Back in my days as a Classicist, I specialized somewhat in Hellenistic poets and poetry, as well as in the Roman expression of those same novel Hellenistic artistic sympathies in the so-called neoteric school, so dubbed after the Greek word for “newer.” So when I read modernist poet Ezra Pound enjoining his colleagues and posterity [...]
Author: devilsfane
The Devil’s Fane is where we live our real lives, this world and our own bodies, where we take our pleasures as we may. There are no priests, no commandments, no dutiful false piety to empty externalities. We serve ourselves and let others do likewise. We are free. Ave Satanas!
Make it New!
In a 1928 English translation of a Chinese Confucian classic, modernist poet Ezra Pound evinced what would become his characteristic injunction and the inspirational dictum of poetic modernism: “Make it new.” Some 2,228 or so years earlier, the Hellenistic poet Callimachus, scholar in the Ptolemaic institution that was the Library at Alexandria, Egypt, reported in [...]
The Satanics of Roller Skating III: Skating as Reverse Dominance
The 2017 documentary Roller Dreams details the emergence and ultimately downhill trajectory of the once thriving Venice Beach, CA, roller dancing scene. The film quotes its principal subjects, Mad (aka James Lightning) and Sally Piano (aka Sally Messenger)—among others, as noting that the hit 1979 rollersploitation disco films Roller Boogie and Skatetown USA, as well [...]
The Satanics of Roller Skating II: Getting Over Your Self Out on the Floor
Whether in the predominantly white all-female revival world of roller derby or the predominantly African-American revival world of “urban” “adult-night” skating in neighborhood rinks, another inherently Satanic aspect to the world of roller skating in general is both the flamboyance and the purely recreational aspect of identity construction. In roller derby, this play with identity [...]
The Satanics of Roller Skating I: Skating on Sidewalk Terms
At ten a.m. on a weekday, when the roller rink first opens and, for at least an hour and a half, I’m the only intrepid skater out on the floor, the maple boards beneath my wheels are just waking up. They creak and pop underfoot like the icy surface of a frozen lake. It’s winter [...]
The Unexpected Satanic Gift of Skating
My wife’s off-the-cuff decision to purchase a pair of roller skates for our oldest daughter as a Christmas present nearly broke my arm. It also caused me to stumble, both literally and figuratively, over a set of realities that proved unexpected both in their continued existence and their incidentally Satanic nature. Here’s how it all [...]
Addendum to the Theism/Atheism Debate
In this addendum to the previous post on the (a)theistic divide within modern Satanism, I first take a brief look at some of the key verbiage involved for the purpose of clarifying terms and sharpening the outlines of the “debate.” Next, I move to a protracted examination of how concern for theology or, in the [...]
Across the (A)Theistic Divide: Consubstantiality in the Unholy Trinity of Theology, Diabology, and Anthropology
I mean this essay as an addendum to my recent discussion of the theism/atheism debate within modern Satanism. In the comments on that piece, the original author of a blog I briefly mentioned in my somewhat tiresome disquisition noted that the very terms of the debate—theism, atheism—are slightly ambiguous and require some clarification to ensure [...]
On Externalization and the Theistic/Atheistic Divide within Satanism
Recently, the blog of a French colleague dropped The Devil’s Fane’s name as an example of the atheistic path within a modern religion characterized at least since 1975 by a presumptive split between those who view Satan as primarily symbol/inspiration/metaphor and those who imbue the figure with a more concrete external reality. I have little [...]
Externalization, Satanic Uniqueness, and the Theistic/Atheistic Debate
I haven’t discussed the ideas contained in this essay much on the site mainly because I was saving them for what has turned out to be one of the several books I’m supposedly working on writing (but shhh!—I shouldn’t discuss that goal publicly, for reasons that will become apparent at the end). However, I feel [...]
