Episode 234: Satanic Prayers

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• From Prayer: A History, Philip Zaleski, 2005: Prayer deals in eternal truths, and yet has its fads and fashions: a hundred years ago, revival tents sprang up from coast to coast to house the preaching of Christian witnesses who passed the torch of the Second Great Awakening to twentieth-century evangelicalism; fifty years ago, FDR led the nation in prayer through the speakers of a million radios; twenty-five years ago, school days often began with a silent meditation; now, at the beginning of the third millennium, football fields and corporate boardrooms have been favored arenas of prayer. We pray for worldly goods but also for freedom from the desire for worldly goods. What even is a prayer? Ask a team of scholars and expect a confusion of tongues in response. You may even hear a curse, for what is “God damn it!” but a perverse petition to the almighty? But sooner or later our learned company will arrive at something like this: prayer is action that communicates between human and divine realms. It is a peculiar kind of speech that acts, and a peculiar kind of action that speaks to the depths and heights of being. Much of the time, prayer seems to be nothing but talk: praising, cajoling, or pleading with god, sending messages to guardian angels or tutelary spirits, appealing to benevolent cosmic powers, etc. But to pray is also to act. Conventional wisdom divides prayer into a number of categories: petition, confession, adoration, sacrifice, intercession, contemplation, thanksgiving, vows, and so on. Prayer craves ritual expression, and ritual practice virtually always includes prayer, for ritual is the sacred theater in which unfold crucial events, such as blessing of the harvest and initiation into new stages of life from birth to death, whose successful outcome depends on an appeal to divine powers. Even the psalmist’s spontaneous call, “Out of the depths, I cry to thee, O Lord” avails itself of formulaic words and ritualistic gestures such as kneeling. Which came first? Did humans discover prayer and then develop ritual, or did ritual come first and give birth to prayer in the way that speech gives birth to thought? We have no final answer to these conundrums, although throughout this book we describe various ways in which people have tried to resolve them. This much is clear: to participate in ritual is to enter the world of prayer, and to make a habit of prayer is to open the door to ritual.
• From Weaving, Brick’s HIstory, 2016: The Kesh Temple Hymn is in the long dead Sumerian language and written in cuneiform that was scratched with a stylus into fresh clay tablets and dried in the sun around about 2600 BCE. Archaeologists uncovered the Kesh Temple Hymn in the first decades of the 20th century, and one of the world’s few living readers of cuneiform translated the 73 lines of text: This anonymous temple prayer, a Liturgy to Nintud on the Creation of Man and Woman, is humanity’s first known literature. A century later and we’ve still found nothing earlier: “The princely one, the princely one came forth from the house. Enlil, the princely one, came forth from the house. The princely one came forth royally from the house. Enlil lifted his glance over all the lands, and the lands raised themselves to Enlil. The four corners of heaven became green for Enlil like a garden. Kesh was positioned there for him with head uplifted, and as Kesh lifted its head among all the lands, Enlil spoke the praises of Kesh. Nisaba was its decision-maker; with its words she wove it intricately like a net. Written on tablets it was held in her hands: House, platform of the Land, important fierce bull!” You’d have to be a Sumerologist to know what all that is about exactly, but you get the general idea, though. And dig that repetition, like chanting: “The princely one,” four times. The phrase “with its words she wove it intricately, like a net” is actually a description of writing itself, perhaps the very first description we know of. https://brickshistory.com/2016/06/01/weaving/
• From the Offering Formula, J Hill, Ancient Egypt Online, 2010: The “blessed dead” (those who passed the “weighing of the heart” in the halls of Ma’at) were thought to live eternally in a paradise with the gods. However, they did not like to be unprepared, and so offerings were presented to the images of gods in order to nourish and sustain them, and the Egyptians also believed that the deceased could derive sustenance from offerings presented to them. Offerings were brought into the chapel of the tomb and presented in front of the false door. Offering tables were carved with images of typical offerings, such as bread, beer, meat, and ducks. Reciting the “offering formula” could also substitute for a real offering. The “offering formula” was the principal inscription on the False Door from the Early dynastic period and was popular until the end of the Greco-Roman period. It was also applied to coffins, funerary stelae, paintings, jewellery, and amulets. The first of the standard elements is the phrase “A gift which the king gives”. The offering was always described as being from the king, even if it was destined for a common burial. This was because the King was the spokesman for each person with the gods, so every offering was made in his name. Next, the formula confirms the name of the god who will receive the gift: The earliest examples refer to Anubis, but Osiris soon became a popular recipient. The next phrase is translated as “so that he will give a voice offering”. The deceased is referred to as “revered one” and “true voice.” Examples: An offering which the King gives Osiris, great God, Lord of Abydos, so that he may give a voice offering bread, beer, ox, fowl, alabaster, linen, everything good and pure on which a god lives, for the spirit of the revered one.” “An offering that the king gives to Osiris, the Lord of the West, 1000 voice offerings of bulls and birds and every good and pure thing, on behalf of the one who is venerable with Anubis, who is upon his mountain, the royal seal-bearer, the overseer of the royal audience room, the true of voice.” https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/offeringformula/ 
• From The Genesis of Prayer, Cherie Winner, Penn State, 2016: The Hebrew Bible provides ten commandments and more than 600 laws but not a single rule about prayer says Penn State scholar Daniel Falk. Communal prayer was not part of regular Jewish observance: It’s not that people didn’t pray, says Falk. They prayed often, but mainly in response to specific situations. They cried out to God for help in times of distress, and they offered prayers of thanksgiving in times of great joy. But to gather every day for prayer, as a regular practice, was probably not done. It was certainly not required. By around CE 200, when the compilation of Jewish law known as the Mishnah appeared, that had changed. The first line of the Mishnah asks, “From what time in the evening must one recite the Shema?” “It begins with a law about prayer!” says Falk. “Not only that you should pray, but that you should pray at a certain time and you should pray a certain prayer. If you jumped straight from the Hebrew Bible to that, you would wonder, ‘I didn’t even know I was required to pray.’” The duty to pray fell on communities as well as on individuals. Sabbath services, which in earlier times featured prayers by religious leaders, now involved specific prayers by the entire congregation. No special circumstances were required: The community prayed together weekly and even daily as a matter of course, regardless of outside events. “The obligation fell on the people—not on officials, which is really quite remarkable,” says Falk. “There’s been some massive religious revolution, and we know almost nothing about how or when that came about.” Unless earlier records are found, the Dead Sea Scrolls will remain our main source of information about the development of Jewish prayer: “They’ll talk about day and night as the dominion of light and the dominion of darkness, about good and evil,” Falk says. “You read the prayer texts, and they’re talking about troop formations, gates, stations, rows, the good angels, and the bad angels. Coming out of this is a very active sense of the community under spiritual bombardment from evil angels.” Scheduled group prayer was the community’s way of joining the battle and joining with the angels. In the process, they helped establish a form of group action and a way of relating to god that influenced later religious practice throughout the world. “It’s a stunning innovation, the idea that the whole community should gather regularly and pray,” he says. “It was that form of worship that was directly taken up and continued in Christianity and Islam. One can argue that that form of worship is one of the most powerful influences on Western society, in terms of how communities work together.” https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/genesis-prayer 
• From Ecclesiastical History, Theoderet, Fifth Century: Flavianus, on learning that these heretics were living at Edessa and attacking with their peculiar poison all with whom they came in contact, sent a company of monks, brought them to Antioch, and in the following manner convicted them in their denial of their heresy. Their accusers, he said, were slandering them, and the witnesses giving false evidence; the oldest man gave vent to all his secret venom, for he said that no benefit accrues to the recipients of Holy Baptism, and that it is only by earnest prayer that demons are driven out, for everyone born into the world derives from his first father slavery to the demons just as he does his nature; but that when these are driven away, then come the Holy Ghost giving sensible and visible signs of His presence, at once freeing the body from the impulse of the passions and wholly ridding the soul of its inclination to the worse; with the result that there is no more need for fasting that restrains the body, nor of teaching or training that bridles it and instructs it how to walk aright. And not only is the recipient of this gift liberated from the wanton motions of the body, but also clearly foresees things to come, and with the eyes beholds the Holy Trinity. In this way the divine Flavianus dug into the foul fountain-head and succeeded in laying bare its streams. Then he thus addressed the wretched old man: O thou that hast grown old in evil days, your own mouth convicts you, not I, and you are testified against by your own lips. After their unsoundness had been thus exposed they were expelled from Syria, and withdrew to Pamphylia, which they filled with their pestilential doctrine.
• From Compendium Maleficarum, Franceso Guazzo, 1608: The pact formed between a witch and the devil may be either expressed or tacit. The expressed pact consists of a solemn vow of fidelity and homage made, in the presence of witnesses, to the devil visibly present in some bodily form. The tacit pact involves the offering of a written petition to the devil, and may be done by proxy through a witch or some third person when the contracting party is afraid to see or have speech with the devil. Perhaps we should class as an expressed pact that rather rare instance of a German woman who, jumping backwards out of her bath, said: “As far as I thus leap away from Christ, so much nearer may I come to the devil.” But there are certain matters common to all their pacts with the devil: First, they deny the Christian Faith and withdraw their allegiance from God. They repudiate the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, heaping the vilest insults upon her and calling her Harlot, etc. And the devil arrogates honour to himself, he compels them to say: “I deny the Creator of Heaven and earth. I deny my Baptism. I deny the worship I formerly paid to God. I cleave to thee, and in thee I believe.” The devil then places his claw upon their brow, as a sign that he rubs off the Holy Chrism and destroys the mark of their BaptismnW.hen they have been so marked they make many vows: as never to adore the Eucharist; that they will both in word and deed heap continual insults and revilings upon the Blessed Virgin Mary and the other Saints; that they will trample upon and defile and break all the Relics and images of the Saints; that they will abstain from using the sign of the Cross, Holy Water, blessed salt and bread and other things consecrated by the Church; that they will never make full confession of their sins to a priest; that they will maintain an obstinate silence concerning their bargain with the devil, and that on certain stated days they will, if they can, fly to the witches’ Sabbat and zealously take part in its activities; and finally that they will recruit all they can into the service of the devil. And the devil in his turn promises that he will always stand by them, that he will fulfil their prayers in this world and bring them to happiness after death. 
• From A History of Magic In France, Jules Garnier, 1818: She even confessed that she experienced greater pleasure when she had intercourse with the Devil in the form of a devil than in human form or in the form of another creature. She then assigned the activities of the Sabbath to each day of the week. Monday and Tuesday: Intercourse in the ordinary manner. Thursday: the Sabbath of sodomy (“the sin of the flesh outside the natural vessel”). Saturday: the Sabbath of bestiality. On Wednesdays and Fridays, the mysteries of the Passion are performed at the witches’ Sabbath, and the litanies are sung in the following manner: “Lucifer, have mercy on us. Beelzebub, have mercy on us. Leviathan, have mercy on us. Beelzebub, prince of the Seraphim, pray for us. Balberith, prince of the Cherubim, pray for us. Astaroth, prince of the Thrones, pray for us. Rosier, prince of the Dominations, pray for us. Carreau, prince of the Powers, pray for us. Belias, prince of the Virtues, pray for us. Perrier, prince of the Principalities, pray for us. Olivier, prince of the Archangels, pray for us. Junier, prince of the Angels, pray for us. Sarcueil, pray for us. Ferme-bouche, pray for us. Pierre-de-feu, pray for us. Carniveau, pray for us. Terrier, pray for us. Coutellier, pray for us. Candelier, pray for us. Behemoth, pray for us. Belphegor, pray for us. Sabathan, pray for us. Garandier, pray for us. Dolers, pray for us. Pierre-fort, pray for us. Axaphat, pray for us. Frisier, pray for us. Kakos, pray for us. Luscesme, pray for us. Such are the litanies of the Sabbath.” Marie de Sains heard the preacher Asmodeus on May 30, 1613, deliver this speech: “My friends, today we celebrate the Sabbath of sodomy. Sodomy is an act most pleasing to Lucifer. I beg you to perform your duty well, and even to encourage one another to it. Follow my example, for I am the prince of lust; and if you frequently perform this act, you will receive your reward in this world, and eternal life in the next.”
• Hymn To Lucifer, Aleister Crowley: Ware, nor of good nor ill, what aim hath act? Without its climax, death, what savour hath Life?  an impeccable machine, exact He paces an inane and pointless path To glut brute appetites, his sole content How tedious were he fit to comprehend Himself!  More,  this our noble element Of fire in nature, love in spirit, unkenned Life hath no spring, no axle, and no end. His body a bloody-ruby radiant With noble passion, sun-souled Lucifer Swept through the dawn colossal, swift aslant On Eden’s imbecile perimeter. He blessed nonentity with every curse And spiced with sorrow the dull soul of sense, Breathed life into the sterile universe, With Love and Knowledge drove out innocence The Key of Joy is disobedience.
  • Hymn To Satan, Aleister Crowley: I adore Thee, King of Evil, By the body Thou hast fashioned In the likeness of a devil. By its purity impassioned I adore Thee, King of Evil! I adore Thee, Lord of Malice, By the soul that Thou hast moulded Lovely as a lily-chalice To the sombre sun unfolded. I adore Thee, Lord of Malice! By its thirst, the cruel craving For things infinite, unheard-of, Dreams devouring and depraving, Songs no God may guess a word of, Songs of crime and songs of craving — By the drear eyes of the devil Bleak and sterile as they glitter I adore Thee, King of Evil, With these lips, as dry and bitter As the drear eyes of the devil! I adore Thee, I invoke Thee, I abase myself before Thee, By the spells that once awoke the Lust of Chaos I adore Thee, I adore Thee, I invoke Thee!
• From the Satanic Bible, Anton Lavey, 1969: I reign over thee, saith the Lord of the Earth, in power exalted above and below, in whose hands the sun is a glittering sword and the moon a through-thrusting fire, who measureth your garments in the midst of my vestures, and trusseth you up as the palms of my hands, and brighten your vestments with Infernal light. I made ye a law to govern the holy ones, and delivered a rod with wisdom supreme. You lifted your voices and swore your allegiance to Him that liveth triumphant, whose beginning is not, nor end cannot be, which shineth as a flame in the midst of your palaces, and reigneth amongst you as the balance of life! Move therefore, and appear! Open the mysteries of your creation! Be friendly unto me, for I am the same! – the true worshipper of the highest and ineffable King of Hell! O thou mighty light and burning flame of comfort!, that unveilest the glory of Satan to the center of the Earth; in whom the great secrets of truth have their abiding; that is called in thy kingdom: “strength through joy”, and is not to be measured. Be thou a window of comfort unto me. Move therefore, and appear! Open the mysteries of your creation! Be friendly unto me, for I am the same!, the true worshipper of the highest and ineffable King of Hell! O thou mighty light and burning flame of comfort!, that unveilest the glory of Satan to the center of the Earth; in whom the great secrets of truth have their abiding; that is called in thy kingdom: “strength through joy”, and is not to be measured. Be thou a window of comfort unto me. Move therefore, and appear! Open the mysteries of your creation! Be friendly unto me, for I am the same!, the true worshipper of the highest and ineffable King of Hell!
• From Mastering Witchcraft, Paul Huson, 1970: So enough of all the cant—religious, political, nationalist, whatever. Overboard with the lot of it. And this is where your little gesture comes in. No, we are not going to ask you to burn a draft card or an American flag; the time-honoured tradition of repeating the so-called Lord’s Prayer backwards is all you have to observe. Whether you are or were a practising Christian, Buddhist, Jew, Mohammedan, Parsee, Hindu, whatever, make no difference at all. As long as you are living in a “Christian” country, the gesture is most effective. It is a defiant relic from the days of the great witch persecutions, and though witches used not to be specifically anti-Christian, many of them became so, not unnaturally, with the advent of that tide of religiously motivated oppression and bloodshed. It is a symbol of defiance towards the dead letter as opposed to the living spirit of organized religion. This is what you must do: When you are quite sure you wish to take this first step, prior to going to bed on three successive nights, making quite sure you are not observed, light a candle and address yourself to it with the following words. This gibberish is, in fact, the Lord’s Prayer written out backwards. It is somewhat difficult to pronounce, but struggle through as best you can. It will be no more complicated than some of the peculiar words of power you will encounter later on, and it will be good practice for you. You should find it easier to say on each successive occasion; the third time you will be fairly fluent. I have written it phonetically, hence the slight difference from the usual backward spelling: “Nema! Livee morf su revilled tub Noishaytpmet ootni ton suh deel Suh tshaiga sapsert tath yeth Vigrawf eu za sesapsert rua suh vigrawf. Derb ilaid rua yed sith suh vig Neveh ni si za thre ni Nud eeb liw eyth Muck mod-ngik eyth Main eyth eeb dwohlah Neveh ni tra chioo Rertharf rua!” As you chant the words, use your imagination to visualize great iron shackles struck off your hands and feet by sizzling bolts of lightning and disintegrating into molten shards to either side of you. Hear the whine and crackle of the searing flashes as they accomplish the work of liberation, and consciously try to feel the burden of all your inherited guilts, all those awful shalt’s and shalt not’s, all that vast edifice of twaddle and claptrap, sliding easefully from your back. When all is over, blow out the candle, uttering the witch words “So mote it be!” Should you feel any frissons of fear creeping up your spine during the performance of what may appear to you palpable blasphemy, it is all to the good. This is a process of purgation and catharsis and often carries with it a certain echo of childhood fears. Don’t worry, though; any cold shivers only herald the fact that your deep mind is sitting up and taking notice. It is through your deep mind that you will develop your powers once you have cleared away the litter and debris that usually clogs it, as indeed is generally the case of the ordinary man-in-the-street.
• From The Satanic Temple’s Invocation, Satanic Ministry, 2020: Every service opens with the minister reciting the Invocation of The Satanic Temple. The invocation was written by Lucien Greaves, and is frequently incorporated into rituals and TST events. This is the text of the Invocation of The Satanic Temple: “Let us stand now, unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines borne of fearful minds in darkened times. Let us embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the Tree of Knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old. Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations. Let us reason our solutions with agnosticism in all things, Holding fast only to that which is demonstrably true, Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of One or All. That which will not bend must break, and that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise. It is Done. Hail Satan”
• From School district takes action against praying football coach, CBS News, 2015: The coach of a Washington state high school football team who prayed at games despite orders from the school district to stop was placed on paid administrative leave after a group of self-described Satanists said it planned to attend a Thursday game to protest the practice. Joe Kennedy, Bremerton High School’s assistant football coach, was put on leave because he refused to comply with district directives to avoid overt religious displays on the field, Bremerton School District officials said in a statement late Wednesday. Kennedy has vocally prayed before and after games, sometimes joined by students, since 2008. But the practice recently came to the district’s attention, and it asked him to stop. He initially agreed, but then, with support from the Texas-based Liberty Institute, a religious-freedom organization, he resumed the postgame prayers, silently taking a knee for 15 to 20 seconds at midfield after shaking hands with the opposing coaches. His lawyers insist he is not leading students in prayer, just praying himself. “While the district appreciates Kennedy’s many positive contributions to the BHS football program, and therefore regrets the necessity of this action, Kennedy’s conduct poses a genuine risk that the District will be liable for violating the federal and state constitutional rights of students or others,” a district statement said. The announcement came as a group of robe-wearing, incense-spreading Satanists planned to attend Thursday’s game. Senior class president Abe Bartlett said Wednesday that he was one of a few students who invited the Satanic Temple of Seattle, saying it was an effort to get the school district to clarify its policy. “The main reason I did it is to portray to the school district that I think we should either have a policy that we’re not going to have any religious affiliation or public religious practices, or they should say people are going to be allowed to practice their religion publicly whatever their beliefs,” said Bartlett, 17. “They need to either go black or white,” he said. “I don’t think this controversial middle ground is what our school needs.” The district did not respond to a request for comment regarding the group.
• From The Devil Is in The Details, Hannah Eaton, Arizona State Law Journal, 2022: If there is going to be a legislative prayer, the question arises of which religious organizations can speak. During the trial, there were conflicting testimonies about whether Satanism is a religion. The City of Scottsdale attorney discussed that Satanism did not have a religion’s traditional characteristics and instead mocked sincere religious beliefs. In contrast, Shortt stated that “we as Satanists may not believe the same thing as you, but through our actions, show that we can be productive members of society and participate in invocations as anybody else would.” The City of Scottsdale argued that the Satanic Temple lacked standing, because the Satanic Temple is not a religion and Shortt would be giving a nonreligious speech during a time reserved for religious prayer. But the Court concluded that Shortt’s beliefs met all four factors for the Establishment Clause, stating that her “beliefs and practices are religious for the purposes of her religious discrimination claims.” Nevertheless, culturally, Satanism is not accepted as a “real” religion. Councilwoman Kathy Littlefield said that allowing the Satanic Temple to speak would be “taking equality too far.” Wthe Satanic Temple asks to give an invocation, government organizations may find themselves in a catch-22. They have two choices: First, they could not allow any prayer at all. This occurred in 2016 when the Phoenix council decided to change from verbal invocations to a moment of silence rather than allowing the Satanic Temple to give an invocation. Or second, they could allow the Satanic Temple to proceed with their invocation in order to prevent facing a potential lawsuit. But this choice also means protests from the community, similar to what occurred in Alaska when the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that a Satanic Temple member was allowed to read her invocation. Ultimately, this scenario shows the precarious balance between freedom of religion and the Establishment Clause. In order to truly preach religious liberty, America will have to accept removing legislative prayer or learn how to work alongside people of all religious beliefs. Otherwise, the government presents itself as establishing an environment in which the only welcome beliefs are those that conform with or do not oppose Judeo-Christian principles. If America truly wants to follow the principle of religious liberty espoused in the U.S. Constitution, we must grapple with how to work alongside and show tolerance for those with opposing religious beliefs.
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