Episode 196: Living Deliciously

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• • From Revelation 17-18, King James Version: And he saith unto me, the woman which thou sawest is a great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth. And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and god hath remembered her iniquities. Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double. How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,
  • From Notes on the New Testament, Albert Barnes, 1830s: “How much she hath glorified herself,” meaning been proud, boastful, arrogant. This was true of ancient Babylon, that she was proud and haughty; and it has been no less true of the mystical Babylon that is Rome. “And lived deliciously,” ie, by as much as she has lived in luxury and dissoluteness, so let her suffer now. The word used here and rendered “lived deliciously” in the Greek is derived from the noun which is used in Revelation 18:3, and rendered “delicacies.” It means  “to live strenuously and rudely,” as in English, “to live hard”; and then to revel, to live in luxury, riot, and dissoluteness. No one can doubt the propriety of this as descriptive of ancient Babylon, and as little can its propriety be doubted as applied to papal Rome. This word occurs nowhere else in the New Testament and may also be rendered as “luxury,” or “proud voluptuousness”; and the reference is to such luxuries as are found commonly in a great, a frivolous, and a splendid city. These, of course, give rise to much traffic, and furnish employment to many merchants and sailors, who thus procure a livelihood, or become wealthy as the result of such traffic. Babylon or Rome is here represented under the image of such a luxurious city; and of course, when she falls, they who have thus been dependent on her, and who have been enriched by her, have occasion for mourning and lamentation. It is not necessary to expect to find a literal fulfillment of this, for it is emblematic and symbolical. The image of a great, rich, splendid, proud and luxurious city having been employed to denote that anti-Christian power, all that is said in this chapter follows, of course, on its fall. The general idea is, that she was doomed to utter desolation, and that all who were connected with her, far and near, would be involved in her ruin.
  • • From Entertaining Satan, John Demos, 1983: The grasping quality attributed to witches comes through again and again in court testimonies. A witch would start by asking for what she wanted but, when rebuffed, would not hesitate to resort to stronger means.Envy, like “discontent,” was directly associated with the process of becoming a witch. Potential recruits were plied with “fine promises”: for example, “money, silks, fine clothes, ease from labor” for Elizabeth Knapp) a chance to be “big rich” for Mary Staples; to “live deliciously” for one unidentified boy, or to “go where there were fine folks” for Katherine Branch); even “an husband” and a guarantee against death for Mercy Short).  According to Cotton Mather, the Devil was acutely alert to signs of envious wish : “There is no condition but what has indeed some hunger accompanying it; and the Devil marks what it is that we are hungry for, [whether] preferments or employments, cash or land or trade, merriments or diversions, the Devil will be sure to suit his persuasions accordingly.
  • From Robert Eggers Explains ‘Butter’ and ‘Living Deliciously’, David Crow, Den of Geek, 2019: Before Robert Eggers’ The Witch became the toast of the Sundance Film Festival and earned him a Best Directing Award, he was a first-time filmmaker trying to get an indie horror movie out into the world. During that post-production process, he did test screenings, and time and again he received the same note: Why butter? Why a pretty dress? “That was a pretty consistent note, so I kept trying to find something better,” he says. There was just one thing the director couldn’t get past: “Those were things the devil actually promised.” Or at least they were things those pressured into confessing to witchcraft claimed were their greatest wishes. “What struck me as I read through the reams of Salem depositions was how a young boy is asked, ‘Well, what did the devil promise you? Why did you make covenant with the devil?’ And he says in complete innocence, ‘I wanted a pair of shoes.’” He also points to the story of Elizabeth Knapp, a Puritan teenager who in 1672 was believed to be possessed by the Devil. Said Eggers, Beginning with complaints of physical pain, Knapp eventually displayed convulsions, laughing fits and “hysterics,” and hallucinations. After seeking a medical solution, her employer Samuel Willard eventually concluded Knapp was possessed by the Devil, and pushed her to confess that she had been assaulted by the Dark One before making a pact with him and letting him into her bed. Willard, a minister, asks Knapp, ‘What does the devil mean to you?’ ‘Well, he’s going to take our ashes from the fireplace.’ “You fall over laughing when you see this, but you realize this is a fifteen-year-old-girl who’s sick to death being a domestic slave.” Eggers eventually compared Knapp’s likely sorrowful plight to that of Thomasin in The Witch. While Thomasin lives with her family, she is treated with suspicion and loathing and her mother wishes to rid the farm of Thomasin and sell her into servitude to another family. “Tking the ashes out seems silly or mundane, but it’s so… sad,” Eggers reflected on the Knapp case in comparison to The Witch. https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-witch-explains-butter-living-deliciously/ 
  • From The Witch: The Complete Guide, Novum, YouTube, 2024: And now we come to probably the most famous scene in the film, not just because it has a  talking goat. We begin with this  sound of bells ringing in the dark; bells are traditionally used to ward off witches, the devil, evil spirits and so on. I actually think this might be meant to allude to the goat  bells we’ve heard previously, only made more mystical sounding now the farm is somewhat overrun by this satanic presence. The blood around Thomasin’s mouth and spilled on her chest is very in line with the trope of the fallen women that we see so often and reminds us of Eve biting into the forbidden fruit, an indicator of unfeminine desire for violence and consumption. Thomasin’s sin is revealed to be Greed, she wants to live deliciously, she wants to sample  all the delights of life. This should be unsurprising as it has roots in this ‘night demoness’ archetype that Thomasin is in the process of embodying, of vampirism, inverted motherhood, twisted desire, and fears regarding female emancipation. She is, in every sense, the fear of what women would be without religion. The question “What does thou want?” should have been easy to answer, but Thomasin is directionless and doesn’t  necessarily know what to even ask for. She replies “What cans’t thou give?” and we can and should read this as indicative of Thomasin’s inexperience, she doesn’t know what the ceiling is on what she can ask of the Devil, but it’s also indicative of an ‘I want it all’ attitude, I’ll take everything you’re offering. 
  • The taste of butter and a pretty dress are cribbed from actual, or alleged, incidents  from witch trials–to quote Robert Eggers “things that the Devil actually promised.” For a couple of centuries the eating of butter had  been considered a sin within the Catholic church, something that actually catalysed the Protestant reformation in its own small way. The most famous line in the film  “Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?” And This offer of living deliciously makes  her immediately say yes. She leaps on it. Thomasin only really bites at this offer to live a grander, more delicious life, to gorge on earthly delights in every sense she can. So much of the film is rooted in consumption. Thomasin tells him that she cannot write her name and he says ‘I will guide thy hand’. This could well be a reference to the phrase “your hand will guide me” from Psalm 139, which refers  essentially to god’s loving care. But primarily this is demonstrating how consent is working: Thomasin may not know how to write her own name,   but she is eager to do it. The Devil can’t force her to do it but he can guide her in how. This issue of consent was very important in  Puritan witch trials. Cotton Mather wrote: “In the case of Witchcrafts we know that the Devil is the immediate Agent in the Mischief done, so the consent or compact of the Witch is the thing to be demonstrated.” So it’s crucial that while Black Phillip is willing to help her hold the quill and show her how to write, this isn’t a scenario she can be forced into. Coerced but not forced.  This is her soul and her decision.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEYgVnKUiRY&t=281s 
  • From Satanism and Feminism in Popular Culture, Miranda Corcoran, 2025: The relationship between woman and the devil is arguably even older than the Satan myth itself. When we say “relationship” we mean that pretty literally, as our modern concept of Satan probably stretches back to Second Temple Jewish myth and the stories of the mysterious Watchers angels who were seduced to sin and vice by the comeliness of mortal women in the Book of Enoch: These dalliances between mortal and immortal beget evil, violence, war, and even a race of cannibalistic giants. In the end, the disobedient angels are cast into everlasting fire. At face value, Enoch seems to put fault on the male-coded Watchers, but it didn’t take long for misogynist preachers and church fathers to implicate the womenfolk. In The Testament of Reuben, a mostly apocryphal second century text, Reuben, son of the Israeli patriarch Jacob, preaches that women “allured the Watchers” and warns, “women are evil, and by reason of their lacking authority or power over men, they scheme treacherously.” Mind you, Reuben is most famous for stealing his father’s concubine and getting cut out of his will, so we might wonder who asked him to begin with? But not to worry, because Reuben has corroboration from “the angel of the lord,” who assures him that “women are more easily overcome by the spirit of promiscuity.” Reuben seems to have rarely been overcome with the spirit of self-awareness himself, but we’ll let that lie for now. 
  • The Watcher story went out of favor in time, replaced by the now-famous Eden myth, with Eve seduced by a mouthy serpent as an alternate origin for worldly evil; naturally, popular preaching cast Eve, and by extension women generally, as tools of wickedness, often barely differentiated from the Satanic serpent; as dusty old second century Roman preacher Tertullian put it: “And do you not know that you are each an Eve? The sentence of god on this sex of yours lives in this age: […] You are the devil’s gateway […] the unsealer of that forbidden tree. You are the first deserter of the divine law.” That sounds pretty metal to us, but apparently Tertullian meant this as a bad thing? Religion is confusing. When European witch scares kicked into high gear in the 15th and 16th centuries, witch-hunting weirdos were quick to frame witches as sultry feminine temptresses who were quite literally seduced by the devil through diabolical orgies with attendant demons. In a typically unironical example, Italian philosopher Gianfrancesco Mirandola wrote in 1523 that devils ensured the loyalty of witches by way of their “virile members,” which apparently were of quite remarkable proportions and “filled up the most secret parts of the witches”–and we’ll just pause for the reader to add their own editorial comments here. As Neil Forsyth points out in his book The Old Enemy, “blaming women is an uncomplicated solution for men suspicious of their own sexual needs.”
  • From I Await the Devil’s Coming, Mary MacLane, 1902: Now I feel and I want things and I know it with burning vividness. I want Fame more than I can tell. But more than I want Fame I want Happiness. What would I not give for one day, one hour, of that charmed thing! None of the other fools desires Happiness as I desire it. I am ready and waiting to give all that I have to the Devil in exchange for Happiness. I have been tortured so long with the dull, dull misery of Nothingness—all my nineteen years. I want to be happy—oh, I want to be happy! The Devil has not yet come. But I know that he usually comes, and I wait him eagerly. I am fortunate that I am not one of those who are burdened with an innate sense of virtue and honor which must come always before Happiness. They are but few who find their Happiness in their Virtue. The rest of them must be content to see it walk away. But with me Virtue and Honor are nothing. I long unspeakably for Happiness. And so I await the Devil’s coming. The Devil has given me some good things—among other things—my admirable young woman’s body, which I enjoy thoroughly and of which I am passionately fond. A spasm of pleasure seizes me when I think in some acute moment of the buoyant health and vitality of this fine young body that is feminine in every fiber. “It is good,” I think to myself, “oh, it is good to be alive! It is wondrously good to be a woman young in the fullness of nineteen springs. It is unutterably lovely to be a healthy young animal living on this charmed earth.” There are persons who say to me that I ought not to think of the Devil, that I ought not to think of Happiness—Happiness for me would be sure to mean something wicked; that I ought to think of being good. I ought to think of God. These are persons who help to fill the world with fools.”
  • From How Ethical Hedonism Plays Into Theistic Satanism, Chia Satana, Satanic Spirit, 2018: Embracing ethical hedonism has brought me closer to Satan. The definition of hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure and sensual self-indulgence. People think of the pursuit of pleasure as immoral, corrupt, and sinful, but ethical hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure but with personal ethics involved. Ultimately, I decide which pleasures are okay to indulge in and to what extent I can indulge. Religions often shame people for pursuing pleasure, especially the worldly pleasures. Have you ever heard of good food described as “sinful”? Satan wants us to enjoy life, he wants us to experience pleasure without the fetters of guilt or shame. Pleasure is one of the many gifts Satan gives humanity, one of the things that makes life worth living. Pleasure isn’t the only thing to live for, but it’s an important component in life. I make pleasure a priority in life because it makes me feel good, not just pleasures like lust and food, but also the smaller pleasures such as funny memes or time with friends. Worldly pleasures are here for us to enjoy, not avoid; so long as each person involved consents to the activity and the activity itself is carried out in a safe manner, hedonism is ethical. 
  • Admittedly, not all pleasures are ethical: Some pleasure causes harm and has negative consequence, and I acknowledge that there are pleasures that can harm you if you indulge too much. This is where ethics comes in to decide what/how much I can eat without harming my health. Don’t get me wrong: I still eat too much, but I’m trying to work on eating healthier. I know eating healthy will bring me pleasure because I’ll get to enjoy the benefits of health, and this will lead to more pleasure. The pursuit of pleasure is a highly personal thing: Nobody should feel guilty over indulging in pleasures like consensual sex or laughing at an enemy’s expense. Satan helps free me from this unnecessary shame over experiencing and valuing pleasure in life. He also helps me appreciate these pleasures more since I believe Satan, as the true creator, made these pleasures for us to enjoy. I thank Satan for the gift of pleasure every day. Ultimately, only you can decide your personal ethics surrounding pleasure. I think my life is a happier place with both ethical hedonism and Satan involved in it. I find that the more I embrace Satan, the more of an ethical hedonist I become.
  • From the Satanic Revelation, Allison P, 2013: And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. And after these things I saw another infernal Spirit come up from Hell, having great power; And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is risen, and is become the habitation of Devils, and the hold of every infernal Spirit and the dominion of those who kept Satan’s covenant! For all nations have drunk of the wine of the pleasure of her fornication, and the Kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. And I heard another voice from Hell, saying, go into her, my people, that ye be partakers of her wisdom, and that ye receive of her joys. For the great works of men have reached unto Heaven, and even the enemy hath remembered her glory. Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled: How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are given to thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are imparted to thee, and thou shalt find them forevermore. For in one hour so great riches is come. Rejoice over her, the victorious, for the Lord Lucifer shall deliver you to her. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_xsXutOpIO9wzwlH7I73s1ZcZVehLn65UCHmEJ-uH2E/edit?tab=t.0 
  • From To Live Deliciously, Cradle of Filth, 2025: Velvet incantations, standing ovations from the stalls The torturous stage is a bountiful harvest To which we stay in thrall We wish to live deliciously in this garden of delights, We wish to live deliciously enraptured, bedight, We wish to live deliciousl, in this sea of paradise, We wish to live deliciously, enchanted, enchanted. Greatest expectations, enemy nations, all shall fall to a future wherein peace remains the rule. Behold the golden dawn: Our world reborn to a sworn horizon, as from the grip of winter’s siege, we prise ourselves to rise again, to live deliciously. We expire, best never wait lest these ecstatic fires burn as dreams evaporate. Just one stretch above, so run amok and thunder far in lust and utter bliss, embark: We wish to live deliciously, in this garden of delights, we wish to live deliciously, enraptured, bedight, we wish to live deliciously in this sea of paradise, we wish to live deliciously, enchanted, free to every vice. Forget redemption, for the time is rife to face the day and empower the night, to revel disheveled in the chaos of life, embracing the playful and the slayful knife.