Important note about invites to sites

I got more of those annoying email invites for some site called Boxbe. I don't know or care what this site is.

I have never, in my entire history online, ever joined a site by someone's email/Facebook invitation and I doubt I ever will. When I join a site it is because I have my own reasons to. I only joined Twitter after lots of foot-dragging because, at the time, I needed a way to aggregate links I was sharing onto my LJ; that's pretty much all I use it for still, except occasional visits to the Night Vale Twitter account. I only joined Tumblr, too, after lots of foot dragging, because there were so very many cool things being linked from there. I only joined Facebook for the games it has.

If I've never heard of a site, I might look at it once, and might join if it sounds interesting or useful. If it's popular, I'm likely to resist joining the bandwagon for as long as possible, because by nature I just don't like bandwagons. And I add pretty much any site I get email invites about to my "never in a million years" list. So inviting me to sites does the opposite of enticing me.

After months and months of it being popular, I still have not joined Pinterest. I have basically told Google Plus to fuck off. I'm more likely to grow horns than join Instagram. And the sun will likely grow cold before I join any of those websites that broadcast your location for everyone and their grandmother to see. Hell, I only joined the Soup.io bandwagon because Yahoo bought Tumblr, and Yahoo has this nasty reputation for censoring stuff that isn't "family friendly." Apparently, though I've not logged in for months, my Soup is still importing from Tumblr. :-)

So don't ever email invite me to any website. I don't care how cool you think it is, I have my own ideas about why to join things, and if I am going to join at all, it must be in my own time and for my own reasons.

Theistic vs Atheistic Satanism

I don't really know if I consider myself theist or atheistic. I'm a Satanist, and I have moods; sometimes I have theistic moods. Other times I have atheistic moods. I think it's the chaote in me.

That said, I really hate it when atheistic Satanists shit on the theistic Satanists. Theistic Satanists were here first, and LaVey's version of Satanism is to Satanism as Wicca is to paganism. People keep saying there are no surviving pagan religions and that Wicca is a reconstruction. The truth is, they're not only forgetting African pagan religions (which are alive and well and have been this whole time), but also that paganism was NOT completely crushed. They couldn't crush European Judaism, what makes people think European paganism was crushed? Mostly it just merged with Catholicism, the way Santeria did.

Also, it's forgetting that Wicca is NOT and has NEVER BEEN a reconstruction of European paganism: Gardner basically grabbed and slightly modified the rituals of the Freemasons, said it had to be done naked, and called it Wicca. Anyone who's ever been to a Thelema ritual knows this; the rituals of Thelema are almost exactly identical to Gardnerian Wicca's rituals.

Likewise, LaVeyan Satanism was basically this guy with absolutely ZIP in the way of knowledge about already-extant Satanism redefining the term to suit his own prejudices and then taking massive dumps on theistic Satanism, denouncing it all as dabbling. Sure, there ARE dabblers, but theistic Satanism is as old as Satan (who is far older even than Judaism and only became evil when monotheism adopted Him) and never died.

This whole "Satan is just a symbol" stuff is nice and all if you're into that scene, but it's no excuse to shit all over anyone who thinks Satan is real. The theistic Satanists have been around a lot longer than you have, and anyone saying that theistic Satanism is less valid than atheistic Satanism is being just as stupid as the kind of Wiccans who scoff at hard polytheists when "everybody knows" that "all Goddesses are The Goddess and all Gods are The God." Um, no. You're welcome to believe that, but don't crap all over people who disagree. That kind of bullshit behavior looks terrible on everybody. For things that are purely a matter of faith, one belief is as valid as another unless it shits on someone else to try to gain legitimacy. It's only acceptable to call someone a brainless moron when they believe something that's been proven wrong, like "fluoride in the water is used to control people's minds." Don't be silly, that's TV's job.

Hell, LaVeyan Satanism isn't even terribly original. LaVey took Crowley's philosophy, made a "For Dummies" version of it, and called it Satanism. Also, I laugh at the use of Enochian in Satanic rituals. Yeah, wannabe-badass LaVey used an angelic language for his rituals, WTF? I mean yeah, Satan is supposedly a fallen angel by post-Judaic standards, but still... at least warp the fucking Enochian, like The Black Speech was a warping of elven tongues in the LOTR.

So yeah: theist, non-theist, whatever. Just don't shit on each other over your differences. You end up looking even pettier than "Christian" sects that disagree over a comma, since as a dominant religion, they've earned the right to be that inane and divisive. When there are so few of us, we need to stick together and stop being as shallow as the Christians-in-name-only.