How do you change a western world where
blasphemy is illegal?
By way of subversion.
In the first
instalment of this series we discussed how the wicked decided that the West
needed to change. This is a statement that many people struggle with because progress
towards a greater future is just assumed by many people, whether on the left or
the right. This is one of the reasons why it is so hard to have this
conversation with some people, because so many people do not understand just
how inverted the world in which we live is, they do not realize that we have
given up much that is good, and received bad in return. Most people are avowed
modern supremacists, who think our modern society is just inherently superior
to the past. So, what I am going to do here in part two of this series is first
give a simple illustration which highlights just how inverted out modern culture
is, and then I will begin to summarize how the West was made from Christendom
into Satandom, with more to follow in future articles.
People are generally
poorly equipped to question the cultural assumptions of the society they grew
up in. In an era where history is poorly taught, this inability is only
exacerbated. So, perhaps I can step outside of our topic to use an illustration
from C.S. Lewis that will help us here. In his powerful book Mere
Christianity, Lewis makes a series of arguments that show the intellectual
soundness and solidness of the Christian faith. While making his case for the
superiority of the Christian perspective on sexuality morality, to try and highlight just how fallen his
culture was, he reaches into what he considers to be the realm of absurdity to
make his point:
You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease
act—that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you came to a
country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to
the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just
before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon,
would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite
for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think
there was something equally queer about the state of the sex instinct among
us?”[1]
What I find
fascinating about this illustration here is that when C.S. Lewis first published
this in 1952 the entire premise of his illustration was ridiculous; and that is
precisely the point. Lewis is seeking to highlight in Big Neon Letters
that something had gone wrong with the sexual appetite of the western man, and
the way he can think to best describe this is to highlight how crazy it would
be to the man of 1952 to see a world where people gathered around to watch food
revealed to a lusting audience. I find this so fascinating because without
intending to, Lewis has described our western world today. This is what many
competition cooking shows are: food lusting events where people gather around
to drool over the fancily prepared blow torched whatever it is. We are a
culture of gluttons. Whether in the Church or outside the Church, many of our
instincts for what is good, and what is not have been thoroughly inverted.
Meditate on
this for a second: the most ridiculous morally dystopian world that C.S. Lewis
described is the world we currently live in. Evil is wickedness, it is
rebellion, it is that which stands against God, but it is also craziness, insanity,
stupidity, because at heart evil is rebellion against God and his good order.
That which creates chaos is foolishness, foolishness often with wicked intent. So,
the fact that our society reflects in high definition detail the absurdity of
C.S. Lewis’s illustration is a big sign we have been directed down an evil
path, even more so, than when Lewis was alive.
Lewis’ world
was not perfect, by any means, it was the era of Stalin, Hitler, and of
Churchill bombing civilian centres like Dresden, and leaders lying their peoples
into destructive wars, and much, much more. But it is clear we have digressed
even further since Lewis’ day in many ways. If we have not become more violent,
we have become more decadent, and there are scores of the unborn dead who would
dispute that we are not more violent…if they had a voice that is. Now that we
have established that we are not necessarily morally superior to our
predecessors, we will reflect on how we got here.
Let’s
situate ourselves in the early modern period, England in the 17th Century.
This is an era where blasphemy is still quite illegal, and even if you
subscribe to one of the various Christian sects, you may still be labelled a
heretic, or dissenter and punished. In various decades whether or not you were
a Presbyterian, Anglican or Catholic was of imminent consequence, and if you
were Baptist then in every decade of the 17th Century England you
were unpopular[2]. Legislation
like the Test Acts of 1673 were designed to weed out Catholics and other
dissenters from public office.[3]
This was the era that the famous Baptist preacher, John Bunyan was imprisoned
for unauthorized preaching,[4]
that Cromwell replaced the monarchy for a time, that Anglicanism was seeking to
establish it’s hold over England, and various other Christian movements vied
for legitimacy, if not supremacy. It was an era where blasphemy was dangerous.
Indeed, even
the famous Acts of Toleration in 1689 did not grant full religious
rights to dissenters, even dissenters who were thoroughly Christian, like
Bunyan.[5]
So how do you direct a western world toward Satanic values, when to even
express such values is punishable in many ways?
Story…
You change
society by telling stories, and you do it in such a way that you can get around
the blasphemy codes. This is precisely how Satanic feminists and socialists did
it from early on.
We all
recognize the power of story. Hollywood is famous for pushing certain agendas
through the medium of story-telling. Both good, and bad, but mostly bad. I
remember growing up one of my favourite films was John Wayne’s, The Green Berets.
I used to watch it as a kid. But when I got a little bit older, I realized it
was some over-the-top pro-Vietnam war propaganda. Hollywood and propaganda are
well known bedfellows, indeed, much of our modern morality has been driven by
the values represented on the silver screen. Some people may wonder what comes
first: the values as presented in the movies or the movies that present the
values? Well in some cases it might be both, but regarding feminism there was a
clear push from certain literary figures to influence society in a certain
direction through story.
Per
Faxneld’s well researched work Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as Liberator of
Woman in Nineteenth-Century Culture shows a large proportion of how this
change was pushed. In fact, part of his case is that Satanism has not been
given the credit it deserves for our modern society. He shows how Satanic feminists
subverted the idea of Lucifer being the agent of wickedness in the garden, and
transformed him into the ‘Lightbringer’, the ‘Prometheus’, the enlightener, or
liberator and specifically the liberator of women. And he shows how this was
instrumental in destabilizing Christianity’s dominant role in West.[6]
Faxneld[7]
traces this trend as far back as Milton. Though he does not claim that Milton
was a Satanic revolutionary himself, he suggests that when you combine Milton’s
ambiguous representation of the devil in his Paradise Lost, with the context in
which Milton was a republican revolutionary and Oliver Cromwell’s private
secretary, you can draw the conclusion that Milton is making the revolutionary
Lucifer the hero of the story, rather than the villain. Afterall, was Milton
not himself a revolutionary and part of a plot to overthrow a king? Does he not
also present the Devil as simply convincing the woman to eat the fruit to raise
her lot, and achieve equality? Something many moderns see as righteous and just,
and a foundation stone of republican ideals.
But this
conjecture aside, explicitly “…the phenomenon of writers declaring themselves
to be of the Devil’s party first arose among German and English-speaking
Romantic poets in the late eighteenth-century and would soon become observable
all over the western world.”[8]
It is important to understand that this was not a fringe movement in literary
circles, rather it was “…both highly visible and stemming directly from writers
that were among the most famous of their time.”[9]
Just as today’s Luciferian morality is pushed by the most famous and most loved
actors and performers…
Milton
himself argued that his intent was to ‘justify the ways of God to men’ and not
at all to glorify lucifer”[10],
and scholars generally accept this as correct. However, this did not stop
others interpreting Milton’s Lucifer as the ideal revolutionary and being
inspired to write with this intention in mind. For example, inspired by Milton,
Goethe’s poem ‘Prometheus’ (written in 1772-74, published
1789), in which the Greek Titan expressed his defiance of God (Zeus) and
relished his own independence, displays a congruent spirit of rebellion against
an oppressive divinity, but cloaks it in a less offensive Greek garb.[11]
Goethe took
what he saw in Milton to another level. Faxneld lists an impressive array of
writers who were similarly inspired by Milton’s Lucifer: Edmund Burke, Mary
Wollstonecraft, William Blake, Schiller, Goethe, Robert Burns, and William
Godwin, among others.[12]
Godwin even wrote, “Poetical readers have commonly remarked Milton’s devil to
be of considerable virtue.”[13]
He then goes on to argue,
[Why] did he rebel against his maker? It was, as he himself
informs us, because he saw no sufficient reason, for that extreme inequality of
rank and power which the creator assumed. It was because his prescription and
precedent form no adequate ground for implicit faith.[14]
In other
words, Satan presumed to be as great as the one who was better than him. Godwin,
here, has identified Lucifer as his ideal hero, who stands against what he
considers illegitimate and inherited authority.[15]
The ultimate symbol of revolution! In the circles which Godwin ran in, his
views on Lucifer were considered acceptable.[16]
Indeed, Godwin’s feminists bona fides are top notch, as he is notable for later
marrying the “first” feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, herself.
So, whatever
Milton intended, is besides the point. The entire corpus of
Romantic Satanism was based on an interpretation of the
Miltonic Lucifer as a hero, and there are instances where feminist scholars
themselves return to Milton and apply their own combination of Romantic
Satanism and late-modern ideologies of women’s liberation.[17]
In other
words, by arguing from the Devil’s perspective, unknowingly or not, Milton
inspired an entire following of literature gurus to take up that argument and
carry it on to its logical conclusions. What did they say that Satan argued for
specifically?
In Gilbert and Gubar’s reading of Milton, Satan and Eve share
a preoccupation with equality, and both stand to gain from a rebellion against
the hierarchical structure epitomized by God the Father and Adam the Husband.
This interpretation of Paradise Lost, they further claim, was widespread among
nineteenth-century woman authors…their basic assertion is indeed accurate.[18]
So where did
this grand movement of feminist equality in the West stem from, according to
Paxneld? The Bible, as many modern Christians like to assert? No, at least not
in the sense that they intend. Rather, it was inspired by Lucifer’s offer to
the women in the Garden, as expounded by Milton, and interpreted through the
Romantic poets. Lucifer’s offer to the woman of equality with God, and
usurpation of her husband’s role was the impetus for feminist revolution; the
literal beginning of the modern chant: “Down with the patriarchy!” This always
meant, down with God and man, and it was literally inspired by the Devil. The
prophecy of Scripture was surely fulfilled: “Your desire shall be contrary to
your husband, but he will rule over you.”[19]
Milton’s story,
inspired many, literally Satanically minded people, to take up a cause, that is
nowhere spoken of in a positive light in the Bible; that of equality, and
specifically feminist equality. Milton did not originate the idea of equality,
nor even the modern conception of it, but he did inspire radically minded
people to take up the torch of enlightening the world with this Promethean idea.[20]
There are
great examples of this, but the poet that I want to focus in on, and one who
stands above many in influence, is Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). Shelley,
who married Mary Shelley, the famous author of Frankenstein, and who was
Godwin’s and Wollstonecraft’s son-in-law, was not ambiguous about his love for
Satan at all:
Nothing can exceed the grandeur and the energy of the
character of the Devil as expressed in Paradise Lost…Milton’s Devil as a moral
being is far superior to his God, as one who perseveres in some purpose which
he has conceived to be excellent, in spite of adversity and torture, is to one
who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible
revenge upon his enemy, - not from any mistaken notion of bringing him to
repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the open and alleged design of
exasperating him to deserve new torments.”[21]
Shelley is
smitten with the devil. This is not to say that Shelley, or even many other
Satanic feminists, genuinely believed in the being called Lucifer, many did not.
But that is beside the point, the issue is that they were inspired by him and
all that he stood for. They wanted to push society in a direction which was
consistent with Satanic values, rejection of a biblical worldview being one of
those values. For some, their lack of belief only made some of them less
restrained in their approach to push against the structures of society, and
they particularly pushed their views through the mediums of story and poetry.
Shelley’s
most notable example of this is his poem The Revolt of Islam, dedicated
to his equally famous wife, and capturing her father’s sympathy for the devil,
and her mother’s feminist ideas.[22]
Though Shelley does not use any of the traditional names of Satan in the poem,
it is evident who he is writing about, and that he presents Lucifer as the hero:
A serpent battles with an eagle in the sky, but is defeated
and falls from the heaven. These two animals are the shapes taken by the
spirits of good and evil respectively: ‘Two powers o’er mortal things dominion
hold/Ruling the world with a decided lot, Immortal, all-pervading, manifold.’
The serpent is identified as the Morning Star, making it obvious just who the
figure is.[23]
Consistent
with the writer’s loyalties, it is the Serpent who is identified as the good
guy by the peoples of the world, in Shelley’s poem.[24]
God is blamed as the originator of death, earthquakes and blight, and “his
enemy the serpent in the benefactor of mankind and the enemy of all
oppressors.”[25]
It is abundantly clear who Shelley views as the liberator. Can you now see the inversion
at work?
Shelley did
this cleverly, as blasphemy is still punishable in this period. He “made God
the author of evil and Satan the bringer of good, while simultaneously removing
himself to some extent from Christian mythology by not using their actual
names.”[26]
It is thinly veiled blasphemy, designed to subvert in a Christian world.
This serpent,
that is cast to the earth, takes on a sexual relationship with a woman. This is
significant that the freedom loving Satan’s primary ally in the story is a
woman, because Shelley is harking back to Milton, and the Serpent in the Garden
with Eve. In the poem, “Woman and Satan are both part of nature, while God and
males are connected to a hierarchical, unjust civilisation.”[27]
In other words: down with the patriarchy, but less obnoxiously presented than a
modern feminist.
The main
part of the poem presents two siblings, Cyntha and her brother Laon, who
struggle against a tyrannical sultan, for liberation. The story presents Cyntha
as a breaker of gender stereotypes, hell bent of the liberation of women, and as
the leader of the insurrection that takes the fight to the oppressive Sultan.
The revolt fails, however, and Cyntha and her brother are burned at the stake,
as revolutionaries often were in the past.[28]
In this
story, Shelley was actively seeking to push against the positions of the Church
on women’s issues and gender roles, and presenting Cyntha in the heroes role as
the rider on the glorious steed who rides to her brothers rescue highlights
this.[29]
As Shelley tells us he writes “in the view of kindling within the bosoms of my
readers a virtuous enthusiasm for…doctrines of liberty and justice.”[30]
Read: social justice, but before the term was coined.
Shelley
believed that one day all gender distinctions would be abolished, and so he
presented this “utopia” in some of his works.[31]
While it did not sell well by itself, Revolt went on to influence many
later nineteenth century feminists, and was even described by some as the
greatest feminist poem written in English.[32]
It was also disseminated widely in collections of Shelley’s writing, and was
not his only work so explicitly lauding feminist ideals.[33]
Of course,
more examples can be given, and Faxneld does provides many. But we can start to
see how society was slowly influenced towards change; through story.
Stories are
rarely, if ever, neutral. Most of us think that propaganda has only been pushed
more blatantly in modern Hollywood films as the left gains more ascendancy. But
it has always been an undercurrent of pop culture and indeed film making, and
hard left agendas are anything but new. To paraphrase the comedian Owen
Benjamin’s analysis on Mary Poppins, for example: this beloved children’s
classic is about a witch who flies into town, to help administer behaviour
modifying drugs to children, who are always behaving badly, because their
mother is more focused on getting voting rights, than raising her kids. And,
rather than admonish the mother, the film admonishes the father for taking his
job seriously. This is blatant feminist propaganda, woven into a beloved
Children’s fantasy tale.
These ideas
have been subtly and often not so subtly, pushed into people’s homes, from at
least the times of the Romantics. As many historians have noted, the success of
Christianity in the West did not eliminate Satanic religion or ideas, it simply
pushed it underground. How do underground movements gain power? Through
subversive means, and frankly many of us in the West, and in the Church have
been slow to wake up to this.
Satanic
Feminists used story to help subvert and invert the West. People imbibed them
whether in prose, verse, or novel form, or any other media. And this has
accelerated with film. Indeed, the conservatives who eschew story telling
should learn from this, our entire society was undone by story tellers with
wicked intent. Was it one of the Greek philosophers who said control the poets,
control society? At the very least, we need to recognize how this process was
done, so that we can think how to undo it.
Story is
powerful, and it can be used by either side. We need to recognize when it is
being used against us, and it is a tool we have to take up, if we wish to see
evil’s work undone.
List of
References and Notes:
[1] Lewis,
C.S. 2002, Mere Christianity, Harper Collins Publishers: p96
[2]
Ah, the good old days of all the Baptists standing side by side against the
man!
[3] Trevelyan,
G.M. 1997, Life Under the Stuarts, St Edmundsbury Press: p338.
[4]
Weaver, C.D. 2008, In Search of the New Testament Church: The Baptist Story,
Mercer University Press: pp11-12.
[5]
Ibid, p12.
[6]
Faxneld, P.2017, Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as Liberator of Woman in
Nineteenth-Century Culture, Oxford University Press: p5.
[7] Ibid,
p75.
[8] Ibid,
p74.
[9] Ibid,
p74.
[10] Ibid,
p75.
[11] Ibid,
p76.
[12] Ibid,
pp75-76.
[13] Ibid,
p76.
[14] Ibid,
p77.
[15] Ibid,
p77.
[16] Ibid,
p77.
[17] Ibid,
p19.
[18] Ibid,
p19.
[19]
Genesis 3:16.
[20]
It is important for the reader to note, that I am aware that there were
currents arguing for different versions of society wide equality predating, and
also concurrent with Milton. I have written about that in other works and am
continuing to write about that in other works. At this stage, I have traced the
idea of “Equality” in the sense that we think of it: “All men being created
equal” to Nicholar of Susa, it is transmitted through Hobbes, and is exposited
by Locke, who had great influence on the American founders who nearly exactly
quote Locke in the Declaration of Independence. So, I am in no way arguing that
Milton invented the idea of equality, I am showing that he put it, in its right
context: as a Luciferian ideal, not an actual righteous ideal. For further
discussions about the idea of equality, refer to my article (here,
or here),
read Martin Van Creveld’s, Equality the Impossible Quest, or you can
continue with this series, and another I am writing on where equality comes
from. It is fundamental for this piece to recognize this: the great socialist
and feminist movement, which has wrought great change in our society were not
inspired by Christianity, but were deliberate attacks on Christianity, which is
patriarchal and hierarchical, not egalitarian.
[21] Faxneld,
P.2017, Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as Liberator of Woman in
Nineteenth-Century Culture, Oxford University Press: P79.
[22] Ibid,
pp80-81.
[23] Ibid,
p81.
[24]
Ibid, p81.
[25]
Ibid p81.
[26]
Ibid, p82.
[27]
Ibid 82.
[28]
Ibid, pp82-83.
[29] Ibid,
p83
[30]
Ibid, p83.
[31]
Ibid, p84.
[32]
Ibid, p84
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