Rituals

Contributed by Chris
Sect of the Horned God Member

Many people have rituals.  Some are getting up and having coffee before they drive to work. When they miss that ritual it seems that the whole day is nothing but chaos. A lot of Satanists have grown up in homes with religious ceremonies occurring every week. What is the phenomenon of ritual that many Satanists engage in, considering many Satanists identify as Atheistic? What are they using ritual for if they are skeptical of external agencies? Well not all ritual alludes to the notion that external agencies exist. There still remains an essence of mystery to the existence of a Principle or Force in Nature. While this force may not be supernatural it could exist between dimensions of time and space, or be a very natural phenomenon that is at this time trans-rational.  It’s a possibility,  but not a certainty. Arthur C. Clarke, the author of Childhood’s End, declared that: “Magic is just a science we don’t understand yet.”

Ritual is a systematic methodology to working out a willed intent and working, both inside and (or) outside the ritual chamber, to ensure it’s coming into being. From a pragmatic standpoint magic is a way for a determined Satanist, or Chaos Magician, to focus on the quality aspirations of their life and develop an active blueprint by which these goals are achieved. This tends to run concurrent to a social realm where when goals become too hard or too challenging we give up on the greatness and settle for second best. For the Satanist this attitude is unacceptable. Ambition and a strong sense of self confidence are the recipe for what would be termed a successful working.

A Satanist may have faith in him or herself that a ritual will work out for their best interest. This is different from a Christian ritual where the faith is removed from the self and externalized into a god form who will find a solution to the problem for them. For some Satanists, like the author, the bottom line is that the magic worked, their respective symbol systems are on a whole different, intellectual level. The magic worked across the board, however, the dogmatic Christian will have trouble explaining why the magic worked when only his religion is correct in principle. Thus the need for demons and devils as  this is the buffer system for explaining to the dogmatic why the magic works despite the difference in the symbol systems.

For some Satanists magic may take an even more practical step in that ceremony and ritual are no longer necessary for them to effect a change in their environment. In their day to day life their willed intentions are embedded in their motives. They have a talent for shaping their plans from moment to moment. They are vigilantly studying the patterns in life and shaping them to bring the outcomes that will yield them immense benefit. This is a step toward magical mastery. Ritual becomes a nomenclature for the simple causes of bringing about beneficial change for the individual Satanist.