By Mistress-Babylon Consort, Co-founder of the Sect of the Horned God

Rarely a day goes by that I am not, on some level, questioned or ‘accused’ of having no ‘moral standards’ because I am an Satanic Atheist . There is also not a day that goes by that I don’t question/challenge/debate it within myself. Of course in the most general sense, I have a long list of self –imposed standards or morals that are as innate as primal instinct, ones that are based on physical and emotional survival, ones that are ‘best’ for me and my own. That in itself promotes a ‘pebble in the pond’ chain of events as it filters through extended family and community. But that’s the brainless and glossy end of self-defined morality. It would be easy enough to stand and beat my chest, like so many do, roaring Left-Hand Path/Atheistic-Satanic modes of well worn kindergarten philosophy.

But how long does one need to sit at the starting gate after the whistle has shrilled?

The day will and does come, for all of us, when life will throw a bomb into that carefully built hill of moral agenda. Mine certainly has. I’ve seen it coming for many years but chose to put it aside in hopes that the challenge and upheaval of self reflection would dissipate into a solution provided by the natural course of universal law. Foolish me.

I have a sister who was recently locked away in a mental health facility where she will remain for the rest of her life. Finally. It’s been years in coming. Diagnosed at the age of 26 with schizophrenia, the pre and post diagnosis years saw our family life in ruins with her never-ending manic and irrational violence. She was a mean bitch right from birth. The level of violence she is capable of started early when she killed the family pets with nary a blink of an eye. The list is long and horrifying. It would be wrong of me to ever assume that she has never murdered another human. Eventually, of course, the voices, hallucinations, and paranoia she experienced further led her delusional decision making. Fear and anger were my best friend when she was around. I recall an instance several years ago that stands out in my mind, where in Canada, just outside the city I am from and was living in at the time, a young college student was murdered and cannibalized on a GreyHound bus by Vince Lee, the gentleman who sat in the seat next to him. Lee was an undiagnosed schizophrenic , and when the ‘demon voices’ instructed him to kill and eat this young man, he did. Upon hearing the initial sketchy news reports of this on television, my heart stopped. Was it her? Fear washed over me like a sickening sewer. I knew she was capable of it simply by the fires she had set to occupied homes and buidings. Regardless, and knowing this, the dozens of times I had petitioned the Canadian courts, pleaded with dozens of judges, and filled out reams of paper to have her committed fell on deaf ears for too many years.

Of course she had been arrested and/or hospitalized many many times before. Those were the nights I slept well. She was safe and the world was safe from her. Nobody would die tonight. But then again, she was always released. Those with the most severe of mental health issues have rights, despite the fact that they are a known danger to society and/or themselves. Vince Lee, himself, is currently preparing for his re-entry back in mainstream society, after what I consider a short hospital stay.

Her last stand in ‘normal’ society ended when she was quietly picked up in a coffee shop by the police on a special order from the courts, as by now her descent into madness was fully complete. She has no conscious. She is rabid and feral. And I hate her. Or at least I tell myself that. She is self-will run riot, with nary a capable thought in her head of cause and effect, yet I resent that the sweet lull of her madness will cradle her. Whatever she did or has done, she got away with, and I say ‘got away with’ as in her world there are no repercussions. They do not exist, and never really have.

I betray myself with the cold and sincere desire of having to admit wanting her dead for so many years. Is this my ‘easy way out’ or a desperate emotional attempt to just stop the pain and horror? Am I unfeeling for wanting that and have for so very long? But there is no relief, as paradoxically it holds the hand of crushing guilt. It’s hard to decipher as I pick up the pieces from years of her destruction and try to piece together a faded crumbling puzzle. Right now, unbidden, every moral of my being, every last frayed nerve and thought is colliding and called into question with my own behavior and thought processes. Don’t tell me to understand her illness. I do. Clinically and without emotion. Do I pity her? I can’t as the words of Nietzsche remind me “( Pity) preserves what is right for destruction; it defends those who have been disinherited and condemned by life; and by the abundance of the failures that keep it alive..” Pity would be an insult.

And still, emotions and self-introspection unceasingly collide. I am angry and enraged, but it is coupled by a grief so deep it seems unmanagable. It’s like she ‘has’ died and my wish fulfilled. I am horrified at the thought of ever being capable of thinking such a thing. Around and around I go.

She is alive, but gone. The birth and hope of the innocent girl-child shattered by a disease that would take her mind early and turn her into a monster It’s not fair, but life isn’t. Resolve seems fleeting.