Did you like both religions and decided to incorporate what you would see as the best of both? Did you always believe in something that didn't fit your original faith?
I'm asking because I'm considering blending a couple of different things together. I like Western and Middle-Eastern polytheism/paganism, but I don't believe the deities in as literal beings, as I am atheist. I also have been resonating stronger and stronger with atheistic Satanism the more I read about it. I may become a syncretic in this respect but I would like to hear your stories.
Short story:
I grew up Christian (Protestant, place with loose evangelical and baptist kinds of Christians, my parents didn’t identify with a denomination but they basically took on those kinds of views) my experiences with Christianity weren’t really negative though but I was very frustrated and infuriated by Christian doctrine as a teenager and spent a lot of time reading on the subject and basically disowned myself from religion entirely for about a decade.
For that decade I was an atheist and had quite anti-theist, anti-religious views.
Then I started exploring mysticism, meditation as well.
I explored several systems, I was quite a Gurdjieffian at one point with the fourth way, also a big fan of Zen Buddhism.
My real adulthood though began with Thelema which revolutionized myself and to which I never turned back. I was still an atheist when I started practising Thelema. Doing some very intense forms of Yoga however, aiming at samadhi, really teared away my prior materialist view of reality though.
I should also add that as an artist and composer, I was also prior quite a big afficionado of Surrealism, Absurdism and 20th century Classical music, as well as Progressive Metal, and Avant garde music in general.
Anyway, practising Yoga and various forms of Ceremonial Magic flipped off the lid for me, I had very intense experiences of altered consciousness that destroyed everything I had thought reality could be prior. I somewhat also realized the human margin of error in our dogmatic assertion of materialism.
As much as I liked Thelema at the time, I started becoming quite unsatisfied with the Thelemic community and I had also become a strong Monotheist at the time. I was also reading the Corpus Hermeticum a lot too, and the Emerald Tablet.
Over the course of months I had started reading the Qur’an and was again and again profoundly affected by it’s deep metaphysical and mystical wisdom. The Meccan surahs in particular effected my like nothing I had and still haven’t read.
I basically from Thelema converted to Islam.
However after a few months as a Sunni I became very dissatisfied with that too and found many many problems with it’s ideology and it’s view over the succession of Prophet Muhammad (A.S.)
I started reading some of the Shi’i sources and learning about Shi’ism. Reading the sayings of Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib (pbuh) in particular literally brought tears to my eyes.
I became a Twelver (Ithna Ashari) and fell in love with the Ahlulbayt, the Twelve Imams and their oceans of esoteric wisdom.
At the same time I also studied bits of Ismailism on the side, which is even more esoteric-bent than regular Twelverism.
Then at the same time, being now a Muslim, having debates and all kinds of things both with Christians (usually Protestants, sometimes fundi evangelicals too) and with Sunnis, caused me to take quite a subversive approach.
Christians calling me a Satanist, saying the Qur’an was written by Satan and saying that Allah (God in arabic) is “Satan” - and the hilarity and irony involved in such a notion, also drew me to start appreciating Satanism for the first time.
Prior I had seen Satanism as merely just some kind of edgy rebellious kind of thing, but I started seeing a lot of irony there.
My studies of lots of the esoteric/occult orders and secret societies – in conjunction with the tinfoil hat conspiracy theories about them – all led me to quite an anti-dualism view, total opposition to even the hint of dualism.
Just as Christians basically consider “Satan” as a ‘second deity’, I have come to unify Satan back with God. They are one.
I’m a person who realizes the irony everywhere and revels in it, I love absurdism in that sense.
Anyway some examples are – Jesus is the antichrist to Jews, Yahweh is “Satan” to Marcion and later Gnostic sects like the Sethians, Jews and Muslims worship “Satan” according to Protestant Christians. According to Islamic eschatology Jesus will destroy the cross when he returns. According to Christians Muslims are Satanists. According to Satanists, such a notion is offensive. I want to unify all of these absurdities because they are beautifully absurd.
As Athanasius famously said “God became man so that man could become God”.
As Jesus said “I and the Father are one”.
As Muhammad said “he who knows his self knows his lord”, and according to Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq “he who dies without knowing the Imam (Hidden Imam/Imam of One’s Being etc – higher self) of his time dies the death of Jahl (ignorance)”
According to Mansur al-Hallaj “I am the truth”.
As a famous movie quote goes “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.” same applies with God.
God = Satan.
Satan = God.
There is only one Ultimate Reality (la ilaha illa'llah) and it is that transcendent, formless, unbegotten, not-begetting, IT which is not like anything, which no likeness can be given but which is the totality, the Absolute, the All. That which all depend on.
This is my new praxis.
The eye in the triangle represents the Atman, everyone is ignorant. The only secret societies are the ones that are open and not secret. I love Christian tinfoilhat conspiracy theorists who can validate my views too.
