FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 642 29 July 15 HAIL SATAN!

SATANISM IS REAL AND DANGEROUS TO ALL AND SUNDRY - INCLUDING THE SATANISTS THEMSELVES.
------------------------------------------------------------


As hundreds of worshippers gathered in their Detroit Temple to unveil a huge demonic idol called the ‘Baphomet’, fervent shouts of ‘Hail Satan!’ went up.

A travesty of Christian rituals and beliefs, Satanism is puzzling. Being the pursuit of evil, a cult of deliberate wickedness, why do people join it? Dreams of power, I imagine, in its polymorphous, seductive aspects. Money, sex, pleasure, domination, miraculous gifts, you name it.  But Satanists are mistaken. Because trusting in Supreme Goodness brings excellent rewards, it does not follow that adoring Absolute Evil will achieve the same. Think of food. Good food sustains life but bad food does not. A good person keeps his word, a bad person doesn’t. Hail him as your Lord as much as you like, His Satanic Majesty is not to be trusted – that is the point.

The ‘Baphomet’ goes back to the much maligned Knights Templar. A medieval order of warrior monks. Their enemies accused them of being secret Muslims – the Baphomet being a cryptic and twisted reference to ‘Mohamet’, Islam’s Prophet. Given that the poor Knights were a sort of SAS elite force in the Holy Land fighting the Saracens, a preposterous charge. Anyway, the towering Denver statue is ugly. An enthroned horned and winged figure, partly goat, partly human, with intertwined snakes emerging from its loins. Sinister, yes, but also grotesque and a touch comical. That two young children are shown looking up to the freak is truly sickening.

Being a parody of the worship of the One True God, Satanism sometimes cloaks itself with a mantle of pseudo-piety. ‘Unnecessary suffering is bad’, intoned the Temple rep. ‘We seek to reduce suffering’. Who would object to such banalities? Ditto when they claim to praise ‘rationality and scepticism’. (Shades of Professor Richard Dawkins?) They might of course start with submitting their own Satanic nonsense to a bit of rational and sceptical analysis. You can bet they won’t.

Curiously, some anti-clerical radicals took up Satan as a positive champion, an emblem of rebellion against authority. Thus the Italian poet and Nobel prize winner Giosue’ Carducci composed a blasphemous ‘Hymn to Satan’. Not unlike some extravagant Sufi mystics who felt to have discovered in the Shaytan or Iblis of the Qur’an the first, perfect monotheist, because he refused to bow or prostrate before Adam. This implausible devil would bow only before Allah, according to the Sufis. A perplexing reversal of the Qur’anic meaning, methinks.

When in parish work, I met some crestfallen, repentant devil worshippers. They told similar, sad stories. Dazzling mirages of fantastic power perks had lured them in. Soon, the opposite befell them. They began losing power, becoming feebler. Ended up as virtual slaves, robbed of their freewill, chained to the chief Satanist or con man, forced into prostitution or menial drudgery.

Human credulity being endless, a well-meaning evangelical Vicar I knew was once cheated of thousands of pounds by a pretended, former Satanist. The money was necessary to purchase a ‘Satan’s throne’, my friend was told, so to free further victims. Alas, it only ‘freed’ the hapless clergyman of his cash.

A key question lurks behind these diabolical investigations. Mere human stupidity or actual, cosmic wickedness? Idiocy or more? Is Satan outside of man or only inside his mind? A matter of metaphysical, substantial evil or of individual psychology, like quirks of the subconscious?

As a priest, a professional, trained expert in good and evil, I have an axe to grind. The Christian Scriptures and traditions do not beat about the bush. Satan and his minions are real, all too real. Interfaith reinforces this. The Qur’an states that the fiend’s first victims were Adam and his wife. His whispering led them to disobey God. When they had tasted the tree, they became aware of the shameful parts. A teaching mirroring the Bible, Genesis 3:7: ‘…And they knew they were naked.’ How notable that, as Satanism rears its ugly head in the ungodly West, human beings seem to have lost much sense of modesty about nakedness…

Pity is, I think, the right attitude towards the deluded Denver Satanists. In Roman Polanski’s supernatural movie, The Ninth Gate, occultist Boris Balkan begins to perform a diabolical ritual aimed at making himself all-powerful. As he mumbles gobbledygook invocations to the Devil, Balkan douses his body in petrol and then sets himself alight, believing to have become invulnerable to fire. Too late he realises the ritual is rubbish. He screams in atrocious pain, succumbing to the flames.

I doubt Polanski meant it but for me the moral is clear: hailing Satan will not work. It will only bring his servants closer to the eternal Fire.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

============================================================
** follow on Twitter (Twitter Account not yet Authorized)
| ** friend on Facebook (#)
| ** forward to a friend (http://us7.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=72aa8ffba6&e=5707b9e8db)

Copyright © Fr Frank Gelli
Email Marketing Powered by MailChimp
http://www.mailchimp.com/monkey-rewards/?utm_source=freemium_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=monkey_rewards&aid=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&afl=1
** unsubscribe from this list (http://simplesite.us7.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=f9573901af&e=5707b9e8db&c=72aa8ffba6)
| ** update subscription preferences (http://simplesite.us7.list-manage1.com/profile?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=f9573901af&e=5707b9e8db)