(December 20, 2024 at 4:39 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:(December 20, 2024 at 4:35 am)Belacqua Wrote: Thank you -- you clearly know more about these groups than I do.
I'm glad to hear that the American group isn't related to the Nine Angles. They seem like a nasty bunch.
Two questions, if you happen to know:
Do the Nine Angles people believe in a real Satan, or do they use the name as a kind of symbol?
And am I correct in thinking that your group uses the name as a symbol or mascot, but doesn't hold to the idea that there's a real Satan out there? Like no one is asking for favors from an evil demon or anything.
As I think about it, I recall that there's a good precedent here. Some of the great English Romantic poets saw Satan as a kind of tragic hero, much like Prometheus. They held him up as a symbol of justified rebellion against authority. Though they seem to have gotten their image of Satan more from Milton than from Christian orthodoxy.
Blake, as usual, was unique. Since he saw God as the state or condition of infinite awareness, he defined Satan as the opposite -- a near-total condition of opacity. Humans could aspire to the condition of God, but, he thought, often fall to the condition of Satan.
‘Unique’ is a very charitable term. What Blake was, was teetotal fucknuts crazy.
Boru
TST, The Satanic Temple, doesn't believe in any god/gods, including Satan. He's used as a metaphor, we're all atheists. Using religious imagery, like a pentagram, or an inverted crucifix is to get the attention of those who "believe" because we know what kind of reaction it'll provoke.
They always go apeshit, which does nothing but bring attention to how biased the US is towards anything that's considered anti-christian.
