I have always had a fascination for the bizarre, the mysterious, and the unsettling. I was really into (and still am) fascinated by UFO theories, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and all kinds of shit that most people would consider asinine. This is probably not much different than any other hard rock/metal kid. In the Heavy Metal culture, there is a lot of symbolism that a young person can be exposed to. As a young Catholic, Symbols was taught to fear and stay away from to save me from eternal damnation, fire, and brimstone. When I saw these symbols, I did not know what they represented or meant, and honestly, I didnât give a ratâs ass. They just looked badass.
Los Angeles hard rock band Motley Crue has a huge pentagram on the original vinyl release of their album Shout at the Devil. UK Black Metal veterans Venomâs debut album Welcome to Hell had a pentagram with a goatâs head in. Their following two albums also were adorned with dark imagery. Black Metal featured a goatâs head with a pentagram on its forehead and At War with Satan had what looked to be a bible with an inverted cross embossed into it. Metal vocalist and former member of Mercyful Fate, King Diamond, boasted a Leviathan Cross (Satanâs Cross) as part of his logo.
Just what did all of this mean? Again, I didnât give a fuck. I figured (and still do actually) it was all fucking badass. If I were to choose between Duran Duran sporting their loud-colored power suits or an album cover with fire and dudes making evil signs with their hands while wearing leather and spikes, I would pick that one.
Looking back, I donât think that I necessarily picked the metal albums over pop and rap music for more than two reasons and those reasons were that they looked awesome and that it was loud and made me feel accepted and understood. But what about all of those crazy-ass symbols, pictures, and imagery that captured my attention and lured me in? At 47 years old today in 2021, I still find myself gravitating to things that most ordinary people would consider unsettling, scary, and/or evil.
Instead of trying to get all textbook on your asses, let me say this in my own words, Donspeak if you will. In Catholic school (and Iâm sure in all other Christian establishments), I was taught that there are two realms: the dark and the light. The light is where all the good shit is. This is where the flowers are pretty, the sky is blue, the birds sing, and the sun shines down brightly. The âlightâ is symbolic of all things good. No bad shit happens in the light, evidently.
The âdarkâ side is just the opposite. The dark is scary. There is no light, no singing birds, and no sun. There is only an eerie moon that hovers above. While in the light, you can see for very long distances ahead of you, in the dark, you sometimes canât see more than a third of what you see in the light. The dark is where I was told evil lurks. Itâs why many kids are afraid of the dark. Have you ever heard a kid say that they were afraid of the light?
In grade school, they were devil signs. No more, no less. If they were drawn on my folders or book covers, I was told to remove them, which only made me what them more. It wasnât until I got to be a teenager and taking a theology course in the 9th grade that any of things had any meaning. I had a cool teacher whose name was Brother Rich. Brother Rich taught differently than the nuns of my grade school days. 9th grade in a catholic high school seemed to be a whole different place. It felt a bit rougher, there were more kids, and the teachers were not nuns, which was awesome. I hated the nuns and pretty much still do. All of the rumors of ear tugging and rulers across the knuckles⌠all true.
As I got older and into my mid-late teens, I still found myself fascinated by all of the symbology and literature about the darker side of life and the world in general. Since there was no internet, the answers and information werenât at my fingertips. Instead, I would go to the library. Do you know how hard it is to find reading materials in the late â80s/early â90s in the South on paganism, the occult, anti-Christian fundamentals, and esoteric symbolism? I could do the best to comb through the World Book encyclopedia, and even then, I didnât know what to look for. I started looking up âoccult symbols,â and I found very little. If I remember correctly, I think I found something on the pentagram (which is an inverted pentacle symbol) and the inverted cross. While what I found then is a bit hazy to me now, I do know that it wasnât enough to educate me then and there. This is where the âfork in the roadâ towards the âdarkâ became intriguing, engaging, and thought-provoking.
There is a lot of mystery to the occult and the dark arts. Christianity and Catholicism, in general, seemed to me to be predictable yet so over the top, itâs hilarious. Stories of a man who lived inside of a whale, a man who was executed, died, came back to live, and ascended into the sky only to come back, and a man who didnât eat or drink for 40 days and 40 nights. None of this is humanly possible, but this is what is ingrained in childrenâs heads by Christian teachers and clergy from the cradle. Hell, as a Catholic, they baptize you while youâre still pissing and shitting yourself, unable to talk and have a say in the matter. Itâs selfish and pretentious.
Into my 20âs I started to get into the Grateful Dead, and I was suddenly a part of this vast counter-cultural experience. It was like I had found a whole new race, creed, and nationality. Nobody seemed to be anything. They were just Deadheads who seemed to acknowledge one prominent symbol: The Stealie. What is a Stealie, you ask? The Stealie is a skull with an inflated top that makes it look round. In the circle is a white lightning bolt over a red and blue yin yang kind of design. This symbol first appeared on the live album Steal Your Face and since then has been a symbol of being a Deadhead. If you see a Stealie sticker on a car, you know that a Deadhead occupies that vehicle.
As I became integrated into the Deadhead scene, I noticed that many symbolic images graced t-shirts, tapestries, and stickers. There is a symbol for âom,â which is taken from the Devanagari script. The Om is a syllable that is chanted either independently or before a spiritual recitation in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. In addition to the Om, the various symbology of astrology and other Sanskrit forms were displayed on many merchandise items for sale. Looking back on it now, I wonder if, just like youthful metalheads, the Deadheads didnât always really know what these symbols stood for. Maybe they were drawn to these symbols because of the visual beauty and intricacy of them?
Iâm sure that not many people would consider being a Deadhead is taking a darker path, but it is somewhat it. Beyond all of the tye die shirts, cartoon dancing bears, and incense lies a path away from the typical path of âregularâ society. Very similar to the path towards the dark, the path of the Deadhead leads away from conformity and, most times, away from the stagnant Christian belief system. Many opt to adopt Rastafarian beliefs while others choose to follow astrology or other western forms of religion.
From 1997 until about 2010, I lost interest in seeking out the Dark Arts knowledge and its entailment. After stumbling onto this new uprising in occult rock by bands such as Lucifer, Jess and the Ancient Ones, and The Devilâs Blood, my curiousness was sparked once again. I wanted to pick up where I left off, seeking knowledge about all of the symbology I saw as a kid and even blindly drew on my notebooks. While they still looked cool as fuck to me, I wanted to truly understand and learn the history of the âdarkâ path. My obsession with learning all I could lead me to meet a friend from a Finish occult rock band who had been on this path for many years. He told me that this path was referred to as the âLeft-Hand Path.â
The Wikipedia page on Left Hand Path defines it as:
The historian Dave Evans studied self-professed followers of the Left-Hand Path in the early 21st century, making several observations about their practices:
⢠They often reject societal convention and the status quo, which some suggest is searching for spiritual freedom. As a part of this, LHP followers embrace magical techniques that would traditionally be viewed as taboo, for instance, using sex magic or embracing Satanic imagery. As Mogg Morgan wrote, the âbreaking of taboos makes magic more potent and can lead to reintegration and liberation, [for example] the eating of meat in a vegetarian community can have the same liberating effect as anal intercourse in a sexually inhibited society.â
⢠They often question religious or moral dogma, instead adhering to forms of personal anarchism.
⢠They often embrace sexuality and incorporate it into magical ritual.
Much like with Christianity, I found the Left-Hand Pathâs full-on description to not gel with me. I am not a practitioner of magic, nor have I ever been, and a lot of the fundamentals do seem to connect with the practice of magic. With that being said, there are still many fundamentals of the Left-Hand Path that I connect with. As far as the use of Satanic imagery, I donât necessarily want to get symbols tattooed on my body (yet), but I embrace them for not just what they represent but because of their beauty.
One of the most commonly found images when seeking information on Left Hand Path and Satanism is Baphomet. Baphomet was a deity that the Knight Templars were said to have worshipped. Intimately associated with the Occult and Witchcraft, this pagan deity represents the sum of the entire universe and all its opposing forces. On another Wikipedia entry, this is what is said about Baphomet:
Since 1856, the name Baphomet has been associated with the âSabbatic Goatâ image drawn by Ăliphas LĂŠvi, which contains binary elements representing the âsymbolization of the equilibrium of oppositesâ (e.g. half-human and half-animal, male and female, good and evil, on and off, etc.). On one hand, LĂŠviâs intention was to symbolize his concept of balance that was essential to his magnetistic notion of the Astral Light; on the other hand, the Baphomet represents a tradition that should result in a perfect social order.
Learning this made me have a whole new interest and respect for the symbolic meaning behind Baphomet. No longer was it just a cool devil picture, but it represented something thought-provoking enough to want to dig deeper into the Dark Studies realm. I poked around the internet, Googled books on the topic, and began asking my Left-Hand Path friends about where to start with my Dark Studies. Unanimously, Anton LaVeyâs Satanic Bible was the place my friends told me to start.
I remember The Satanic Bible from back in the â80s. Being a Catholic school kid, as with all Christian sects, I was taught to fear the Devil and anything that led to him. I sought it out in a mall bookstore while in 8th grade, and I clearly remember seeing one copy on the top shelf out of my reach. This act would also be symbolic of how society, even a bookstore that should be a literal neutral space, attempted to keep the Satanic Bible out of reach.
It wasnât until sometime around 2012 when I purchased my copy of The Satanic Bible. Because of the instilled Catholic guilt that still lives deep within many years after denouncing Christianity, I was a bit nervous about opening this book. Just the cover alone sent chills up my spine and made my hands clammy. I finally cracked open the book and began to read it.
Would it be a surprise to learn that The Satanic Bible isnât a scary read at all? If anything, I found it to be something similar to a self-help book. I would even go out on a limb and say that it IS a self-help book. So many of the fundamentals addressed in the Satanic Bible were things that I found myself agreeing with:
âSatan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years!â
âSatanism condones any type of sexual activity which properly satisfies your individual desires- be it heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or even asexual, if you choose. Satanism also sanctions any fetish or deviation which will enhance your sex-life, so long as it involves no one who does not wish to be involved.â
âThe Satanist knows that praying does absolutely no good- in fact, it actually lessens the chance of success, for the devoutly religious too often sit back complacently and pray for a situation which, if they were to do something about it on their own, could be accomplished much quicker!â
âPious prophets have taught man to fear Satan. But what of terms like âGod fearingâ? If God is so merciful, why do people have to fear him? Are we to believe there is nowhere we can turn to escape fear? If you have to fear God, why not be âSatan fearingâ and at least have the fun that being God fearing denies you? Without such wholesale fear religionists would have had nothing with which to wield power over their followers.â
âIf you do not believe in what your religion teaches, why continue to support a belief which is contradictory with your feelings. You would never vote for a person or issue you did not believe in, so why cast your ecclesiastical vote for a religion which is not consistent with your convictions?â
âBlessed are the mighty-minded, for they shall ride the whirlwinds- Cursed are they who teach lies for truth and truth for lies, for they are an abomination!â
These fundamentals, to me, are not âevilâ as much as I think that they are prompts to being a decent human being. I find that I rarely put myself first. Putting yourself first doesnât make you selfish or thoughtless. Putting yourself first as much as you can is a priority. I have spent so much time worrying about others and how others perceive me that I forget to stop and think about how I perceive others and how they treat me.
Except for actually acknowledging Satan as a deity, the Left-Hand Path way of living seems to be more in tune with how I chose to live my life. I donât fear judgment from a âgodâ at the end of it all. Instead of focusing my actions day to day in fear of judgment, I want to be a good person while living. What happens to us after death? For now, I believe that we are, as Joni Mitchell sang in the song âWoodstock,â ââŚwe are billion-year-old carbon.â In the end, ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Maybe this will change as I further myself down this path. I cannot look too far down the road. I must concentrate on my steps in the now to avoid tripping and falling.
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