Tag: Satanism

The Talk Back: What Kind of Community Do We Want?

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ Leave a comment

NOTE: I am moving to Substack! Please subscribe to my work there.

Last week, I published an episode of Sacred Tension with Lucien Greaves responding to the recent controversy in The Satanic Temple. See that post to get caught up.

I’m glad I released the episode. I felt I needed to as a matter of conscience, and that I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t. I feel like I’ve lanced a boil on my conscience that was going septic. At the same time, conscience errs. I know that the episode probably wasn’t perfect, and I’m willing to hear people out if they think I fucked up. I can live with both my imperfection and the requirements of my conscience. Whether other people can too is between them and Satan.

Unless something new happens that requires my commentary, I believe I’m done publicly discussing this controversy. That does not mean I’m closed to dialogue behind the scenes. By all means, my DMs are open. I’m just ready to move on to the stuff that I enjoy writing about.

Since publishing the episode, I’ve received an outpouring of responses, both privately and publicly. Some of the responses were filled with rage, disappointment, and hurt. Others were filled with relief, hope, and gratitude. I don’t think I’ve ever received such a diversity of feedback.

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On Being a Border-Stalker

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 2 Comments

In his book Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Failed a Generation, journalist and Christian Jon Ward writes about how he never felt completely at home in his conservative Christian environment. He writes,

All my life I have been a mearcstapa, or a border-stalker. Mearcstapa is an Old English word used in Beowulf. Painter and author Makoto Fujimura used this term, and his modern translation of border-stalker, to describe those who “are uncomfortable in homogenous groups” and yet are still present in them, and thus they live “on the edge of their groups, going in and out of them.

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The Satanic Dichotomy of Indulgence Vs. Mastery

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 4 Comments

A central theme of my personal Satanic practice is the reconciliation of opposites. In the symbol of the Baphomet, we see the marriage of binaries: angelic and demonic, male and female, light and dark, up and down. My practice is an integration of seemingly irreconcilable conflicts. I wrote an article a couple of years ago listing several primary dichotomies of my Satanism, which you can read here.

As I’ve grown in my religious Satanism, another Satanic dichotomy has emerged: indulgence vs. self-mastery.

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