Satanists have yet to master the art of monument building. I won’t name and shame here, but there’s the high quality one inexplicably featuring children, the military-themed birdbath, and there’s even one that looks like a reindeer-themed Christmas ornament sculpted from mashed potatoes, known lovingly in some circles as “Mashomet”.
Perhaps the most insidious monument to Satanic mediocrity however, is a simple two-word mantra: Hail yourself!
I know, I recently told you that your creased Party City robes aren’t good enough, and now I’m trying to take away a ubiquitous part of Satanic t-shirt culture, but before thy jimmies are rustled, let me be really clear about the following point: I’m not saying we, as Satanists, shouldn’t cultivate healthy self-esteem; I’m saying that constantly telling yourself how great you are doesn’t actually lead to meaningful self-worth.
Like many things about many people’s progression through Satanism — especially through the perspective of an abusive Christian upbringing — I see the value in a mantra like “Hail yourself!” as a useful tool. There’s something exciting and empowering about coming from an environment where you’re told you’re worthless and hearing, “You. Yeah, you. You have inherent value.”
On its face, hailing yourself is an empowering inversion of Christian mindless devotion to God; take that love you were wasting on God and give it to yourself. God doesn’t care. You’re real, and you matter.
Great. I’m all in on this sentiment. The problem is that a lot of Satanists just stop here. The elation of spiritual liberation stagnates and curdles into diseased pride. The hunger for intellectual freedom gorges itself on cheap thinking. Ambition metamorphoses into delusion.
Why bother? You’re your own god, after all.
You aren’t making yourself better, you’re only making divinity worse.
Blithely hailing yourself challenges the idea of divinity itself; render unto you what is set aside for the gods. No gods, no masters. Eat my shorts, Jesus.
What you’re trying to reject is the idea of obeisance and contrived authority. This is good. What you end up rejecting is the concept of ideas higher than yourself, and the notion of authority entirely. This is not good.
Let’s face it: No one is going to build a temple to honor the wonder that is Kevin. There will be no statues erected. Your likeness will never be captured in stained glass. There will be no hymns, no psalms, no pounding of drums.
Because, in the grand scheme of things, you aren’t really that special or interesting. You’re just a fleshy bag of farts and questions, as are we all, and while we’re certainly self-obsessed, humans are categorically not that fascinated with humans qua humans (except anthropologists).
Self-adulation might feel great, but it’s inherently self-limiting. We want it to be self-limiting. When you think of people who unreservedly self-worship, you’re thinking of people who decay from self-awareness into the inescapable self-delusion. They become twisted caricatures of people, toxic and destructive and locked in irons of their own device.
An honest look at himself at this point would unravel Donald Trump’s psyche like a cheap wool sweater. A deluded brain always defends itself from itself.
We need a reason to cast our eyes up. We need great works and we need to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Divinity is something we should aspire to, not something we should tear down low enough to drag our asses over it like a pug with butt worms.
It’s just spooky toxic positivity.
As I mentioned, “Hail yourself!” is useful for introducing yourself to the idea that you have worth, but beyond that it starts to lose coherence. In its mindless ubiquity, it starts to supplant self-critique.
Just be positive! Good vibes only! You are your own god!
I hate to break it to you, but sometimes, maybe a lot of the time, we’re just crap and really need to work on our shit. I don’t really want to be the patron deity of my own mediocrity. I want to build a cathedral to the best parts of me, and I can’t really do that if I’m constantly patting my own back just for existing.
Hailing yourself doesn’t necessarily preclude self-improvement, but it’s a very seductive form of unqualified self-acceptance that can not only strangle your inner growth, but perhaps worse, can propel you into the throes of Dunning-Krugerism.
If you want to learn to love yourself warts and all, you should be very wary of any philosophy that discourages gruesome self-examination. Incompetence is perhaps the most pervasive Satanic trait after individualism, and it’s no coincidence; the more deluded you are, the more deluded you have to be to keep from imploding.
“Hail yourself!” sounds positive, but it’s no more empowering than 𝓛𝓲𝓿𝓮 𝓛𝓪𝓾𝓰𝓱 𝓛𝓸𝓿𝓮.
You actually deserve a lot more than that.
“Hail yourself!” doesn’t mean anything! It’s a vaguely positive, contextless sentiment that makes no more sense than Frosty the Snowman yelling “Happy birthday!” upon donning his magic hat. Hail what? Hail your butthole? Hail your tendency to snap at people close to you when you feel insecure? We might be worthy, but surely all of our parts aren’t, buttholes nonwithstanding.
You deserve better than a blanket, uninformed dismissal. You have very specific things about you that are worth hailing. Not hailing yourself isn’t a meditation on your shortcomings – an awareness, to be sure – but a celebration of the things that make you great as well. Take time to honor and acknowledge those things. Take time to work on your flaws.
Learn to fall in love with saying “I don’t know!”, because only through ignorance do we become knowledgeable, and learn to say “I can’t do that!” because only through incapability do we become capable.
Hail your passion. Hail your struggle. Hail taking your meds. Hail doing things that terrify you. Hail standing up for yourself. Hail knowing when to run away. Hail your love, and hail your darkness.
Lastly, hail yourself.
Just don’t stop there.
In another post, I will discuss Luciferian Pride, and how we can reforge our Satanic identity in a crucible of passion, capability and self-awareness.
