understanding of theology, but it wouldn't make me a rabbi. I've read quite a bit of academic literature about Kabbalah, I've even read some English translations of primary texts. This has greatly enriched my understanding of western religious history. I love discussing theology with my Jewish colleagues. But this doesn't make me a kabbalist. Only a kabbalist can make a kabbalist. Additionally, "practicing Kabbalah" is something that only makes sense if you're Jewish. Which I am not. So why would I want to be a kabbalist? What am I gonna do? Deepen my relationship to HaShem through adherence to Jewish law? Usher in the coming of the Messiah? I don't believe in that stuff!

Many elements of western estoericism are inspired by elements from Jewish mysticism. Jewish mysticism is often inspired by theology from the other abrahamic religions. But these are real things that happened in actual history. And as students of western esotericism we have a duty to understand that history.

"Cultural exchange between mystics" is an EXTREMELY misleading way to describe the relationship Kabbalah has to western esotericism more broadly. That "exchange" was quite diverse. Kabbalistic theology has its roots in Jewish responses to Christian and Islamic theology, but it's entry into western esotericism was complex. Rabbis were often forced to translate kabbalistic texts into Latin under theat of persecution. At the same time, some Christian Cabalists wrote highly of kabbalistic theology in an effort to legitimize Jewish theology in the eyes of the church, and shield their Jewish colleagues from persecution. Cornelius Agrippa was literally tortured to death by the church for being a judaizer!

Moore is conflating Jewish Kabbalah, Christian Cabala, and Hermetic Qabalah, all of which are different things. Judaism informed the creation of Christianity, and both of them informed the creation of Islam. These three kabbalistic theologies have a similar relationship. It is silly to conflate them!

Ave Satanas, friends!

We at the Circle of the Fallen have some announcements to make!

Friends, fiends, sinners, and observers! I am absolutely honored to make the most exciting announcement in the history of the Circle of the Fallen... so far. ;)

Today marks the official launch of our very own website! Hand-coded by our dear Nine, PhD with the help of our awesome tech team (especially Sol Aranea ), we created this site as a means of outreach, to inform the wider world of our community and share our resources.

Speaking of resources, I will not hide my bias in introducing my favorite part of the website. The Library of the Fallen. We've got books for beginners! We've got classics! We've got resources created by community members! We've got advanced grimoires for those who are ready to step beyond the starting line! We even have some rare books that you're unlikely to find anywhere else on the internet. And it is all, to the best of my ability, free for you all to read.

And it's not done! I doubt it will ever be. This collection has been a dream of mine since this community began over a year ago, and we took our unexpected new start as an opportunity to finally get the project going. I wanted to get together something useful to you all as soon as possible, and I believe I've achieved that - but I will continue to add to it as time goes on.

Thank you for your patience, and your company, my friends. Enjoy.

Welcome to the official Tumblr for the Satanic organization known as The Circle of the Fallen! We are an online community for Theistic Satanists of all beliefs founded upon mutual respect instead of restrictive belief.

Hail Satan, and Hail You!

keep reading for our navigation and links !

Explore our blog:

Events Announcements

Explore our community:

Official Discord Official Website

There's a lot that gets skewed or glossed over in witchcraft literature, and the authors with a more New-Age bent (which is its' own kind of problem) tend to do a lot of free association between disparate ideas with only passing surface similarity, or ascribe antiquity to things created in the modern era in order to lend them more credibility.

So if I see a claim that strikes me as odd or doesn't jive with previously-held knowledge, I go looking for a reputable academic text on the topic. The writings of Ronald Hutton, Michael Bailey, Owen Davies, and Margot Adler have been very helpful in this regard when it comes to the history of pagan practices in the western world and the modern witchcraft movement.

I also keep a go-to trove of resources handy on things like minerology, botany, and medicine, just in case I run into any odd claims about the properties of certain plants or stones. I also have books on folklore, mythology, and comparative religion that I keep around for similar purposes.

Beyond this, I also supplement any magical study I'm engaged in with practical learning, so that I have a broader context and frame of reference to work from. And so that things like ingesting essential oils or dumping belladonna into one's tea in order to see visions immediately ring a bell as a Bad Idea.

I credit my finely-tuned bullshit detector to a developed habit of immediately fact-checking claims about witchcraft in history or modern pagan practices and occult philosophies against mundane sources. (You'd be surprised how much you can find just on Wikipedia.)

come join my discord, Circle of the Fallen. we're small-ish (100ish people) but quite active, extremely chill, and very friendly and welcoming to all manner of Satanic-adjacent spiritualities (or just folks who are curious & respectful).

The Kybalion is not an ancient book. It's an early 20th century text probably written by William Walker Atkinson, a guy who wrote under tons of pseudonyms. (More info.) Basically, you should take everything it says with a grain of salt.

In terms of specific rituals I always tend to write my own based off of established rituals from other practitioners.

“The Complete Book of Demonolatry” outlines a ton of different rituals for various purposes including meditation exercises to develop the ability to enter into trances effectively. There’s also a ton of information on ritual set up, astral projection and invocation etiquette.

The Temple of the Ascending Flame has been very public and open with much of their work and have published many rituals that can easily be found on their website or YouTube channel. “The rites of Lucifer” by Asenath Mason in particular outlines multiple rituals I’ve used in my own practice. M Ford also has many many many books on Luciferian magic that are available on multiple platforms.

And my biggest recommendation is the work of Kindra Ravenmoon, “Lucifer: A Devotional”. It has many different rituals including very personalized and romantic rites. Consecration of sacred spaces and items, daily affirmations and prayers etc. Definitely the book I return to most often.

Don’t accept witchcraft books for history. Read history texts. 

Don’t accept witchcraft books for mental processes. Read psychology and biological texts. 

Don’t accept witchcraft books for mythology. Don’t accept witchcraft books for religion. Read original texts and papers written researchers credited in their fields. 

Stop reading right then and look up what they’ve claimed

Make a note of the fact - sticky notes, notes app, notebook, etc. - and research it at a later date

When researching, look for high-authority cross-reference sources. What I mean by that is, look for sources that have a legitimate, easy-to-prove claim to expertise. This’d be sources like (for example, not exhaustive) university presses, scientific research papers, museum publications, experts with degrees and years of experience in their fields, and, for cultural information, elder members of said culture and internally-run cultural heritage organizations.

Great places to find solid sources for cross-referencing:

The Smithsonian

Encyclopedia Britannica

JSTOR

Oxford Academic Journal

Sage Journals

Science Direct

Google Scholar

Your local library

Expanded Guide to Divination

(Free Download)

Contributor: @an-candy-witch

Editor: @jasper-pagan-witch

INDEX

What is Tarot?

Caring for Your Deck

How to Read Tarot

Major Arcana

Suit of Cups

Suit of Coins

Suit of Swords

Suit of Wands

What is Cartomancy?

Wheel of Fortune Keywords

Tarot, Oracle, and Wheel of Fortune Spreads

What Is Astragalomancy?

Guide to Traditional Astragalomancy

Guide to Polyhedral Astragalomancy

Six sided Die

Eight Sided Die

Ten and Twenty Sided Die

Twelve Sided Die

15. Word of Thanks

DOWNLOAD HERE

A happy day indeed. For the first time my book is now available in a physical form. For those of you who have downloaded the free digital edition of The Dirokvul from my pages, this is the same book. Now the only difference is a few special illustrations and a bit of alternative formatting. This hardcover edition is more of a collector's edition for those who wish to hold the tome in their hands.

https://www.amazon.com/Dirokvul-Ualthum/dp/B0DY6RK2L7

Understanding your own underlying desires, emotions, intentions, and experiences, none of this requires shadow work to accomplish.

You do not need to do shadow work in order to embrace who you are entirely and not just on the surface.

Everybody is different. Everybody learns about themselves differently, discovers things about themselves differently, self cultivates differently, grows and matures into versions of themselves differently. Growth, maturity, learning, living, experiencing the world, these things take time, lots and lots of time, and practice. There has never been a one size fits all for human development. Developmental psychologists have written no shortage of books and papers on this subject alone. Shadow work isn't some therapeutic silver bullet that'll solve your problems, give you a boost of mental health superpowers, voila, epiphany, self realization, you're a better witch. In fact, nothing will magically do this for any of us. There's no rushing life experiences and learning processes. There are things that simply take time, and work.

I've been a witch for 13 years and I've never done shadow work. I have, however, done nearly a decade of trauma recovery therapy. Trust me, by this point, at age almost 38, I know myself and why I'm a witch pretty damn well now. It's been a long while since I've come to learn what I'm capable of and why.

Do you know the damage shadow work can wreak if not done tactfully, carefully, with enough knowledge and understanding, and preferably guided by a mental health professional who knows what they're doing and with a good amount of trauma treatment experiences on their hands? People have ended up with PTSD, and people have had existing trauma disorders worsened, by jumping into it alone, unsupported, uneducated, not knowing what they were getting themselves into, not at all prepared for what would be brought to the surface too much, too quickly, too soon, way before they were ready, because some random witches on the internet who don't even understand what shadow work actually entails got into their heads that to be witches they must do shadow work.

If you're actually interested in this topic, then I recommend reading some psychology books, especially on the history of Jungian analytical psychology.

And by the way? You have no right, no place, whatsoever, to "enforce" anything onto any aspect of anybody's practice, spirituality, life, period. What works for you doesn't work for everybody. Your way of doing things isn't the right way for all.

So now we have Witchcraft is dangerous if someone doesn't *checks hand* understand themselves???

Did I catch that right?

@crazycatsiren already got on the topic of how Shadow Work has very little to do with "understanding themselves" and is not used for that. So I don't need to go into it.

But the fuck? Does that? Even mean here?

Like what are we pretending here? Why are you coming from the starting place that someone saying that Shadow work is not a requirement equals that they don't know themselves. I mean, honestly, is knowing themselves an actual requirement for witchcraft? In What sense do I need to know my "underlying" .... "UNCONSCIOUS??? is that what you're trying to say??" motives to throw out a spell that brings me luck? Brings me protection? Gets me money?

I just want to be lucky, I just want protection, I just want money. I don't need to dig any deeper to know those motivations. You're doing too much.

Is this just some thinly veiled, Golden Dawn bullshit? Are we back at the Powers of the Sphinx? Oh right, it's been going by the Witch's Pyramid for a little while - which is also still bullshit.

Come on dude, stop. Just stop. It's ridiculous.

come join my discord, Circle of the Fallen. we're small-ish (100ish people) but quite active, extremely chill, and very friendly and welcoming to all manner of Satanic-adjacent spiritualities (or just folks who are curious & respectful).