Saturday, November 30, 2019

Announcements

Wherein the Wicked Witch Confesses to an Uncomfortable Mix of Apathy & Outrage, with no Energy to be Found, Resulting in a List,
Instead of Meaningful Writing.





1.  Surprising absolutely no one, I could not complete the years stated schedule for Radio Free Satan's Confessions of a Wicked Witch.  I want to thank a tornado and life threatening illnesses for that, although, fair disclosure, it probably would have gone tits up, anyway.  I make no promises, but I still may pull this off by years end, if I pull my head from my ass.

2.  Please use this list, as well as the items shared by members on social media to find unique gifts for the holidays: https://www.churchofsatan.com/sources/

3.  I am gearing up for the 6th Annual Wicked Witch of the Year Award, and will begin accepting nominations.  I remind all that nominees must be a member in good standing in the Church of Satan.  The nominee should have some demonstrable accomplishment, which she credits some part of, to her applying Satanic philosophy in the real world, during this year.  I remind you of the highly accomplished Satanic Witches we've awarded over the previous 5 years:

Marilyn Mansfield
 Kim Rice
 Ruth Waytz
 Troj Bruegel
  & Heather Height, our Reigning Wicked Witch of the Year

You may nominate by sending an email to MagistraY@gmail.com 



Sunday, August 18, 2019

A Public Response to a Personal Question

When Not Busy Casting the Bones & Stirring the Cauldron

I am Busy Being An American

Wherein the Wicked Witch Admits that it Isn't Politics She Loves
but 
Her Country

Usual Disclaimer Type Stuff:  While I usually write about things from my perspective as a Satanic Witch, and that being who I am it could hardly be filtered anyway, like much of the country, politics are on my mind.  I must then repeat, The Church of Satan does not, ever, take a position on political policies, parties, candidates, or legislative issues.  They are the only church I am aware of, and I'd be happy to be proven wrong, that upholds the Jeffersonian ideal of true separation of church and state.  Therefore our members are utterly free to pursue, or not, whatever position they feel best represents their needs and principles.  Now, one would think that sort of open-minded, generous view would be seen as the opposite of the cult like preaching of politics from the pulpit that seems the norm on Sunday, these days.  

But no, the Right think we are left wing radicals with billions of dollars.  They drag up crazy Chelsea Clinton conspiracies, liberal doses of the Illuminati, and claim we run ANTIFA...blah, blah, blah.
Which, strangely, makes me more comfortable than when the Left attack. 

They think we are all the worst kind of anything that ends with "ist."  We are all racist, sexist, anti-feminist---by the time they are done listing all the people we allegedly hate I want to ask who the fuck they think is left to be in the Church?

It is hard, what the Church does.  I know because I keep writing "we," and as pretentious as I can be, I didn't mean it in the imperial sense.  I know when I am speaking I have to be clear I am speaking for myself, not the organization.

So that was on my mind after a particularly hurtful twitter battle with someone who attacked the Church from a political position, as well as all the usual bullshit.  

So, already on my mind was the futility of online politics, whether I should be concentrating on something (like, anything) else, and why it matters to me.

Then, under a full moon, with music filtering out of a small British restaurant, absolutely packed with people of any number of genders, nationalities, races, religions and degrees of sobriety, someone reminded me why I am the way I am.  What follows springs from that moment.

A dear friend, who I respect deeply, but with whom I disagree with most everything, politically, asked me a question I could not answer, properly, at the time.

He wanted to know why I would speak politically, if doing so could cause me to lose friends--was it worth it?
The timing was strange as I had been contemplating how to remain true to myself and not further confuse a specific brand of politics with my apolitical church, and in the name of self-awareness, while I knew the bottom line answer, I asked myself why I am so obsessed with our government?

I envy those who don't feel the need to shoot off their mouths.  I am jealous of those who can happily go about their lives with little or no regard for shit that, let's face it, we can't control.  They have a peace I will never know, and I don't hold that against them, but that isn't who I am. Like all of us I am a product of my environment.

I have spent a lifetime out of the mainstream.  My grandparents were unique, my parents were brilliantly weird, and so it goes.  It might strike my friend funny to know that as a kid, trying desperately to fit in, I used to beg to my parents “can’t we be normal?”  When we moved upstate from NYC our lack of normalcy became so obvious it was jarring. Picture a hippie version of the Addams Family moving onto an entire block of Archie Bunkers.  It wasn’t pretty.

Watching those neighbors, flag wavers, all shiny and clean, doing the Sunday church thing, raising perfect cheerleaders and football stars, I felt I wasn’t one of them--and trust me, whenever I tried, they made sure I knew they thought the same.  I learned about the cruelty of the majority in the most benign, bucolic, surroundings. I learned about pack mentality, not on National Geographic, but in suburban backyards. Then, as now, I found my place as the scapegoat, designated to be blamed for whatever plagued the social group. It should surprise no one that from grade school I learned that hypocrisy enraged me above all things.

I watched my father get punched in the face for having the nerve to have a peace symbol bumper sticker on his car, by a church deacon.  I watched my mother cry when she ran the local brownie group, spent hours creating and gifting the most amazing crafts, and, one moment, the girls were engaged and delighted--and the next the parents dismissed her for being “too young” which, we were later told, by the only black people in 30 miles, was code for “show business Jews, from the city!"  I had been taught that we were all Americans and nothing else mattered, but that wasn’t what I saw from suburban patriots. The had a very minimalist, but straight forward, postcard view of what an American was. We were a blot on their image, skewing the demographic, and we were resented for it.

I was lonely but I wasn't unhappy. We were the weirdos who went to museums and plays. We read books. We read and watched the news. We travelled throughout the states for months every summer. We studied history by touching it. I don't know how old I was when I realized I loved my country, but I tied it to my family, and to what we represent.

My father, from Dubuque, Iowa, has a degree in history, my mother, a true native New Yorker, had a Masters in Fine Arts, before retiring to the Rocky Mountains.  My grandfather was born and raised in the Midwest gaining engineering and literature degrees, before moving east, and my grandmother immigrated from Warsaw, Poland, with her 8 brothers and sisters, and became the first Jew to enroll in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.  What I am saying is my family IS America. We embody its principles and its history. If we connect in no other way to our fellow man, we are connected by that. It is the link that ties us to humanity, and it matters. 

Our experience spans from the Midwest, to Ellis Island, to Hollywood, going back to the Salem Witch Trials, as well as a case of genetic wanderlust that has me in the South and my kids in four different states.  This really is MY country. I am ridiculously idealistic, and in the face of all things to the contrary, I’m still a believer in the American ideal. I may be a Satanist for what I KNOW, but I am an American for what I believe: Equality under the law, justice to those who harm the innocent, and opportunity for all.

I have 5 kids and 3 grandkids.  If I didn’t, maybe it would matter less.  Since I don’t believe in any afterlife beyond that which you leave behind, my kids and then theirs will contend with whatever choices we allow to be made in our name.  This country was specifically designed by people who embraced the concept of leaving it better than they found it.  They promoted a revolution through protest. They enumerated potential pitfalls, and did something truly unique for us American weirdos.

  They made us matter even if everyone is against us.

The Bill of Rights is designed to protect us from what a complete democracy can do--because in reality a complete democracy is mob rule/pack mentality.  The Bill of Rights protects the INDIVIDUAL. How can someone like me, the perennial outsider, not be grateful and do all I can to protect it?

I see the right to redress grievances as a moral obligation, in return for my children’s rights and freedoms. This is my America, and I react to those I see as damaging it like anyone would if someone was stealing the car out of their driveway.  It pisses me off. Instinct screams “No, asshole! You can’t have it!”

So, if speaking my mind about politics loses me friends or followers, despite my civil and friendly demeanor in public or private, I can’t even count as high as the number of fucks I don’t give.   All of my greatest failings, my biggest mistakes, were based on denying what my instincts and my principles were telling me. I won't deny my convictions for people who can't understand that loving America has nothing to with saluting flags and blindly accepting. It has to do with, for me, being part of its evolution, as I utilize the freedoms and institutions it gave us. I won't sacrifice that amazing gift, fed with the blood of generations of our soldiers, for something as transitory as being popular.

Not when it comes to my children’s America.
So, this election cycle too, shall pass. And most of those who need the race to be interested will post cool kitty videos and recipes, and life will return to normal, and most online bickering, forgiven. I will still be writing congresspeople, gathering statistics, in one hand, and doing witchy stuff with the other.

To sum:

“Never, for the sake of peace and quiet, deny your own experience or convictions”

Dag Hammarskjold

Wednesday, April 10, 2019


Hypocrites, Secularists, & Biases


Oh My!

Wherein the Wicked Witch Confesses 

Shame at Being Surprised that Humans Suck

...and might even find she has one more fight left in her

      Let's start with the obvious.  Of course I am biased, as a member of the clergy of Church of Satan ,against the Temple of Satan.  I admit it, I am proud of it, and despite of it, I can look at their actions through a secular lense.  I can do that through the wonders of critical thinking, instilled in me as a child raised by atheists.  I personally hold, and in my role as Magistra put forth, that they are not Satanists by my definition, by the definitions provided in Satanic Canon, and as evidenced by their actions--but forget that part of me.  To this blog my feelings of their lacking in the Satanism department is irrelevant, and for this purpose the same complaints would hold against any and all religions that violate, or attempt to violate, the establishment clause (aka Separation of Church and State.)

     So the TS has spent the last few years indulging in what I call TBAT--the bigger asshole theory.  I spent a rather significant portion of my life promoting the same.  It is simple, really.  The concept is that you demonstrate the unfairness of traditional religions having their religious bullshit all over tax sponsored places and institutions by demanding equal time.  Outside of the religious world this is called hypocrisy.

Example:  To demonstrate the violation of the 1st Amendment of having the 10 Commandments on a monument at a courthouse, be a bigger asshole, and demand a monument that represents YOUR religion, too.  'that'll learn'em!  Soon we'll be making our way through a religious maze of statues and plaques at the fucking DMV.  Winning?


    Now, here is where the world has gone clusterfuck in a major way.  You would think that groups like American Atheists or any allegedly secular organization would say "Fuck you!  Separation means separation, no matter what religion it is, and there should be NO religious monuments, of any stripe on public grounds, and no "elective" religious classes sponsored by public schools, etc...."  That would make sense.  Secular means, I thought, secular.  Separation doesn't mean everyone gets to do it--it means it doesn't get done.

Try again.  The American Atheists have had T/S speakers at their annual convention previously, and again this year.  Central Florida Freethought Community  is actually selling tickets for a dinner with T/S founder, Doug, and promoting the fluff film his organization is in.  Want to know why this is okay?  Want to know why, or why they claim this is ok?  From the horse's mouth:


There are no monuments, no clubs, and no violations, Ygraine. That's what they want. You deny this over and over and over and talk about how they want religion in government when this is exactly what they are fighting against.
How can you want what you are fighting against?
Like a common preacher, this dude, this guy is asking me to disbelieve my lying eyes, and take on faith that they built that statue (that they even sued Netflix over,) and are using litigation because they DON'T want it used.  Better yet, my questioning of this is some sort of jealous rivalry because I didn't bring it up on his time frame.

Do you really want to understand this better or do you just want to have a one-way conversation? If it is the first, give me a chance and reach out to me. I have been engaged in SOCAS across the state for a decade and hadn't heard of you until you were complaining about how someone was "sataning" wrong.


As a Satanist, my personal view IS that they are Sataning wrong--a lovely term that I hadn't heard before, but that no doubt validates the T/S victim complex one achieves when caught stealing, but that pales in comparison to them AMERICANING wrong, and bringing the rubes in the secular community down with them.

Forgive me for thinking I could find like-minded SECULARISTS in a secular group. Forgive me for having spent 4 decades advocating for ALL alternative religious rights, and choosing, instead, to spend the balance of my life working toward a secular government. This fucker hasn't heard of me. Ouch. It is almost Trumpian to deny expertise and experience in lieu of the bright and shiny media whoredom Doug has embraced with such success. This 'community' (that word should have given me a clue...mea culpa) is free to ignore over 1000 news articles (back when they actually read the news on paper, and online) over 300 local and national televised news interviews, over 2000 students, lectures at 27 colleges and universities, and my being an expert in...shit, I can't count how many court cases and police investigations. Maybe I should be more like Doug and build a religious monument to get national attention and have some cache' in this dick's eyes--except, NO. Principles still matter. I may be the most wicked of witches, but I am fucking Pollyanna Purebred when it comes to my obsessive dedication to the Bill of Rights.

So, my questions to them, the atheists, and others who support this:

1. If the T/S are building these monuments, fighting to have them erected, and WIN, will you turn on them in the same way you'd be against the 10 Commandment monuments, crosses, creche displays, etc....? In other words are they only useful as long as they lose?

2. Is this a backwards, reverse psychology thing? Should we attempt to murder to demonstrate murder is wrong?

3. What other religious organizations have been embraced--surely if it is ok to attempt monuments and school clubs for pseudo-Satanists, you must be ok with the "elective" Biblical Literacy legislation being fought in several states? Which of those churches do you support?

I get Captain Dipshit being concerned that my bias is influencing my position. Hell, I WAS CONCERNED MY BIAS WOULD INFLUENCE MY POSITION, but I employed a little thing we call logic. I asked myself the following:

Would a secularist or atheist support the construction of a Christian statue or support Christian elective classes, to be placed on tax sponsored public land.

No.

Then why are they supporting a supposed Satanic one--and if it is claimed that it is only cool because they are making a point or because they lose in court, how is that not hypocrisy?

&

What if they win? If they were told they had the right to have those classes, and they could place that monument, firmly establishing legal precedent for ALL religions, how does that create a more secular country?

It doesn't. It does the opposite.

In this case my only bias is a disgust at such short sighted hypocrisy.

In the final analysis I find I am actually hurt.  I offered years of experience, proven accomplishments in the realms of religious freedom, advocacy, and education, and instead these 'secularists' are impressed by the celebrity factor of a guy who is doing precisely what they claim to be against.   Back in the day we called that 'selling out.'

So, if unwanted in that particular group, and that group claims to be something they aren't, I kind of feel obligated to demonstrate the principles they have forgotten.  Hell, after years of turning down all but small podcasts, I might discover I miss the spotlight.  I might find that this sort of unAmerican embrace of religious bullshit is just the sort of thing that brings me out of public/media retirement.  Maybe then, they will "hear of me."  I'm no Doug, of course, he is young and pretty and incredibly well spoken, but as my ATHEIST mother taught me,

OLD AGE & TREACHERY WILL BEAT YOUTH AND SKILL, EVERY TIME. It is never too late to be a wicked witch


Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Hail to Thee, Les Hernandez

To a Skylark



Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! 
Bird thou never wert, 
That from Heaven, or near it, 
Pourest thy full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 

Higher still and higher 
From the earth thou springest 
Like a cloud of fire; 
The blue deep thou wingest, 
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 

In the golden lightning 
Of the sunken sun, 
O'er which clouds are bright'ning, 
Thou dost float and run; 
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. 

The pale purple even 
Melts around thy flight; 
Like a star of Heaven, 
In the broad day-light 
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight, 

Keen as are the arrows 
Of that silver sphere, 
Whose intense lamp narrows 
In the white dawn clear 
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. 

All the earth and air 
With thy voice is loud, 
As, when night is bare, 
From one lonely cloud 
The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflow'd. 

What thou art we know not; 
What is most like thee? 
From rainbow clouds there flow not 
Drops so bright to see 
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. 

Like a Poet hidden 
In the light of thought, 
Singing hymns unbidden, 
Till the world is wrought 
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: 

Like a high-born maiden 
In a palace-tower, 
Soothing her love-laden 
Soul in secret hour 
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: 

Like a glow-worm golden 
In a dell of dew, 
Scattering unbeholden 
Its a{:e}real hue 
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view: 

Like a rose embower'd 
In its own green leaves, 
By warm winds deflower'd, 
Till the scent it gives 
Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves: 

Sound of vernal showers 
On the twinkling grass, 
Rain-awaken'd flowers, 
All that ever was 
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. 

Teach us, Sprite or Bird, 
What sweet thoughts are thine: 
I have never heard 
Praise of love or wine 
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 

Chorus Hymeneal, 
Or triumphal chant, 
Match'd with thine would be all 
But an empty vaunt, 
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 

What objects are the fountains 
Of thy happy strain? 
What fields, or waves, or mountains? 
What shapes of sky or plain? 
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? 

With thy clear keen joyance 
Languor cannot be: 
Shadow of annoyance 
Never came near thee: 
Thou lovest: but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. 

Waking or asleep, 
Thou of death must deem 
Things more true and deep 
Than we mortals dream, 
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? 

We look before and after, 
And pine for what is not: 
Our sincerest laughter 
With some pain is fraught; 
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 

Yet if we could scorn 
Hate, and pride, and fear; 
If we were things born 
Not to shed a tear, 
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 

Better than all measures 
Of delightful sound, 
Better than all treasures 
That in books are found, 
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! 

Teach me half the gladness 
That thy brain must know, 
Such harmonious madness 
From my lips would flow 
The world should listen then, as I am listening now. 

Thursday, February 14, 2019

www.radiofreesatan.com

Confessions of a Wicked Witch

Are Thrilled to Announce that

Heather Height

is the 

Wicked Witch of the Year

Social media kind of blurs time lines in the real world.
 I know I knew my Wicked Witch of the Year before I actually met her.
 I also know I met her at a major CoS function, but I can’t remember which one.
 I DO know that the first time we ever had more than a few pleasant words
was in the dining room of Black House Central, at the 50th Anniversary Celebration.
 Once face to face, it took less than 2 minutes to see we were kindred spirits.

No, it isn’t her amazing talents, from stand-up to pin-up.
No, it isn’t just her whip quick wit.
No, it isn’t that we share an ancient stereotype--the sarcastic, big-busted, ever ready with a bawdy joke, and still one of the guys, redhead, and I am playing favorites with a younger version of myself. And, NO, it isn’t because she is married to one of my very favorite people, and most trusted friends, on the whole planet.

It is because, at an age where women are routinely dismissed as sexual beings, where they
are informed that they are too old to chase new dreams, Heather Height and her alter ego,
Heidee Nytes, lived as her own god, and refused to let any body, any tiny dick based
established wisdom, limit her divinity.

For all the pseudo-psychiatric babble about re-inventing oneself while aging, what they
usually mean is re-inventing your ability to accept banality.  Men hit it at about 60, but women are usually dismissed from the career, love, and sex fast tracks by 40. While this is better than the 30 of a previous generation, the terminology applied to sexually dynamic older women is so universally  unflattering that some truly lame ass broads decided to combat ‘cougar’ and ‘MILF’ with WHIP: “woman who is hot, intelligent and in her prime.”
 Worse they use it with no hint of comprehending the sexual irony.  
 I have a feeling my friend Heather could provide some salient WHIP information.

My choice for Wicked Witch of the Year is a  Church of Satan Priestess, stand-up comic,
loving wife,  and, having only started in the industry a few short years ago,
is the writer and star of the Favorite Feature Fetish Film at the Fetish Awards!  

I am in awe.  This woman just did the re-invention thing and she doesn’t need any qualifiers
about graceful acceptance!  She has unapologetically used the wisdom of her life experience
in an industry where youth is demanded, AND, walked right in there and stole the show.
 Her meteoric rise, her humor, and her very obvious devotion to our organization,
made it impossible for me not to select her as The Wicked Witch of the Year.

She joins a cadre of brilliant, sexy, powerful Satanic Witches, and I welcome her to this exclusive club.

Hail, Heather!
Hail, Satan!

Magistra Ygraine,
February 13, 2019




















Undercroft Members Choice Winner



 Radio Free Satan's Confessions of A Wicked Witch



in association with

Undercroft


Are Pleased to Announce the

Undercroft 

Member's Choice

Wicked Witch of the Year/2019




Priestess Hydra M. Star





 I can’t say I am surprised.  For at least the last decade and a half Hydra has been a constant contributor within the ranks of The Infernal Empire . Despite my early onset I am not getting up and pulling a file, I am pretty sure she has been nominated most years, and her fan mail is pretty epic.

This award, voted by members reflects what I have read through the years.  I could and have waxed lofty about Hydra’s multitude of artistic and literary gifts, but I’d like to touch on what makes her truly rare, truly unique.

She is a spectacular friend.  I’m not talking about with me, in fact, although we are warmly friendly, we’ve not had the opportunity to get close.  Instead I am talking about members who feel utterly connected to her, who rely on her council, and want her approval.  She is trusted by the strongest people when they are the most vulnerable, and she maintains those relationships, they are real.  How many of us have, let alone are, friends like that?

So, to me, it makes perfect sense that Hydra was voted by Undercroft members as their choice.



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 7th Annual Wicked Witch of the Year Lizzie Hendrix