I believe that, in the beginning, there was an energy that I will call God the Knowing. Being pure awareness of Itself, the essence of this energy desired to experience itself, so God the Knowing divided into two parts, Itself and God the Experiencing, both of which are connected by the life force of creation flowing between the two states of being. The law of thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed but instead moves to higher and lower intensities, ultimately seeking balance- where, without the friction or tension between the two forces, a kind of death occurs. Knowing this, I began to view death as natural as it is inevitable. However, given there is nothing in existence that isn’t part of God, and believing God never dies- I have come to view death as an illusion. Believing that we simply graduate to a new form of consciousness spiritually, I refer to this process of transformation simply as the breath of God.

The Satanists I knew believed that the concept of an all-powerful God is more theory than fact, and that bad behavior doesn‘t have to lead to consequences if one is smart and powerful enough to avoid them. Understanding that Satanism celebrates the ego and hedonism in such a way that is hopefully abhorrent to God, I, on the other hand, believe in the karma Jesus taught when he declared that we reap what we sow. Chaos theory helps clarify the particulars in a way, for if it is true that a butterfly flapping its wings can be causally connected to a storm on the other side of the world, consider what can human moral or immoral acts do? Simply put, we are responsible for the energy that we share with the world, whether we choose to be aware of what we are doing or not. Learning that what we believe affects what we say and do; I have determined that the energy of those beliefs goes out from us into the world through our actions and words, then returns to us stronger than what we originally sent out, in order to help us manifest our lives. Our perceptions, shaped by our life‘s interactions, focus us for better or worse with concerns to this process.

The law of cause and effect states that when something happens, it causes something else to happen, which causes something else to happen, and so on. In real life, it works like this: imagine me getting into my car all pissed off at the world. Driving like an ass, cutting people off and going slow when I could just as well get out of the way– all this is an attempt to escape the bad mood I am allowing to control me, my anger and aggression dominating and controlling how I impact the world. While allowing my sense of responsibility to care to be nullified by my bad mood, I can only helplessly observe how my behavior negatively influences others, as most of us know what it is like to be behind such an idiot, and the feelings that can arise because of it.

Now imagine that I cut off a woman who has just had a fight with her mother. Seeing the smirk I wear that helps me feel that what I am doing is strong even if it is wrong, it adds to the rage she‘s already struggling with. She goes home and gets into a fight with her husband, not realizing that he has been putting out fires all day at work. Her attack makes him angry, so he, in turn, proceeds to jump on their son, unaware that he just spent the whole day being bullied in school and is hanging on by a thread. The son ends up kicking the dog, and though I am obviously not responsible for another‘s actions, I am still the butterfly that helped set it all in motion. As for how I will reap what I‘ve sown, life will decide how to make me more responsible for having knowingly or unknowingly encouraged storms in others‘ realities.

Looking at chaos and cause and effect from another angle, the law of attraction reigns supreme, helping to explain that if one puts out negative, they will get negative back. Put out positive, you will get positive back. Whatever you want, plant the seed and watch it manifest. You want love? Then offer love. You want respect? Then offer respect. You want compassion? Offer it! Act negatively and see how you like yourself and the world around you. Feed rage and watch your relationships spiral downward. Gandhi was correct when he said that we must first become the change we wish to see in the world. In doing so, we help ourselves attract to us what we need.

Reaping what we sow, we are all responsible for the energy we send out. As Socrates preached, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Living an angry, lonely, isolated existence drains the soul, effectively giving it to the devil, and considering that evil is nothing more than the word live spelled backwards, squelching the joy in your heart is about as backwards as you can get.

One of the fundamental problems I have with Satanism, other than dismissing the divine presence of God, is that it lies when it negates or laughs off the law of karma. There is simply no way to stop the cyclic cause-and-effect of energy. Working as self-fulfilling prophecies, thoughts in the mind reproduce after their kind and you will find yourself acting in ways that reflect your beliefs. For the most part, all of us will end up becoming the people we believe ourselves to be, worth only as much as we allow. There is strength in conviction, whether we choose to accept that or not, and it is in the details of our beliefs that our true powers to manifest lie.

Focused on control, I believe Satanists are committed to convincing human beings to turn away from God, believing that karma can be gotten around, while promoting fear and isolation to help subjugate people to their will. Idolizing Adolph Hitler as the historical example of how well subjugation to hatred and fear work once the world is painted as godless and bereft of spiritual laws was one of Aquino‘s favorite topics when I was a child. Involved with very powerful people, he obviously has not acted alone, and considering that history is cyclic and prone to repeat itself, since what I and others experienced historically originated out of the concentration camps, I believe it would behoove us all to understand propaganda and how it distorts the truth. Once it was the church that programmed and controlled how we view life; today, it‘s the corporate media. Focused on fear and destruction, our media keeps citizens in a constant state of agitation. Satanism, however, taught me the following; that negativity is simply negativity, and it cannot serve as a viable philosophy for life.

It isn‘t difficult to understand that narcissism is the enemy of self-awareness, as are ignorance and self-complacence, all of which are promoted by our media. Does this mean that the one percent of the population that owns 98 percent of the wealth is conspiring to keep people hopeless and vulnerable? A question better posed to the Rupert Murdock‘s of the world, I can offer no answer, but my experience is that the rich and powerful can and do whatever it is they want to do. Aquino and his friends taught me that the world was theirs, the proof being that Satan wouldn’t have been able to offer the world to Jesus had it not been his to offer in the first place.

Chaos theory, karma, cause and effect, attraction –all exchanges of energy that can be influenced by our conscious choice, whatever the media says to the contrary, that, combined together, govern and dictate our experiences. David was right when he told us that the key to life was mastering the ability to ―know yourself, control yourself, and give freely of your time and energy.” The older I grow, the more I realize that true living comes from celebrating life, not exploiting it. True power is not dominance and control; it‘s love. The more you love, the more love you have; the more love you have, the greater power you have over your life.