![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/shadow-Self-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0 The demands and distractions of the modern world can be deafening. We are bombarded with more information than ever: a constant stream of endorsements to consume, produce, and perform. Beneath the
\nfast-paced, attention-demanding currents of the internet age, the repressive mores of societies that have
\nlong since faded quietly persist, like ancient waste that can\u2019t be dissolved but only endured as it cycles
\nthrough its half-life. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche\u2019s imagined prophet of the future calls on his
\nfollowers to \u201cfollow themselves.\u201d This is harder than it sounds. When we are steeped in the fallacies of
\nour traditions and pressured to keep up with the expectations of society, how are we to hear and trust our
\nown voices?<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t miss religion when I left it. I\u2019ve spent most of my life a satisfied skeptic, restlessly chasing the
\nelusive feeling of contentment that sometimes comes fleetingly with success, but never stays. For a long
\ntime, I thought happiness was contingent on fixing myself; instead of changing into a better person, I
\nstarted to disappear. I returned to philosophy because the de facto system of thought I had unconsciously
\nshaped my life around was failing me. It has been a rude awakening to find, at the root of seasons of
\ndepression and discontent, that my most tyrannical beliefs followed me into godlessness after all.<\/p>\n
The truths we can\u2019t acknowledge have great power over us. As explained by Carl Jung, the Shadow is the
\npart of us that so threatens our sense of self that we can\u2019t bear to see it clearly, and so subconsciously
\nrelegate it to the edges of our inner peripheral vision where it reinforces the forbidden and deepens the
\nschisms within us. The process of reconciling these fragments must be destabilizing and unnerving – if it
\nthreatens us, it\u2019s because we cannot come out the same person on the other side. In The Hero With a
\nThousand Faces, Joseph Campbell describes the journey of the hero, one in which uncovering the most
\npenetrating truths of existence requires confronting symbolic monsters who represent the \u201cunsolved
\nenigmas\u201d of our humanity. Confronting the things we can\u2019t accept is an intrinsic part of becoming the
\nhero of our own lives, and discovering a true inner voice we can trust.<\/p>\n
In The Satanic Bible, Anton LaVey embraced the Devil as the great emancipator of our thoughts. The
\nsymbols and rituals in Satanism offer a way to strengthen the will to fight the beliefs that would stand
\nbetween us and self-becoming. For all its theatricality and shock factor, Satanism at its core is a profound
\nand sincere call to love life. This isn\u2019t a passive act. Life can\u2019t tell us how to love it; it can\u2019t credit us for
\ngoing through the motions. We are the only ones who can design our destinies and fulfill them. And if we
\ncan manage to separate the important from the superficial, the signal from the noise, perhaps we can
\nexperience the true magic that comes with an open mind: a state of being without judgment, pretense, or
\nfear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By K.\u00a0 Tooke \u00a0 The demands and distractions of the modern world can be deafening. We are bombarded with more information than ever: a constant stream of endorsements to consume, produce, and perform. Beneath the fast-paced, attention-demanding currents of the internet age, the repressive mores of societies that have long since faded quietly persist, like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":607,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7BLIO-1nq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5296"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/607"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5296"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5301,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5296\/revisions\/5301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}