Hail Satan!
Hail and Welcome to Capital Area Satanists! This is the place for news about CAS, articles, essays, thought pieces, and other content by and for CAS members. For now, we thought we would begin by explaining to those who don’t know what a Satanist is. We will not sacrifice your goats, cats, or children.
Satanism is a religion without official deity, clergy, creed, or rites. It is a religion that is built by each of us, as a group and separately. For most of us, Satan is not a literal being, but an inspiration; a mythological framework on which to model our current and future selves.
We place Satan at the center of our practice as a rebel against a tyrannical and self-obsessed god, and as a bringer of the light of knowledge, just as the snake in the Garden of Eden encouraged Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Satanism is based upon the ideas of knowledge free from dogma, justice free from oppression, and personal and collective liberty free from jingoism.
We engage in ritual, together and alone, for the same reasons anyone engages in secular rituals one could name (birthdays, family reunions, school graduation ceremonies, hugging, shaking hands, etc.): to connect with our friends, families, and communities; to recognize important occasions; to mark the passage of time.
We use the trappings of “the occult” in our rituals (casting circles, reading tarot, invoking various deities or other entities, etc.) for many reasons, each unique to the individual. For some, specific ritual elements may hold personal weight, and engaging in them brings comfort, confidence, peace, motivation, or inspiration. For others, occult trappings provide a kind of gravity or earnestness to the occasion, even if they don’t find specific meaning to individual elements of a ritual.
The most important part about satanic ritual is that it’s yours. You can design each ritual to the specific time, place, and people involved without thought about what is “right” or “wrong” according to arbitrary rules. What is right and wrong in a satanic ritual is only dictated by the people involved in the ritual. No one is compelled to speak, or to stay silent, or otherwise conduct themselves in any way that doesn’t feel natural and comfortable for them at that moment.
As Satanists, we often outwardly embrace the darker aspects of life through the use of symbols such as inverted pentagrams or demonic imagery such as that of Baphomet. Often this penchant for dark subjects is exemplified in love of horror, or extreme metal music (though liking either is not a requirement to call oneself a Satanist).
We embrace subjects of death and damnation not because we seek these things out, but so that they can represent the reality of our own eventual death. As Satanists who largely reject supernatural explanations of our universe, we recognize the extraordinary nature of sapient life, and how precious and fragile it is. We wish to remember the realities of mortality so that we do not take our one life for granted.
There are more ways to practice Satanism than there are people in the world. As a group, CAS values building and maintaining an inclusive, socially conscious community of Satanists in and around the Nation’s Capital.
Thank you for reading! Happy Halloween! Hail Satan!