Salt City Sinner

  Perhaps you were lucky enough to grow up without a religious background. Perhaps your guardians were either hardened, borscht-swilling atheist Marxists or the type of enlightened freethinkers one might find at a local Universalist Unitarian meeting – you know, the type who let their children name themselves and pick their own spiritual path. Perhaps you did grow up with a hand-me-down religion, but perhaps it was Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or any other religion available in this great big world.

posted on 4/24/2019 by the Salt City Sinner Because of my unconventional religious beliefs, I expect to be misrepresented and unfairly pilloried. Anyone who stakes out a controversial position that pushes the envelope of free speech or the free exercise of religion can expect some pushback, whether their cause be just (as is the case with the Satanic Temple or ACLU), unjust (conservative Evangelicals writ large, trolls like Roger Stone), or legally-protected but unconscionable (the alt-right, the Westboro Baptist Church). When right wing figures squawk, whine, and weep about how persecuted they are when people quite predictably hate what they have to say, I don’t think it’s the least bit in good faith, because as a Satanist – and, thus, someone whose speech is also often unpopular – I expect to have to deal with the social consequences of my beliefs. Now, on the other hand, the correction of lies and misrepresentations – I think that’s both fair and a productive use of ...

posted on 7/26/2015 by the Salt City Sinner (In part one of this post , I very briefly addressed some of the historic witch hunts, both literal and figurative, that Christians in the West have engaged in. Today we're going to focus in a little closer on literal, 'get him/her, she/he's a witch' witch hunts. ) To be fair, it’s not just Christians in the West (or “Christendom,” as some right-wing Christians have adorably taken to calling it again) who have engaged in this type of hideous nonsense. Listverse compiled ’ 10 Modern Attempts to Police the Occult  -- a fascinating and quick read that is completely worth checking out, by the way -- and only two of the entries on the list are from the West; one example from the United Kingdom and one to Canada. Given the content coming up in the third and final installment of this post, leaving the U.S. off the list strikes me as a little weird. Also, it’s worth noting that Islam is at least as unhinged as Christianity w...

posted on 7/3/2015 by the Salt City Sinner  There are two definitions of “witch hunt,” one literal and one figurative. Literal witch hunts still go on in America and abroad (primarily in Africa and the Middle East). They happen when a community succumbs to collective insanity and goes searching for “witches” (practitioners of magick or the occult) and/or evidence of witchcraft, blaming everything from failed crops to moral transgressions by “upstanding” community members or outbreaks of contagion on suspected witches. The victims of these hunts are often, but not always, people who have absolutely nothing to do with witchcraft – and who are certainly innocent of causing the harm they are held responsible for in either case. Figurative witch hunts follow the same pattern of moral panic, a frenetic search for a conspiracy, and the persecution of people perceived to be members of a hated minority, but can happen when angry, panicked idiots set their sights on just about a...

posted on 5/27/2015 by the Salt City Sinner It's a beautiful day outside! Spring is blossoming on the brink of summer, the warm air is laden with birdsong and sweet, golden pollen, and you've decided to join a cult. This is not a wholly unusual life choice, and although your friends, family, coworkers, and various psychiatric professionals may be dismayed by your decision, or even tell you that you're making a horrible mistake that will destroy your life, this modest bloggue is a judgement-free zone and staunch defender of your political and religious liberty and your right to live according to your Sincerely Held Beliefs™, no matter how unusual they may be. You may think that this means that your decision-making days are over. This is, unfortunately, not true YET. After all, planet Earth in the year 2015 offers you a magnificent array of options in terms of cults that are eager to have you on board. To help determine which cult might be a good fit for you, we h...

posted on 4/19/2015 by the Salt City Sinner  The drunk pack of sports fans at the football game do it when they don “war paint” and headdresses and cheer for the crude, stereotypical “Indian” that is their team's mascot. That insufferable white college freshman does it when he shows up for class inexplicably clad in a dashiki. It's called cultural appropriation, and it's one of the favored pastimes of dominant groups in this, the poisoned fever dream of late-stage capitalism. Wikipedia has a pretty good working definition of the phenomenon, which it describes as “the adoption of elements of one culture by members of a different cultural group, especially if the adoption is without the consent of the originating culture, and when the appropriating group has historically oppressed members of the originating culture. ” This brings us to the modern Evangelical yen for Judaism, and the related (in a limited sense) topic of Messianic Judaism. Now, this post is specif...

posted on 10/30/2013 by the Salt City Sinner  Happy Devil's Night and preemptive Halloween, ye servants of darkness! It is by this point quite apparent, I would think, that I have a low-grade obsession with Joseph Farah's WND (formerly “WorldNetDaily”), which I think is probably the most insane right-wing website on planet Earth – certainly the most insane site that generates such a volume of traffic, anyway. It's impossible to know how many WND readers are there looking for their version of legitimate “news” and how many are, like me, lookie-loos attracted to the most ghastly political freak-show this side of Alex Jones, but the numbers are pretty impressive (1.680 in traffic worldwide, 454 in the US, according to Alexa ). Lest you think this is just a depressing measure of the size of the proverbial fever swamps, it's worth noting WND's email list has been purchased by the Republican National Committee for outreach efforts in the past. This lends Farah...

posted on 8/30/2013 by the Salt City Sinner  ...well, WND has been infiltrated by ONE pagan, anyway. Now, when it comes to religion, I am not one to throw stones – both as a matter of principle and because my house is made of the very thinnest glass. After all, according to Jesper Aagard Petersen's 2009 book on contemporary looney-tunes belief systems*, people like myself are “often seen by other occultists as dangerous or worrisome revolutionaries.” In short, I would never criticize someone for letting their religious freak flag fly. I am, however, perpetually delighted by the pratfalls and hypocrisy of “pure” religious believers (usually these falls from “grace” involve sexual proclivities of a nature that they have spoken out against pretty heatedly – see Ted Haggard et. al. -- but not in this case). This brings us to WND. Big Joe Farah's perpetual conspiracy engine has been a source of much mirth   here  at Salt City Sinner and   elsewhere . WND (former...

posted on 8/16/2013 by the Salt City Sinner Happy Friday, ye godless, begodded and many-godded pilgrims! The sun came up in the East this morning, gravity apparently still works, and water is still wet, and thus homophobes are still engaging in contortions of screwball logic and epic bouts of sulky wailing about their supposed persecution at the daintily manicured hands of the gays. The fact that most Christians – that is to say, those who are not affiliated with the likes of Big Joe Farah or Pat Roberson – do NOT feel the iron boot of Hitler / Stalin / Obama on their necks doesn't faze these wild-eyed true believers, who see themselves as beleaguered heroes desperately trying to warn an ignorantly sleeping population of God-fearing Americans that they are done for. The Supreme Court's DOMA ruling prompted what was probably the apex of this screeching so far ( jeepers! ), but it is anti-discrimination laws – the slowly evolving legal framework that, in some places ...

Posted 5/20/2012 by the Salt City Sinner HAIL to thee, Amun-Ra, Lord of the thrones of the earth, the oldest existence, ancient of heaven, support of all things;  Chief of the gods, lord of truth; father of the gods, maker of men and beasts and herbs; maker of all things above and below;  Deliverer of the sufferer and oppressed, judging the poor;  Lord of wisdom, lord of mercy; most loving, opener of every eye, source of joy, in whose goodness the gods rejoice, thou whose name is hidden.  Thou art the one, maker of all that is, the one; the only one; maker of gods and men; giving food to all.  Hail to thee, thou one with many heads; sleepless when all others sleep, adoration to thee.  Hail to thee from all creatures from every land, from the height of heaven, from the depth of the sea.  The spirits thou hast made extol thee, saying, welcome to thee, father of the fathers of the gods; we worship thy spirit which is in us. ...