Introducing the Dark Doctrines

by Hr. Vad

It is difficult to introduce the Dark Doctrines, but I'll do so here from a more personal perspective. Nothing here goes in a straight line, and as simple as the Doctrines may appear, they are equally complex and impossible to understand. They are the true mysteries. Yet in simple form they are just about the Darkness (or Void) and how this Darkness enters the realm of Light (this world, you, the chair you sit on), only to whoosh through it to flow back into the Void. There is no morality in this, it just is.

I've been a Satanist for 15 years and hail from the typical background of someone who has grown up in close encirclement by Xtianity. Back in the mid-80's it wasn't all too easy to find information about Satanism, especially not in my own language (Danish), and my first encounter with the subject came from Anton LaVey's "Satanic Bible". Wow, finally someone who cries out "Hail Satan!" and speaks of demons and devils, and has nude altars. Clearly an author who had issues with Xtianity, and his provocative logic cleaned out a lot of silly preconceptions. At least that's what I thought back then ... big, big, mistake.

That said there are a couple of questions one has to ask oneself, when approaching a subject like Satanism. You have grown up in a Xtian family, gone to Sunday school, gone to church, live in a society into which Xtianity is completely secularized, almost every book you've read has been written by a Xtian, Xtians taught you in school, and every time you turn on your television Xtians appear on-screen. So you got to ask yourself:

What are the chances that you have ever received any reliable information about a legitimate Satanic tradition and religion? How likely is it that your current image of Satanism is anything like what it really is? Also, given your newfound desire for knowledge of the Left Hand Path (or anything non-Xtian), how likely is it that you would even know where to look? And upon finding something, would you even recognize it for what it is? Of course, someone might tell you that some particular passage in a text describes Satanism, but would you grasp the meaning? Considering the entire knowledge you have of the world, and Satanism in particular, what are the chances that you have ever received any information unfiltered by Xtian minds?

I think you know the answers to the questions.

The Dark Doctrines are nothing like anything you have ever expected! I've always had an inquisitive nature, and I've read countless books, but nothing could prepare me properly for the Dark Doctrines. I thought so at first, trying to fit the doctrines into the small boxes that I had been provided with by Xtian society and to some extent the Satanic Bible. But as one delves deeper into the tradition it becomes increasingly clear that there is a large task of redefining one's premises of Satanism. There most certainly is such a thing as Satanism and a Satanic tradition, but it's just not exactly what Hollywood or the CoS tells you. It's more like Sat Tan-ism, about SAT (Being) and TAN (Becoming).

My own experience also tells me that the process of coming to know the Doctrines is bumpy and roundabout. You do not plot a straight course through Euclidian space. It's more like a twisting, turning journey where the conclusions and discoveries lie in ambush, ready to flank you when you least expect it. I promise, though, that when they hit you, the results are jaw dropping and you may find yourself reaching for something solid to hold onto.

At this point it is important to explain that I am speaking from the point of a typical Westerner being initiated into the Dark Tradition, I was not born into it! People like Tani Jantsang, on the other hand, are generational Satanists, meaning that not just her parents were Dark Adepts, but her family has been like that for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. What may appear as strange and novel to us is just matter-of-factly for her.

People react very differently to the Dark Doctrines. There are people who instantly resonate with the descriptions of The Dark Force in Nature, others just intuitively know that they're onto something, and they see the bondage of all the false dichotomies evaporate before their eyes. Things they've spent years debating are shown to be non-issues that only serve to short-circuit thinking and keep people trapped in an idiotic world of nonsense.

At the other end there are those who react as if a life threatening autoimmune response had been triggered, and they lash out with hatred and contempt, seemingly unable to even grasp the slightest leaf of the vast tree that is the Dark Doctrines. It's as if matter and anti-matter meets. It's like these people are the enemies of the Flame itself.

I once corresponded on an e-list with a Grotto Master of a "Mephistopheles Grotto". Considering the name of the grotto I thought he might enjoy some information about Mephistopheles, the Devil of Goethe's "Faust". What I did was basically rehash the 2 pages from "Package of Doctrines" by Tani Jantsang, which was information I knew to be 100% accurate. They guy freaked out. He instantly launched into abusive language to describe both my and Tani Jantsang's account of Goethe and his play, and venom was dripping when he dismissed the "stupid idea" that Goethe knew the Kaballah intimately. Yet, all Tani and I ever did was take a couple of pages from standard literature and explicitly point out how they indeed contained the wisdom of the Dark Doctrines. Actually, what I had to do to shut up the freaked out Grotto Master was to cite from my girlfriend's 101 book on German literature that contained all the factual information about the subject. So you see, it's not as if I was quoting from some highly suspect source, just freshmen material. The magic was in the ability to recognize it for what it was.

Obviously, the fact that there actually was sources describing so clearly a satanic tradition before 1966 was so unsettling to this "Master" that he instantly attacked us. Despite the fact that all we did was quoting some freshmen-year book on German literature! If you wish to understand the Dark Doctrines, try to keep the Ego in check, and prepare for the unexpected, because you're going where no Satanist has gone before.

These hostile people are also serving another cause. They are trying to rob you and everyone else of the wonderful, limitless, richness of life by constraining Satanism into the small, suffocating box where they keep their own definition of Satanism. And their definition borrows more from fascism and rigid, dogmatic, Xtianity than from the Dark Doctrines and everything else in that tradition. You shouldn't let anyone tell you that you can only paint with only one color, when in reality the whole spectrum of the human experience is what you deserve.

It's a tragedy that people aren't more open-minded, but it's like this: you will find Satanism in the least expected places, and you will find that Satanism is not like anything you ever expected it to be. Most of us Westerners are simply looking for Satanism in the wrong places. Most modern Satanists don't have a clue as to what the real Dark Tradition is about.

How your journey on the Left Hand Path fares will be entirely up to you!

Bon Voyage!

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